Habits of Race and Faith in a Religiously Diverse World - (Religion and Race) by Mara Brecht (Hardcover)
About this item
Highlights
- Religious diversity, cultural pluralism, and interreligious encounter are widely viewed in modern life as socially--and for many people of faith, spiritually--enriching.
- About the Author: Mara Brecht is associate professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago.
- 238 Pages
- Religion + Beliefs, Christian Theology
- Series Name: Religion and Race
Description
About the Book
In The Habits of Race and Faith in a Religiously Diverse World, Mara Brecht argues that by understanding the entanglements of whiteness and Christian theology, Christians will be better prepared to encounter religious others responsibly and to develop adequate theologies for a...Book Synopsis
Religious diversity, cultural pluralism, and interreligious encounter are widely viewed in modern life as socially--and for many people of faith, spiritually--enriching. One of the most significant but frequently overlooked benefits of interreligious encounter is that it empowers us to see ourselves, and particularly our racialized identities, in new and revealing ways. In The Habits of Race and Faith in a Religiously Diverse World, Mara Brecht places whiteness under particular scrutiny--its tangled and entwined relationship with religious identity, as well as strategic associations with dominance and privilege. The analysis of whiteness gives way to fresh perspectives on Christian ideas about salvation, both in connection to religious faith and racial embodiment.
Review Quotes
The Habits of Race and Faith in a Religiously Diverse World is a balanced, integral work of Christian theology that challenges every reader to think about race, privilege and interreligious learning as necessarily interrelated concerns. Well-grounded in Catholic tradition and alert to the too-often hidden vice of white privilege, Mara Brecht brings to this highly readable volume vivid classroom examples, a distinctive personal voice, and candor about the challenges facing real-world interreligious learning of the mid-21st century and beyond.
Mara Brecht does not just provide a cogent analysis of how white racial privilege plays out in interreligious encounter. This book also draws its readers into a multi-layered process of interreligious self-reflectiveness--a process born out of the author's own well-honed classroom pedagogy. Trenchant yet devoid of rhetorical bombast, Dr. Brecht's critique of Christian soteriological superiority is a must read for scholars and students alike.
Mara Brecht's analysis of the entanglements of racialization and Christian attitudes about religious diversity reaches far beyond the US Catholic context from which she writes. As a teacher, she is methodical, philosophically precise, and attentive to embodied experience at every step. Emphasizing habit formation rather than inevitability or blame, she issues a challenge that provides grounds for hope and change.
About the Author
Mara Brecht is associate professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago.
