Vulnerability and Resilience

Reviews / Votes

If the first part is a confronting, visceral, poetic, embodied and liberating vulnerability (with some humor thrown in for good measure), the second is a challenging, theoretically, pastorally and theologically embedded program for transformation. Together the two parts of this book provide a glorious, erotic powerhouse for the metamorphosis of contemporary Christian theology and praxis. -- Anita Monro, Grace College, University of Queensland Highly commendable. A moving, challenging, and liberating collection of essays that explore the subversive nature of resilience. In this book the meaning of vulnerability as powerlessness is challenged to demonstrate that the vulnerable have agency with the power to speak. Resilience comes with the courage to talk back to the powers that bind. -- Seforosa Carroll, World Council of Churches A sobering but hopeful read! The essays in this wide-ranging volume tackle an immensely important and yet peculiarly controversial topic: bodies in which we live. These thoughtful and provocative analyses will enable us to see various precious bodies that are being denigrated or violated bodies in our world today. They will further embolden us to embody our theological thinking and emend our theological practice. -- Tat-siong Benny Liew, College of the Holy Cross This volume of collected essays is a "daring" project that disturbs and unsettles the biblical text and traditional theological understandings. Almost all of the essays deal with subject matter- "body" and "liberation"- that is seldom interrogated in a sustained way in theological seminaries and churches around the globe. Of note is the diverse range of authors that bring together the experiences of marginalized groups across continents, ensuring that notions of vulnerability and resilience are interrogated as they intersect with transnational locations. -- Beverley Haddad, University of KwaZulu-Natal Through a transnational lens, Vulnerability and Resilience brilliantly interweaves the stories from those whose bodies have been categorized as vulnerable and, thus, not fully human. However, these stories create a courageous space to challenge the traditional understandings of vulnerability, oppression, and liberation by unfolding the theological meanings of the embodiment of resilience. This book plainly shows how the vulnerable and despised bodies, in fact, produce the critically transnational and deeply theological knowledge of resilience, resistance, and liberation. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to meditate on the deeper meaning of the vulnerable body of Jesus in various transnational contexts. Readers will appreciate the critical voices filled with love, hope, resilience, and resistance from the vulnerable who have never lost the power of agency. -- Keun-Joo Christine Pae, Denison University How long, one rightly asks, how long can we remain vulnerable? How long can we wait and hope? How long can the subaltern hope to be listened to? How long will our voices just echo in the wilderness and not penetrate the smugness of the powerful? The contributors to this extraordinarily evocative volume refuse to take refuge in pious platitudes or shallow sentimentalism but offer a disturbingly direct and robustly resilient reading of issues and themes that is a bellwether leading us in our complex and messy present. No one who reads this book will come away comfortable; but they may come away determined to be part of a movement that challenges persistent injustice and rapacious power with the tools refined in the forge of vulnerability and the anvil of resilience. -- Rev. J. Jayakiran Sebastian, United Lutheran Seminary