On November 16, 2017, Pope Francis tweeted, "Poverty is not an accident. It has causes that must be recognized and removed for the good of so many of our brothers and sisters." With this statement and others like it, the first Latin American pope was associated, in the minds of many, with a stream of theology that swept the Western hemisphere in the 1960s and 70s, the movement known as liberation theology. Born of chaotic cultural crises in Latin America and the United States, liberation theology was a trans-American intellectual movement that sought to speak for those parts of society marginalized by modern politics and religion by virtue of race, class, or sex. Led by such revolutionaries as the Peruvian Catholic priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, the African American theologian James Cone, or the feminists Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether, the liberation theology movement sought to bridge the gulf between the religious values of justice and equality and political pragmatism. It combined theology with strands of radical politics, social theory, and the history and experience of subordinated groups to challenge the ideas that underwrite the hierarchical structures of an unjust society. Praised by some as a radical return to early Christian ethics and decried by others as a Marxist takeover, liberation theology has a wide-raging, cross-sectional history that has previously gone undocumented. In The World Come of Age, Lilian Calles Barger offers for the first time a systematic retelling of the history of liberation theology, demonstrating how a group of theologians set the stage for a torrent of new religious activism that challenged the religious and political status quo.

During his days in prison in Berlin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had time to read and reflect on the Enlight­enment and to ask the question of how Christians might live in a world come of age. One can interpret Karl Rahner’s theological and pastoral writing as addressing that question. Born in 1904, he lived through both World Wars to a ripe age of 80 and wrote 1651 published works. Although his writing had a unique historical genesis and intellectual setting, along with a technical vocabulary, he consistently wrote out of pastoral concern in an effort to make Christian faith and belief credible in his Western European culture and the new post–WWII context. Probably his most important student was Johann Baptist Metz who was born in Germany 1928, conscripted into the army as a teenager, and after it, turned to the seminary and to theology. He studied with Rahner in Innsbruck and received his doctorate in theology in 1961 and taught at the University of Münster for thirty years. As Dorothee Soelle converted Bultmann’s existential analysis into social commitments, so did Metz give new social meaning to Rahner’s “transcendental” theology in a time of social cataclysm. Thus, together, Rahner and Metz, not in competition but as complementary, offer a distinctive response to the spiritual question of finding God in the present-day secular world.

Though Soren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer both made considerable contributions to twentieth-century thought, they are rarely considered together. Against Kierkegaard's melancholic individual, Bonhoeffer stands as the champion of the church and community. In Attacks on Christendom, Matthew D. Kirkpatrick challenges these stereotypical readings of these two vital thinkers. Through an analysis of such concepts as epistemology, ethics, Christology, and ecclesiology, Kirkpatrick reveals Kierkegaard's significant influence on Bonhoeffer throughout his work. Kirkpatrick shows that Kierkegaard underlies not only Bonhoeffer's spirituality but also his concepts of knowledge, being, and community. So important is this relationship that it was through Kierkegaard's powerful representation of Abraham and Isaac that Bonhoeffer came to adhere to an ethic that led to his involvement in the assassination attempts against Hitler. However, this relationship is by no means one-sided. Attacks on Christendom argues for the importance of Bonhoeffer as an interpreter of Kierkegaard, drawing Kierkegaard's thought into his own unique context, forcing Kierkegaard to answer very different questions. Bonhoeffer helps in converting the obscure, obdurate Dane into a thinker for his own, unique age. Both Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer have been criticized and misunderstood for their final works that lay bare the religious climates of their nations. In the final analysis, Attacks on Christendom argues that these works are not unfortunate endings to their careers, but rather their fulfilment, drawing together the themes that had been brewing throughout their work.

A trans-American cultural history of ideas of how in the 1960s and 70s the first generation of liberation theologians conceptualize a radical political theology. Representing those marginalized by modern politics and religion due to race, class, or sex status liberationists redefined the theo-political space and set the stage for new expressions of religious activism.

Ivan King is an Award Winning and Best Selling Author of over 30 books. His #1 Book on Amazon, Breakfast With Jesus, has become a major success internationally. Mr. King was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1977, though his stay in Rio was to be short lived. Adopted from an orphanage, he was raised in Ipatinga's, Valley of Steel. His favorite author is Hemingway; yet his favorite book, is Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. When he is not writing or reading, he plays chess and the guitar. When Ivan was eight, he read his first book, Judy Blume's Superfudge and the rest is history. That's the story behind how the passion for reading began; how it ends...has yet to be written. Currently, he is working on a couple dozen writing projects and turning some of his novels into screenplays. Ivan’s first published work, Valley of Steel, is a Fiction Novel loosely based on his life growing up in the favelas, or slums, of Brazil. Favorite quote: “In life, incredible things happen and unforgettable moments do exist; but nothing compares to having been loved by you, and though you rest in peace, I will miss and love you always.”

Sept. issue is the Andover Newton catalog.

Fleeing the firebombing of his native Dresden at the age of 15 in February 1945, the author found an answer to the question that haunted him: Is there a gracious God, and if so, how do I respond to the challenge of that knowledge in the face of so much pain and suffering? He found his answer in the writings and witness of German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hung as a traitor by the Nazis in 1945. These lectures and sermons over a long career as a Lutheran pastor and professor provide insights into how one reconciles the gospel of Christ with the reality of Bonhoeffer's "world come of age."