The sixties spiritual awakening

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Graham Ward

Arguing for a new direction in postmodern theological thinking, away from the liberalism and nihilism of those who name themselves postmodern theologians, this book collects together for the first time important examples of the work of continental critical theorists relevant to the study of theology or religious studies. Each essay or excerpt is selected, edited and introduced by a leading exponent of that person's work, an exponent who is also a leading figure in the contemporary theological debate.

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Bettina L. Knapp

The book begins by probing the "Divine Feminine" in Tibet's Gesar of Ling, one of the most fascinating myths of all time. Especially intriguing is the hero's seemingly continuous dependency on the feminine principle for guidance. The heroine in Kalidasa's Sanskrit drama, Sakuntala focuses on the obstacles set in Sakuntala's earthly trajectory, and how these were instrumental in her evolution from the stage of passive, unconscious, and withdrawn archetypal Maiden to that of the conscious, decisive, strong spiritual Mother. To explore the highly complex personalities of Kriemhild and Brunhild in the High German Nibelungenlied is to enter the realm of sun and shadow, the lightened regions of consciousness and the deep interiors of primal darkness. Quiche Mayas's Popul Vuh introduces a primordial couple as active participants in the creation of humankind while Racine's Phaedra projects the dramatist's own gnawing religious conflicts onto his mythical heroine: questions of guilt, remorse, anguish, and fatality/predestination. Yeats's Irish/Celtic feminist and heroine, Deirdre, underscores her inner strength, fortitude, and courage in the face of death while I.B. Singer's "Yentl the Yeshivah Boy" depicts the struggle confronting a young girl from an orthodox Polish Jewish family as she attempts to break out of an ultrapatriarchal society.

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Quentin J. Schultze

"Schultze demonstrates how religion and the media in America have borrowed each other's rhetoric. In the process, they have also helped to keep each other honest, pointing out respective foibles and pretensions. Christian media have offered the public as well as religious tribes some of the best media criticism - better than most of the media criticism produced by mainstream media themselves. Meanwhile, mainstream media have rightly taken particular churches to task for misdeeds as well as offered some surprisingly good depictions of religious life."--BOOK JACKET.

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John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum

Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications is an anthology specifically designed for use as a textbook for courses on the Holocaust in universities and adult study groups. It is a complilation of what are now "classic" pieces in the voluminous literature on the Holocaust - pieces by Raul Hilberg, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, George Steiner, Richard Rubenstein and Irving Greenberg - all organized around what the editors have found to be the most often asked questions by their students: (1) Is the Holocaust unique? (2) What really happened in the ghettos and death camps? (3) Who knew what was going on? (4) How could people do the things they did? (5) What about God? Governed by the thesis that the Holocaust left fundamental questions, Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications, in addition to being organized around the five themes identified above, addresses the multiple implications of complexities such as resistance during the Holocaust, and Jewish and Christian identity after Auschwitz. --