Faith on the Edge: Religion and Marginalized Existence - Softcover

Boff, Leonardo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1610975871 ISBN 13: 9781610975872

Publisher: Wipf and Stock, 2011

Synopsis

A major voice in liberation theology and once silenced for a year by the pope for his outspoken views, Leonardo Boff here presents a collection of his controversial essays attacking poverty and political persecution. As a Brazilian, Boff is witness to, and active in, the liberation movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America. He claims that the Church there is redefining itself as a modern, populist movement. "It is [in Latin America]" writes Boff, "that the Church of the future is being molded. There are more Catholics in Latin America than on any other continent. Soon more than half of the members of the Church will live here. European countries, with their demographic decline and meager religious creativity - their theology, liturgy, and pastoral ministry consisting almost entirely of syntheses of material drawn from the past - are gradually losing their universal relevance . . . It is in Latin America that the Church's principal new challenges are appearing. What is the relationship between the gospel and the liberation of the oppressed? How can Christian love be reconciled with participation in the wild class struggle taking place around us? How can Christianity help overcome the relations of international injustice prevailing in the unequal relationships between rich countries and poor ones? Advocating a sympathetic but critical relationship between liberation theology and Marxism, Boff claims that historical materialism is the social - scientific method conducive to liberation theology. He also discusses the political dimension of faith, the Church's role in the struggle for human rights, the nature of the popular Church, the rights of the poor and the oppressed, and the kind of future they may anticipate. Boff's bold reflections on these and other issues make vital reading for anyone concerned with faith and justice in today's world.

About this title

About the Author:

Leonardo Boff was born in Brazil in 1938 and received a doctorate from the University of Munich in Germany in 1970. For the following twenty years, he worked as Professor of Theology at the Franciscan School for Philosophy and Theology in Petropolis, Brazil. During the 1970s, he and Gustavo Gutierrez helped to define liberation theology. Since 1993 he has been a professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology. He is also a member of the international Earth Charter Commission. Boff is the author of more than seventy books, including Saint Joseph: The Father of Jesus in a Fatherless Society (Cascade Books, 2009) and Virtues: For Another Possible World (Cascade Books, 2010). In 2001 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award (which is considered to be the "alternative" Nobel Prize) by the Swedish Parliament. Robert Barr, SJ, completed work on a doctorate in patristic theology at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He has authored a wide range of articles in various American and European scholarly reviews; included among these are studies on the saving significance of Christ's resurrection, on Russian ecclesiology, and on St. Augustine's 'City of God'.

Language Notes:

Text: English, Portugese (translation)

About this edition

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1610975871
• ISBN 13: 9781610975872
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220