God Knows There's Need: Christian Responses to Poverty - Hardcover

Holman, Susan R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195383621 ISBN 13: 9780195383621

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009

Synopsis

The subject of poverty is rich in meanings and associations, among them hunger, stench, disease, disfigurement, shame, revulsion, and loss. It is a topic that has preoccupied the mind and hearts of the faithful since the inception of Christianity.

In this insightful volume, Susan R. Holman blends personal memoir and scholarly research into ancient writings to illuminate the age-old issues of need, poverty, and social justice in the history of the Christian tradition. Holman weaves together stories from late antiquity with three conceptual paradigms that can bridge the gap between historical story and modern action: sensing need, sharing the world, and embodying sacred kingdom. In the first four chapters, the author explores how personal need influences the way that we look at the world and the needs of others. Beginning with the story of her own encounters with need and her discovery of the world of early Christian texts on poverty and religious response, the author re-tells these historical narratives in new ways, and traces their influence on post-Reformation history. The second half of the book uses a complex amalgam of images and stories to consider several recurrent themes in any religious responses to poverty and need: poverty and gender, the dilemma of justice in material distribution, ascetic models of social activism and contemplation, the language of human rights and the "common good," challenges of hospitality, and the role of liturgy in constructing a vision for restorative righteousness.

Tying these historical texts to modern responses to need, Holman begins with her own encounters with need and describes her discovery of the existence of never-before-translated early Christian texts on responses to poverty, hunger, and disease. Holman's embrace of the historical perspective will prove useful in interdenominational and ecumenical dialogue on religious responses to social welfare needs. Through their sensitive exploration of nuances and tensions, these essays invite reflection, conversation, and response for scholars and students as well as concerned laypeople across a range of Christian faith communities.

About this title

About the Author

Susan R. Holman is an academic research writer and editor at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health. She is the author of The Hungry are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia.

Reviews

Although a concern with poverty is writ large in the New Testament, scholars have paid scant attention to the ways in which early Christian writers addressed economic inequities in the first four centuries of the Common Era. Combining a passion for social justice with lucid exegesis of patristic authors like Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, and Basil of Caesarea, Holman (The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia) demonstrates that the poor have always been with us and that the church has devised strategies for taking care of them. Holman argues that these writers engaged a response to poverty that involved sensing the needs of the poor; sharing the world with these poor in ways such as, but not limited to, giving alms; and embodying the sacred kingdom, or bringing the brokenness of the impoverished bodies into the body of Christ. For example, the famine that struck Cappadocia in 368–369 left many homeless, ragged and hungry. Gregory of Nazianzus responded by exhorting Christians that these disfigured persons are part of you, even if they are bent down with misfortune. Holman helpfully offers fresh insights into the ways that church history can illuminate social activism. (June)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195383621
• ISBN 13: 9780195383621
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 218