When Did We See You Naked? Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse, edited by J. R. Reaves, D. Tombs and R. Figueroa (SCM Press, £35 (Church Times SPECIAL OFFER PRICE £25); 978-0-334-06032-1).
“Was the stripping and exposure of Jesus a form of sexual abuse? If so, why does such a reading of Jesus’s suffering matter? The combined impact of the #MeToo movement and a further wave of global revelations on church sexual abuse have given renewed significance to recent work naming Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse. Timely and provocative, When did we see you naked? presents the arguments for reading Christ as an abuse victim, as well as exploring how the position might be critiqued, and what implications and applications it might offer to the Church. The collection includes an impressively diverse international field of contributors drawn from a range of disciplines.”
Rosie Dawson spoke to philosophers about this subject; read her feature here
Karl Barth: A life in conflict by Christiane Tietz (OUP, £25 (£22.50); 978-0-19-885246-9).
“From the beginning of his career, Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) was often in conflict with the spirit of his times. While during the First World War German poets and philosophers became intoxicated by the experience of community and transcendence, Barth fought against all attempts to locate the divine in culture or individual sentiment. This freed him for a deep worldly engagement: he was known as ‘the red pastor’, was the primary author of the founding document of the Confessing Church, the Barmen Theological Declaration, and after 1945 protested the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. Christiane Tietz compellingly explores the interactions between Barth’s personal and political biography and his theology. Numerous newly available documents offer insight into the lesser-known sides of Barth such as his long-term three-way relationship with his wife Nelly and his colleague Charlotte von Kirschbaum. This is an evocative portrait of a theologian who described himself as ‘God's cheerful partisan’, who was honoured as a prophet and a genial spirit, was feared as a critic, and shaped the theology of an entire century as no other thinker.
Religious Hatred: Prejudice, Islamophobia and antisemitism in global context by Paul Hedges (Bloomsbury, £21.99 (£19.79); 978-1-350-16286-0).
“Why does religion inspire hatred? Why do people in one religion sometimes hate people of another religion, and also why do some religions inspire hatred from others? This book shows how scholarly studies of prejudice, identity formation, and genocide studies can shed light on global examples of religious hatred. The book is divided into four parts, focusing respectively on: theories of prejudice and violence; historical developments of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and race; contemporary Western anti-Semitism and Islamophobia; and prejudices beyond the West in the Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Each part ends with a special focus section.”
Selected by Aude Pasquier, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop.