Bøger i Contending Modernities serien

Who Are My People? explores the complex relationship between identity, violence, and Christianity in Africa.In Who Are My People?, Emmanuel Katongole examines what it means to be both an African and a Christian in a continent that is often riddled with violence. The driving assumption behind the investigation is that the recurring forms of violence in Africa reflect an ongoing crisis of belonging. Katongole traces the crisis through three key markers of identity: ethnicity, religion, and land. He highlights the unique modernity of the crisis of belonging and reveals that its manifestations of ethnic, religious, and ecological violence are not three separate forms of violence but rather modalities of the same crisis. This investigation shows that Christianity can generate and nurture alternative forms of community, nonviolent agency, and ecological possibilities.The book is divided into two parts. Part One deals with the philosophical and theological issues related to the question of African identity. Part Two includes three chapters, each of which engages a form of violence, locating it within the broader story of modern sub-Saharan Africa. Each chapter includes stories of Christian individuals and communities who not only resist violence but are determined to heal its wounds and the burden of history shaped by Africa's unique modernity. In doing so, they invent new forms of identity, new communities, and a new relationship with the land. This engaging, interdisciplinary study, combining philosophical analysis and theological exploration, along with theoretical argument and practical resources, will interest scholars and students of theology, peace studies, and African studies.

The contributors to this original volume provide a new and nuanced approach to studying how discourses of religion shape public domains in sites of political contestation and "e;broken solidarities."e;Our public discourse is saturated with intractable debates about religion, race, gender, and nationalism. Examples range from Muslim women and headscarves to Palestine/Israel and to global anti-Black racism, along with other pertinent issues. We need fresh thinking to navigate the questions that these debates raise for social justice and solidarity across lines of difference. In Religion and Broken Solidarities, the contributors provide powerful reflections and wisdom to guide how we can approach these questions with deep ethical commitments, intersectional sensibilities, and intellectual rigor.Religion and Broken Solidarities traces the role of religious discourse in unrealized moments of solidarity between marginalized groups who ostensibly share similar aims. Religion, the contributors contend, cannot be separated from national, racial, gendered, and other ways of belonging. These modes of belonging make it difficult for different minoritized groups to see how their struggles might benefit from engagement with one another. The four chapters, which interpret historical and contemporary events with a sharp and critical lens, examine accusations of antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism in the Women's March in Washington, DC; the failure of feminists in Iran and Turkey to realize a common cause because of nationalist discourse concerning religiosity and secularity; Black Catholics seeking to overcome the problems of modernity in the West; and the disjunction between the Palestinian and Mizrahi cause in Palestine/Israel. Together these analyses show that overcoming constraints to solidarity requires alternative imaginaries to that of the modern nation-state.Contributors: Atalia Omer, Joshua Lupo, Perin E. Gurel, Juliane Hammer, Ruth Carmi, Brenna Moore, and Melani McAlister.

Claims that our current political upheavals, exemplified by the far-right populism of billionaire Donald Trump, reveal fundamental flaws in secular liberalism. Angus Ritchie argues instead for an ""inclusive populism"", in which religious and nonreligious identities and institutions are fully represented in the public square.