Reviews for Handbook of Latina/o Theologies

The average rating for Handbook of Latina/o Theologies based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-08-24 00:00:00 Raymond Dzik This book contains quite a bit of provocative wisdom. Despite its rather bland title, which ostensibly connotes a simple introduction to God-talk (albeit in relation to Christianity alone, which is not abundantly clear), Dorothee Soelle's collection of lectures and essays reflects her own radical and often controversial position in Christian circles and her commitment to a liberation Christianity inspired by Gustavo Gutierrez and feminist philosophy. While not discussed in this text, Soelle first introduced the term "Christofascism" to describe fundamentalist Christianity and its tendency to embrace the status quo in our current sociopolitical context; she rejected Christian triumphalism, imperialism, and militarism, and openly identified as a political leftist. Soelle also worked extensively in a South American Christian context, and her face-to-face encounters with South American workers coupled with her familiarity with the Christian liberation tradition there inflects many of her claims in these essays. Thus, while Soelle is not necessarily an "objective" writer with whom to think about Christianity, she provides a much-needed, and wonderfully modern, framework with which to approach orthodox Christian ideas. Moreover, she consistently presents orthodox, liberal, and liberation perspectives in relation to each of the concepts she discusses, which include creation, sin, peace, resurrection, the use of Scripture, Christ, and even theism itself. Finally, Soelle is charitable to each of these traditions, even when she objects to some of their core assumptions. Her admiration extends to orthodox thinkers such as Karl Barth and liberal writers such as Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ultimately, however, Soelle finds the simple, social justice-oriented ideas of Peruvian or Guatemalan workers and priests most instructive in her attempt to reframe and revise tired and misunderstood Christian doctrines. The easiest and perhaps most accurate way to summarize Soelle's views is to say that she believes that God is on the side of the poor, that Christianity concerns God's liberation, and that most modern iterations of Christianity in the developed world are inadequate to address systemic oppression and injustice. Soelle also firmly believes in the circular movement from praxis to theoretical reflection then back to praxis'that is, the notion that action inspires reflection which then modifies our future action, and helps repel an ossified Christian intellectualism that seldom touches real people's lives. While Soelle's commitment to a liberation framework is manifest from the outset, her belief in the power of that framework develops over the course of the book. In the first few chapters, she therefore traces historical movements from orthodoxy, with its insistence on correct belief and faith in revealed truth, toward liberalism, with its tendencies toward the historicization and contextualization of Scripture and its commitment to the validity of science, toward liberation ideas, wherein Christians are collaborators in God's work of liberation and which prioritizes the perspectives of the poor, women, and victims of oppression. She uses this same method in relation to each of these three discourses to address each tradition's use of the Bible, creation, and sin. Other chapters explore feminist and black liberation perspectives, and in the final chapters, Soelle takes seriously questions about theism and the nature of God (God as omnipotent ruler, God as relation, or God as the expression and source of shared, liberatory power, for example). The scope of this short book is therefore extremely impressive. It is both a helpful primer and a fecund source of important questions and ideas for students and new researchers. Given this scope, I will include here just a few quotes I found especially incisive and useful to keep in mind. On Christianity and politics, Soelle writes: "The separation of church and state has not functioned either in a positive way, for the landless peasants or for the industrial proletariat . . . or even in a conservative way," as it has not protected the poorest in society. On the end of theism: "The 'abolition of the necessity of God' can only relate to a God who is [conceived] in Greek terms." On sin: "Sin is injustice, and God is understood as justice within the biblical tradition." On work and alienation: "Work makes us less than we really should be. It destroys us, alienates us from ourselves. Paul says of the power of sin that I am 'sold under it.' 'For what I would I do not, but what I hate, that I do' (Romans 7:14) . . . This is the most everyday experience of the majority of people." On Scripture and feminism: "We see that the Bible is an androcentric and patriarchal document, but at the same time we discover in it a fundamental opposition to these traditions; we read it as a book of justice, aimed at liberation from all the bonds that enslave us." On literalism and the word of God: "In [the Bible] speak people who have responded to the call of God but who'as males of their time'have missed, denied or perverted the call of God to justice." On Jesus and what it means to accept Christ as the redeemer of the world: "My personal tie to Christ is bound up with my economic, political and sexual life. . . . The acceptance of Jesus binds me to others, and the 'for me' become 'for us.'" On the symbolism of the cross: "Such are the different ways in which the cross can be understood: as a symbol of desperation, humiliation and torment, and as an instrument of domination. . . . In our creed we have, 'He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified.' That is historical, political information." On the resurrection of Christ and that Jesus's death on the cross "was not the end of his career": "For me it is still the simplest, non-miraculous formulation of the resurrection to say that they could not do away with him. . . . What his life meant, what his spirit was, what his disciples did, this 'yes' to God's will lived, and lives today, and this life appears in the cross." On the connection between Christianity and resistance: "Christians in the Nazi period conformed with the Nazis, and Christians today are economic conformists, even if this conformity involves the destruction of God's creation." As is evident, I hope, from this selection of quotes, Soelle is an bold, provocative thinker untethered to the claims of authority in the vein of Bonhoeffer, Tillich, Delores Williams, James Cone, Cornel West, and Walter Rauschenbusch. This is a text I intend to keep at hand, whenever I may need to rethink a difficult Christian idea, the role of the modern Church, or my own faith. Soelle's wisdom is what I believe middle class Christians in Europe and North America most need to hear, especially at this perilous social, political, and environmental moment.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-08-27 00:00:00 Kadeem Stewart This was my first Dorothee Solle book, and I bought two more... I'm a fan. In this book, she compares fundamental, liberal, and liberation theology in a number of different categories. Then she makes some really remarkable, insightful thoughts at the end about how our purpose is to bring the peace of God to earth- but not in an individual "I feel at peace" sense but rather that we can't have peace until there is no more starvation and war, etc. "Even today, many Christians think that one can live by bearing inwardly in one's heart the peace of Christ which comforts us as individuals and relying outwardly on the Pax Romana and the order which it imposes by force... So we must understand the Pax Christi which comes into the world with the birth of Jesus as a history of peace making, a history of the interruption of violence." (pg 160)