The Holocaust and Christian Theologies of Sin and Forgiveness: Imperative Need for Christians to Listen to Jews

Elizabeth Johnson, The Quest for the Living God (London: Bloomsbury, 2007)

Ruth Krall's recent sounding of various ecclesial responses to the sexual abuse of minors and how they raise profound questions about theologies of sin and forgiveness has made me think about the valuable contribution of Jewish thinkers to Christian theological reflection about these matters. Ruth's essay includes a paragraph surveying some Jewish thinkers on the topic of sin and forgiveness.

Killing of John Allen Chau, Controversy re: Pope Benedict's View of Jewish-Christian Relations, Claim of Franklin Graham That Trump Defends the Faith: Idea of Religious Mission Now in News

With the killing of John Allen Chau on North Sentinel Island and controversy about EPope Benedict XVI's understanding of Jewish-Christian relations in the news right now, religious missionizing is unexpectedly in the spotlight of the mainstream media. In the current conversations about Christian mission, it would be short-sighted not to recognize that these conversations are taking place against the backdrop of great fear in some quarters that Christian cultures are being overtaken by Muslim ones, and that Christianity needs to compete with Islam in a way reminiscent of the "Holy Wars" period in the past.

Passover 2017: Reflections on Passover as More Than a Holiday — "It's a Call to Arms"

Why was Trump's passover night different from Obama's passover night? POTUS wasn't there. https://t.co/btwRBIcXnu

— Alana HorowitzSatlin (@achorowitz) April 11, 2017

Mark Silk on the seder that POTUS hosted (but did not attend) at the White House:

Richard Rodriguez, Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography: "Until the Desert Religions See the Woman as Father, the Father as Woman, Indistinguishable in Authority and Creative Potence," They Will Continue Opposing Homosexuality

I'm reading Richard Rodriguez's book Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (NY: Viking, 2013) right now. A theme running through the book is the distinctiveness of the monotheistic "desert religions" — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — all of which were born in the same desert crucible, are closely genetically related to each other, and focus on God's self-revelation in scripture (and there's significant interplay between the sacred books of all three desert religions). As a gay (and practicing) Catholic, Rodriguez is interested, in particular, in the jealous, vengeful maleness of the deity of the desert religions, and their seeming imperviousness to gay people (which is, he argues, intrinsically connected to their obvious allocation of second-class status to women).

Wil Gafney on Rape Culture, Kidnapping of Nigerian Schoolgirls, and the Bible:" We Must Teach the Bible’s Iron Age Theology Because It Permeates Our Culture and Society"

I find Wil Gafney's approach to the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls to force the girls into rape-marriage illuminating. Gafney's essay is at Religion Dispatches, and follows on the heels of one by Anthea Butler telling the story of the recent kidnapping of some 200 girls in Nigeria by the Islamic theocratic group Boko Haram, which Gafney cites.

The Times, They Are A-Changin': Reconstructionist Judaism Selects First Openly Gay Leader (and Southern Baptists Get a Shock)

As Timothy Kincaid reports at Box Turtle Bulletin this morning, this is a really, really big deal: the national Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association has just selected as its leader Jason Klein, an openly gay rabbi. The times, they are a-changin'.

Benedict Builds Alliance with World Religions to Combat LGBT Rights and Shore Up Patriarchy

In linking this article to his Facebook feed, my friend and fellow theologian Michael J. Iafrate observes,