L. Juliana M. Claassens

Countering Stereotypes: Job, Disability, and Human Dignity

In the Book of Job, one finds a classic example of a person moving from able-bodied privilege to disability by means of a debilitating disease. This series of tragedies causes Job to become an outcast, alienated from his family and friends, and relegated to the outskirts of society. Throughout the Book of Job, one encounters some of the religious stereotypes regarding suffering, disease, and disability common to the Hebrew Bible, which relate to the many stereotypes and misguided perspectives that people with disabilities in todays society have to face—religion and theology quite often playing a negative role in transmitting and sustaining such harmful views. In the Book of Job, however, one also sees glimpses of a counter narrative that moves toward a new kind of speech regarding disability and theology, particularly with regard to what it means to be human. These glimpses of an alternative way of speaking about theology and disability serve as encouragement in our own journey to find different a kind of (theological) speech rooted in values such as human dignity, inclusion, and hospitality.

Tragic Laughter: Laughter as Resistance in the Book of Job

As part of a research study on “Humor in the Holocaust” conducted in 2000, Chaya Ostrower interviewed fifty-five Holocaust survivors, asking them to describe anything that was responsible for making a person laugh or smile during the Holocaust.2 Laughter in the Holocaust? Is it not sacrilege to even contemplate finding anything funny in one of the darkest chapters in human history?3 As evident in the testimony of the Holocaust survivor cited above, Ostrower actually found that for many Holocaust survivors, laughter was an important strategy for survival.

From Esther to Kwezi

This article seeks to reflect on the issue of sexual violence in the context of the twenty year anniversary of democracy in South Africa bringing together views from the authors’ respective disciplines of Gender and the Bible on the one hand and Political Science on the other. We will employ the Old Testament Book of Esther, which offers a remarkable glimpse into the way a patriarchal society is responsible for multiple levels of victimization, in order to take a closer look at our own country’s serious problem of sexual violence. With this collaborative engagement the authors contribute to the conversation on understanding and resisting the scourge of sexual violence in South Africa that has rendered a large proportion of its citizens voiceless.

Engaging Disability and Religion in the Global South

Religion is enormously important for many disabled people, their families, and communities, especially in the Global South, but it is not given a great deal of attention. This chapter is a collaboration between religious studies scholars from different faith traditions (Christian and Muslim) and an atheist disability studies scholar. We explore the central role of religion in many disabled people’s lives, and we suggest that a new theology taking clearer account of disability may be productive in understanding the central role of faith in people’s lives. We acknowledge the historical and contemporary nexus between religion and oppression but suggest that there are far more productive ways of engaging with religion than seeing it unidimensionally and solely as an instrument of oppression.

Face of the Deep: A Theology of BecomingDeur Catherine Keller

Catherine Keller se nuutste boek Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (London: Routledge, 2003) is ’n interessante kombinasie van konstruktiewe sistematiese teologie, post-strukturalisme, feminisme, en chaos-teorie. Face of the Deep is ten diepste ’n intertekstuele projek waarin Keller op kreatiewe wyse in gesprek tree met die Bybelse tekste aangaande die skeppingsleer, Christen en Joodse tradisie, filosowe soos Jacques Derrida en Mikhail Bakhtin, bevrydings en femistiese teoloe en selfs Melville se Moby Dick.