This book examines a unique university model for social change-the University of Central America Jos Sime-n Ca-as (UCA) in El Salvador, where the military murdered six Jesuit priests and two women on November 16, 1989. The book addresses such important questions as: Is the role of a university to train managers for maintaining the status quo, or to prepare graduates who will help create a new society? Is the university an ivory tower, or a center for research on social problems? Beginning with the historical, social, economic, and political context of El Salvador, this book examines the university and the factors that contributed to its changed focus, such as liberation theology. The bishops of El Salvador wanted a traditional Catholic university, but the Jesuits and their lay colleagues established an institution of Christian inspiration, free from ecclesiastical entanglements. The rectorate of Luis Achaerandio, S.J. (1969-75) saw new academic programs, research, and social outreach. The UCA took over the journal Estudios Centroamericanos, which undertook the analysis of such social issues as the 1969 war with Honduras, agrarian reform, and the fraudulent elections of 1972. Rom n Mayorga's term of office included intensified academic and financial planning, and a sharper focus on crucial national issues, with the result that rightist bombs began to explode on the campus and employees were threatened. In 1977, death squads gave the Jesuits a month to leave the country, or be killed, but the Jesuits refused to go. The final chapters cover the Ellacur'a decade: 1979-89. Despite continued bombings and attacks in the press, the UCA expanded academic programs, centers for social outreach, and publications, and played a major role in calling for negotiations to end the civil war which had erupted in the early 1980s.

The 1980s saw one of the largest social movements in US history, as activists fought to change the Reagan Administration’s policy of supporting right-ring terror and oligarchy in Central America. Despite the size and diversity of the movement, however, it remains understudied. Fight and Flight examines the campaigns of three US NGOs, namely Amnesty International USA, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. By analyzing the ways in which the NGOs ameliorated the effects of human rights violations in Central America, primarily through their refugee assistance programs, this research demonstrates that the movement was more effective than is generally reflected in the existing literature. Of particular interest for academic students of human rights and social movements, as well as activists interested in strategies of social change, this book offers a nuanced reading of a critical movement for human rights and international justice.

On a hot and dusty December day in 1980, the bodies of four American women-three of them Catholic nuns-were pulled from a hastily dug grave in a field outside San Salvador. They had been murdered two nights before by the US-trained El Salvadoran military. News of the killing shocked the American public and set off a decade of debate over Cold War policy in Latin America. The women themselves became symbols and martyrs, shorn of context and background. In A Radical Faith, journalist Eileen Markey breathes life back into one of these women, Sister Maura Clarke. Who was this woman in the dirt? What led her to this vicious death so far from home? Maura was raised in a tight-knit Irish immigrant community in Queens, New York, during World War II. She became a missionary as a means to a life outside her small, orderly world and by the 1970s was organizing and marching for liberation alongside the poor of Nicaragua and El Salvador. Maura's story offers a window into the evolution of postwar Catholicism: from an inward-looking, protective institution in the 1950s to a community of people grappling with what it meant to live with purpose in a shockingly violent world. At its heart, A Radical Faith is an intimate portrait of one woman's spiritual and political transformation and her courageous devotion to justice.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice brings together a team of distinguished scholars to provide a comprehensive and comparative account of social justice in the major religious traditions. The first publication to offer a comparative study of social justice for each of the major world religions, exploring viewpoints within Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism Offers a unique and enlightening volume for those studying religion and social justice - a crucially important subject within the history of religion, and a significant area of academic study in the field Brings together the beliefs of individual traditions in a comprehensive, explanatory, and informative style All essays are newly-commissioned and written by eminent scholars in the field Benefits from a distinctive four-part organization, with sections on major religions; religious movements and themes; indigenous people; and issues of social justice, from colonialism to civil rights, and AIDS through to environmental concerns