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

In this insightful volume, Susan R. Holman blends personal memoir and deep research into ancient writings to illuminate the age-old issues of need, poverty, and social justice in the history of the Christian tradition. Holman explores, for instance, the stories of fourth- and fifth-century bishops, showing how these early Christian writers can be allies for those who want to influence our contemporary dialogue about social justice. Throughout this deeply personal and richly scholarly work, Holman connects the ancient and the modern, helping readers understand more fully these age-old issues.

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