Religion

In this powerful, groundbreaking work, Boyarin guides us through a rich tapestry of new discoveries and ancient scriptures to make the powerful case that our conventional understandings of Jesus and of the origins of Christianity are wrong. Boyarin’s scrupulously illustrated account argues that the coming of the Messiah was fully imagined in the ancient Jewish texts. Jesus, moreover, was embraced by many Jews as this person, and his core teachings were not at all a break from Jewish beliefs and teachings. Jesus and his followers, Boyarin shows, were simply Jewish. What came to be known as Christianity came much later, as religious and political leaders sought to impose a new religious orthodoxy that was not present at the time of Jesus’s life.

Published in hardcover to nationwide attention and now available for the first time in paperback, this brilliant work will continue to challenge some of our most cherished assumptions.

In the 1960s, the hopes for a blossoming progressive Catholicism awakened by the Second Vatican Council were cut short by conservative opposition and the rightward agendas of the previous and current pope.

Forty years later, Catholic ­ ≠ the Vatican heralds the revival of a newly democratic and participatory church that transcends narrow Vatican doctrine. Destined to be a seminal text of progressive Catholicism, this beautifully written and uncompromising book by renowned scholar and activist Rosemary Radford Ruether examines the serious moral contradictions in Vatican Catholicism and offers a vision of a faith committed to justice and peace. Ruether calls for the dismantling of sexist teachings and ascetic values, while promoting healthy sexual ethics and egalitarian communities that welcome women, gays, and lesbians into full equality in the church and even ordination. Reverend Doctor Susan Thistlethwaite’s introduction explains Ruether’s pioneering leadership in progressive Christianity and her unwavering commitment to ecological responsibility and human rights.

Grounded in her civil rights work in the Mississippi Delta and the Latin American tradition of liberation theology, Ruether’s long overdue vision of the church as it should be will serve as an inspiration for Catholics everywhere.

In the spring of 2007, Daniel C. Maguire was condemned by U.S. bishops for his progressive writings, because, the New York Times reported, Maguire’s pamphlets on abortion and same-sex marriage “are written in a very popular and lively style, and from what the bishops knew, they were very widely distributed.” Praised by Ms. Magazine as one of “40 male heroes who took a chance for women,” Daniel C. Maguire is a noted theologian and ethicist whose controversial views and irreverent style have rankled conservatives for nearly thirty years.

In this pithy guide to progressive Catholicism, Maguire shows how tragically far conservative Catholic politics have strayed from the best Catholic social teaching. Whose Church? takes special aim at the “pelvic politics” that have dominated official Catholicism, skewering the Church hierarchy’s rigid positions on sex and reproduction and revealing a “spiritually healthy” alternative approach that is fully in line with Catholic tradition. Whose Church? offers deeply informed and incisive theological arguments in favor of gender equality, affirmative action and antiracism, opposition to war, and the fight against poverty and economic inequality.

Full of humor, passion, and intolerance for injustice, Whose Church? is a manifesto for Catholics and for progressives everywhere—showing the way forward at a critical juncture in the history of the U.S. Catholic Church and in progressive politics more generally.