Monday, March 2, 2015

Alain Epp Weaver's recent book is the subject of an extensive discussion at the journal Syndicate, at which four authors will engage with Epp Weaver's book. Readers interested in this theopolitical conversation will be richly rewarded. Check back every few days for new essays. After the online versions have been posted, the essays will only be available in the print edition. The editor begins his introduction this way:

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"Talking about Palestinian-Israeli affairs is very uncomfortable. It is a practical matter of grave significance for contemporary foreign affairs and a historical malaise of maddening perplexity; the lack of peace has tragically grave consequences as we all learned this last July when escalating violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza led to the deaths of over 2000 Palestinians in Gaza and 71 Israelis. The historical complexity of the political reality is redoubled when the issues therein are discussed as political-theological matters, mostly because political theology itself is inherently awkward. Political theology forces us to discuss topics that are gauche, uncouth, and imprudent: violence, sovereignty, God, rights, and money. And so, one can be forgiven for thinking that, if it is taken up as a political-theological matter, any further discussion of the distance between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives (not to mention the multiplicities therein) about how to organize and arrange—that is, to map—their collective futures, only promises to deepen the distrust, pain, and dispossession."

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