- Queer Hands of God edited by Crystal Cheatham
- Baptized in Tear Gas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist by Elle Dowd
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
- The God Who Riots: Taking Back the Radical Jesus by Damon Garcia
- Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks
- The World's Poorest President Speaks Out by Yoshimi Kusaba
- Bright Evening Star: Mystery of the Incarnation by Madeleine L'Engle
- Miracle on 10th Street and Other Christmas Writings by Madeleine L'Engle
- Mother God by Teresa Kim Pecinovsky
- Beyond Shame: Creating a Healthy Sex Life on Your Own Terms by Matthias Roberts
J.L. Neyhart
Writing about Books, The Bible, Theology, and C. S. Lewis since 2001. Let's go "further up and further in!"
Wednesday, January 04, 2023
Favorite Non-Fiction Books Read in 2022
Tuesday, January 03, 2023
Favorite Fiction Books Read in 2022
These were my top ten favorite fiction books that I read for the first time in 2022 (simply alphabetized by author's last name):
- Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers
- A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2) by Becky Chambers
- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1) by Becky Chambers
- A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2) by Becky Chambers
- To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
- X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont
- Upgrade by Blake Crouch
- The Resisters by Gish Jen
- Superman: Son of Kal-El, Vol. 1: The Truth by Tom Taylor
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Neyhart's Nerdy Reading Recap 2022: Book stats, Graphs, and Charts!
Now on to the nerd stats:
Number of pages read: 37,753
Average book length: 188 pages
Mode of reading:
If you are interested in reading progressive-type theology books and discussing them with me and other people, click on over to this page where you can find out more about that and join the fun!
Previous reading recaps and book lists:
2018 Reading Recap and Book Stats2017 Reading Recap and Book Stats
2016 Reading Recap and Book Stats
2015 Reading Recap
What I read in 2021 (202 books)
What I read in 2019 (203 books)
What I read in 2017 (83 books)
What I read in 2016 (142 books)
What I read in 2015 (120 books)
What I read in 2014 (111 books)
Monday, December 12, 2022
What is Liberation Theology?
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excerpt from The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology |
When I was growing up in Evangelicalism, the only thing I heard about Liberation Theology was that it was “not the real gospel” and that it was somehow “watering down” the “real” gospel by making it only into some kind of “social gospel.” The message I received was that the “social gospel” was no gospel at all. (Spoiler alert: I don't agree with any part of that assessment.)
If you google “what is liberation theology?” the top results, including britannica.com will tell you that liberation theology developed in Latin America in the 1960s and that it arose in the context of Catholicism out of a reaction by the local priests and laity to the poverty and social injustice in the area. Gustavo Gutiérrez was the first to use the phrase, “liberation theology” in his 1971 book: A Theology of Liberation. And this is one of the best-known forms of this theology. This book caught the attention of the Roman Catholic Church and criticized Gutiérrez for making Christianity too political. But Gutiérrez said all readings of the Bible are political.
And these ideas were not brand new. As Miguel A. De La Torre points out, this cry of resistance against oppression echoes throughout our history, from some of the early Christian writers who claimed solidarity with the poor and said wealth was a hindrance to salvation, insisting that those who were rich “had a moral obligation toward the poor,” which if ignored “bordered on idolatry” (13). Of course, they were really only pointing back to the words of Jesus in Matthew 19:24: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
I will give more background on the Liberation Theology that came out of Latin America in a future post. For now, I just want to emphasize that it is more accurate to talk about different liberation theologies instead of just one version of liberation theology.
In the seminary course that I took on this subject, we spent time reading about not only Latin American liberation theology, but also Black liberation theology, womanist theology, queer theology, and disability theology. We can learn so much from all of these different perspectives, and we find areas of overlap and solidarity as well. In my notes from my Systematic Theology class, I wrote down:
"Theology is like a bowl of fishhooks because you try to pull out one and it’s linked to a bunch of others." - Shannon Craigo-Snell*
Works Cited and Recommended Resources
- De La Torre, Miguel A. Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2013.
- Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988.