Reading 'Saving Paradise'



As we begin a new year, I invite you to join me in reading Saving Paradise by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker.  Our mutual reading can become a springboard for thoughtful discussion -- and it may also lead to new and fruitful ways to understand the Christian faith.

About Saving Paradise, one reviewer writes,

"Brock and Parker urge readers to see church history in a new light, with an eye toward social justice... By re-emphasizing early Christians' focus on paradise - on the kingdom of God on earth - the authors are convinced they are reclaiming 'traditional' Christianity.  It's a controversial thesis, deserving of debate and study."
Douglas Todd, Religion News Service

Another reviewer comments,

"This humane and often beautiful study of faith, loss and hope straddles the boundary between historical discovery and spiritual writing." Publishers Weekly

About the Book, Saving Paradise:

When Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker began traveling the Mediterranean world in search of art depicting the dead, crucified Jesus, they discovered something that traditional histories of Christianity and Christian art had underplayed or sought to explain away: it took Jesus Christ a thousand years to die. 

During their first millennium, Christians filled their sanctuaries with images of Christ as a living presence in a vibrant world. He appears as a shepherd, a teacher, a healer, an enthroned god; he is an infant, a youth, and a bearded elder. But he is never dead. When he appears with the cross, he stands in front of it, serene, resurrected. The world around him is ablaze with beauty. These are images of paradise—paradise in this world, permeated and blessed by the presence of God. 

But once Jesus perished, dying was virtually all he seemed able to do.

Saving Paradise offers a fascinating new lens on the history of Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, and asks how its early vision of beauty evolved into one of torture. In tracing the changes in society and theology that marked the medieval emergence of images of Christ crucified, Saving Paradise exposes the imperial strategies embedded in theologies of redemptive violence and sheds new light on Christianity’s turn to holy war. It reveals how the New World, established through Christian conquest and colonization, is haunted by the loss of a spiritual understanding of paradise here and now. 

About the authors of Saving Paradise:

Rita Nakashima Brock is director of Faith Voices for the Common Good and a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  Rebecca Ann Parker is president and professor of theology at the Starr King School for the Ministry.   

For more information on Saving Paradise, go to http://savingparadise.net/

To join the discussion, get your own copy of Saving Paradise and check this blog frequently.  Your comments will add to the discussion!