Food Justice and Hospitality in Luke-Acts


Book Description

Food security is a multifaceted concept and extends beyond the production of, availability of, and demand for food. This book attempts to explore the meal narrations in Luke-Acts as a source for a theology of hospitality to ascertain Luke’s concern for the immigrant, the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the outcasts. This book focuses on fifteen meal scenes in Luke-Acts and contributes to Lukan scholarship on meals, particularly in addressing the issue of food insecurity. Firstly, by incorporating cultural dimensions and anthropology to understand the social context of the first-century world, this book contributes a new perspective on the Lukan audience, which was stratified by socioeconomic and religious disparities in terms of privilege, wealth, and power. Secondly, this book analyzes the Lukan concern with the social structure and the social, political, economic, and religious setting behind his emphasis on the pto[set macron over o]choi and the marginalized concerning livelihood needs such as food and shelter. Thirdly, this book connects Lukan concern with contemporary theologies that include an emphasis on hunger and hospitality, such as liberation theology, Dalit theology, and practical theology. Thus, the book challenges readers and offers a few recommendations for implementations to combat hunger and destitution.




Food Justice and Hospitality in Luke-Acts


Book Description

Food security is a multifaceted concept and extends beyond the production of, availability of, and demand for food. This book attempts to explore the meal narrations in Luke-Acts as a source for a theology of hospitality to ascertain Luke's concern for the immigrant, the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the outcasts. This book focuses on fifteen meal scenes in Luke-Acts and contributes to Lukan scholarship on meals, particularly in addressing the issue of food insecurity. Firstly, by incorporating cultural dimensions and anthropology to understand the social context of the first-century world, this book contributes a new perspective on the Lukan audience, which was stratified by socioeconomic and religious disparities in terms of privilege, wealth, and power. Secondly, this book analyzes the Lukan concern with the social structure and the social, political, economic, and religious setting behind his emphasis on the pto[set macron over o]choi and the marginalized concerning livelihood needs such as food and shelter. Thirdly, this book connects Lukan concern with contemporary theologies that include an emphasis on hunger and hospitality, such as liberation theology, Dalit theology, and practical theology. Thus, the book challenges readers and offers a few recommendations for implementations to combat hunger and destitution.




The Social World of Luke-Acts


Book Description

"This enormously useful volume presents a 'world' of information and theoretical perspectives that have become indispensable for contextual exegesis of Luke-Acts. The authors of this fascinating and well-planned book are seasoned and trustworthy guides into the world inhabited by Luke and his first readers. These provocative articles provide the commentary reader of Luke-Acts with mighty tools for creating first-century scenarios that reveal significantly new dimensions of Luke's cutting edges." " S. Scott Bartchy, associate professor of Early Christian History, U.C.L.A. "This is clearly the best collection of articles available from the New Testament scholars employing methods of interpretation from cultural anthropology. The writers introduce a wide range of innovative models to unravel the culture of the Biblical world. They offer the first comprehensive analysis of a single New Testament text from the perspective of the social sciences. This highly readable volume will be essential for anyone eager to experience the flood of insights coming from recent social study of the New Testament." " David Rhoads, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago




Acts 1-9:42, Volume 37A


Book Description

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship.




Modern Catholic Social Teaching


Book Description

Outstanding reference work for anyone interested in studying and understanding the key documents of modern Catholic social teaching. (The "modern" period begins in 1891, when Pope Leo XIII wrote "Rerum Novarum," a formal letter, known as an encyclical, on the condition of workers.) Part One includes four essays to provide a context for Catholic social teaching; Part Two includes fourteen commentaries on major documents; and Part Three, with three essays, focuses on broad themes, including the future of Catholic social teaching. The commentaries are the meat of the book, and they reflect a simple framework that will appeal in particular to non-specialists: an intro; an outline; the ecclesial and social context; authorship and process of formulation; the primary essay; reactions to the document; an excursus; and a select, annotated bibliography. All of the contributors represent progressive Catholicism in the United States, that is, scholars within the tradition committed to the ongoing renewal of the church in the spirit of Vatican II.




Subversive Jesus


Book Description

When Jesus left the most exclusive gated community in the universe to come live with the people he loved and gave his life for, he turned everything we know and believe about life on its head. Jesus said that he came to bring good news to the poor, but most Western Christians remain disconnected and isolated from the poor and their contexts of injustice. Even our churches echo society’s pressure to isolate ourselves from the margins (e.g. by moving to a better suburb) and instead teach us how to be “nice people” who worship a “nice Jesus” and don’t disrupt the status quo. Convinced that Jesus places love for the poor and the pursuit of justice central, Craig Greenfield has sought to follow in Christ’s footsteps by living among people at the edges of society for the last fourteen years. His quest to follow this Subversive Jesus has taken Craig and his young family from the slums of Asia to inner city Canada and back again. This is the story of how Jesus led them to the margins: initiating the Pirates of Justice flash mobs, sharing their home with detoxing crackheads, welcoming homeless panhandlers and prostitutes to the dinner table, and ultimately sparking a movement to reach the world’s most vulnerable children. This book is a strong and potentially controversial critique of the status quo too often found in our churches, but it offers an inspirational and hopeful vision of another way. While readers may not relocate to a slum, they will certainly come to view their lives and ministry through a fresh lens—reconsidering how they are uniquely called by Jesus to subversively love the poor and break down systems of injustice in their sphere of influence.




Eating Your Way Through Luke's Gospel


Book Description

Robert Karris spreads before us a delightful feast of information about food themes in the Gospel of Luke. In a lively style of writing, Karris describes the food and drink popular in Jesus' day, eucharistic implications, and the social roles Jesus assumes in relation to food.




Making Room


Book Description

For most of church history, hospitality was central to Christian identity. Yet our generation knows little about this rich, life-giving practice.




Exclusion & Embrace


Book Description

Life at the end of the twentieth century presents us with a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to be defined as in and of itself evil. Miroslav Volf contends that if the healing word of the gospel is to be heard today, Christian theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other. Reaching back to the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation, Volf proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle. In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we "learn to live with one another", but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.




Evidence Unseen


Book Description

Evidence Unseen is the most accessible and careful though through response to most current attacks against the Christian worldview.