Synopsis
An important new volume showcasing a wide range of faith-based responses to one of today’s most pressing social issues, challenging us to expand our ways of understanding.
Land of Stark Contrasts brings together the work of social scientists, ethicists, and theologians exploring the profound role of religion in understanding and responding to homelessness and housing insecurity in all corners of the United States―from Seattle, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley to Dallas and San Antonio to Washington, D.C., and Boston.
Together, the essays of Land of Stark Contrasts chart intriguing ways forward for future initiatives to address the root causes of homelessness. In this way they are essential reading for practical theologians, congregational leaders, and faith-based nonprofit organizers exploring how to combine spiritual and material care for homeless individuals and other vulnerable populations. Social workers, nonprofit managers, and policy specialists seeking to understand how to partner better with faith-based organizations will also find the chapters in this volume an invaluable resource.
Contributors include James V. Spickard, Manuel Mejido Costoya and Margaret Breen, Michael R. Fisher Jr., Laura Stivers, Lauren Valk Lawson, Bruce Granville Miller, Nancy A. Khalil, John A. Coleman, S.J., Jeremy Phillip Brown, Paul Houston Blankenship, María Teresa Dávila, Roberto Mata, and Sathianathan Clarke.
Co-published with Seattle University’s Center for Religious Wisdom and World Affairs
About the Authors
Manuel Mejido Costoya has worked for the United Nations in Geneva and Bangkok and has held teaching and research appointments in Chile, Switzerland, and the United States.
Margaret Breen is Research and Development Director at the Renton Ecumenical Association of Churches. She has been coordinating faith-based responses to homelessness and housing insecurity in the Puget Sound region for over a decade. Originally from Scotland, Breen is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Her publications include “Faith-Based Responses to Homelessness in Greater Seattle: A Grounded Theory Approach” (Social Compass, 2020).
Jeremy Phillip Brown is an Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame specializing in medieval Judaism. He has taught at the University of San Francisco and served as Simon and Ethel Flegg Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at McGill University in Montreal. His research focuses on the Zohar, the penitential discourses of Jewish mysticism and pietism, Jewish Christian polemic in medieval Iberia, and the dissemination of Kabbalah in Latin America. Brown’s recent publications include “Gazing into Their Hearts: On the Appearance of Kabbalistic Pietism in Thirteenth-Century Castile” (European Journal of Jewish Studies, 2020); and “From Nacionalista Anti Kabbalistic Polemic to Aryan Kabbalah in the Southern Cone” (Journal of Religion, 2019).
Sathianathan Clarke is Bishop Sundo Kim Chair in World Christianity and Professor of Theology, Culture, and Mission at Wesley Theological Seminary. A presbyter of the Church of South India, he started his ministry serving as a social worker and priest for the Diocese of Madras among Dalit communities in rural India. Clarke is the author of two books: Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation Theology in India (Oxford University Press, 1998); and Competing Fundamentalisms: Violent Extremism in Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism (Westminster John Knox, 2017).
John A. Coleman, S.J., has been an associate pastor at Saint Ignatius Parish in San Francisco since 2009. Previously, he was the Charles Casassa Professor of Social Values at Loyola Marymount University (1997–2009); Professor of Religion and Society at the Jesuit School of Theology and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley (1974–1997); and the Thomas More Chair, The University of Western Australia (2005 and 2007). Coleman has edited, coauthored, or authored eighteen books, including The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism, 1958-1974 (University of California Press, 1978); An American Strategic Theology (Paulist Press, 1982); One Hundred Years of Catholic Social Teaching (Orbis, 1991); and Christian Political Ethics (Princeton University Press, 2007). He has also contributed over seventy chapters to collected volumes such as Civil Society and Government (Princeton University Press, 2002); Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); The True Wealth of Nations (Oxford University Press, 2010); Modern Catholic Social Teaching (Georgetown University Press, 2018); and American Parishes: Remaking Local Catholicism (Fordham University Press, 2019).
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