Confronting Mortality in the Holocaust and Ourselves

What do we learn about death from the Holocaust and how does it impact our responses to mortality today?

This book brings together the work of eleven Holocaust and genocide scholars who address this difficult question, convinced of the urgency of further reflection on the Holocaust as the last survivors pass away. The volume is distinctive in its dialogical and introspective approach, where the contributors position themselves to confront their own impending death while listening to the voices of victims and learning from their life experiences. Broken into three parts, this collection engages with these voices in a way that is not only scholarly, but deeply personal.

The first part of the book engages with Holocaust testimony by drawing on the writings of survivors and witnesses such as Elie Wiesel, Jean Améry, and Charlotte Delbo, including rare accounts from members of the Sonderkommando. Reflections of post-Holocaust generations—the children and grandchildren of survivors—are housed in the second part, addressing questions of remembrance and memorialization. The concluding essays offer intimate self-reflection about how engagement with the Holocaust impacts the contributors’ lives, faiths, and ethics.

In an age of continuing atrocities, this book provides careful attention to the affective dimension of coping with death, in particular, how loss and grief are deferred or denied, narrated, and passed along.

Author Sarah K. Pinnock is a professor of contemporary religious thought at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. In Hamburg Germany (1997-98) she held a DAAD (German Academic Exchange) doctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Protestant Theology. She joined the Trinity faculty in fall 2000 after two years teaching at California State University Chico. She won a Fulbright award to hold a visiting professorship at the Faculty of Theology of Latvia University in Riga (2006-07). She served as the Religion Department Chair at Trinity from 2012-18.

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Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture

‘No true Christian could vote for Donald Trump.’ ‘Real Christians are pro-life.’ ‘You can’t be a Christian and support gay marriage.’ Assertive statements like these not only reflect growing religious polarization but also express the anxiety over religious identity that pervades modern American Christianity. To address this disquiet, conservative Christians have sought security and stability: whether by retrieving ‘historic Christian’ doctrines, reconceptualizing their faith as a distinct culture, or reinforcing a political vision of what it means to be a follower of God in a corrupt world. The book examines three versions of the conservative quest for the essence that have profoundly shaped contemporary American Christianity: the doctrinal quest for “historic Christianity,” the cultural quest for the Christian worldview, and the political quest for a global, persecuted, cisheteronormative identity. Having traced these developments historically, Congdon argues that the root of the problem is the concept of orthodoxy itself, and suggests the transgressive concept of polydoxy as a constructive way forward for Christianity in a pluralistic society.

David W. Congdon is a the senior editor at University Press of Kansas. He is an author and speaker focusing on the intersection of theology and culture, and publishes books related to political science, law, U.S. history, indigenous studies, and religion.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“In this ambitious intervention in the contemporary culture wars, David Congdon situates current debates in the context of a much longer contestation over the boundaries of orthodoxy. Disruptive and thought-provoking, Who Is a True Christian? offers an incisive critique of attempts to define what is true, “historical,” and “traditional” and calls instead for a transgressive Christianity—a dynamic conception of faith that is compatible with a commitment to pluralism.”
—Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of the New York Times-bestselling Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

“In this work of exceptional erudition, David W. Congdon shows that Christian apologists from ancient times to the present have failed to acknowledge the historicity of their own constructions of Christianity. … Written in the grand tradition of Harvey Cox, Peter Berger, and Charles Taylor, this capacious and contentious book promises to enliven and instruct a generation’s debates about the destiny of the Christian faith in the United States and beyond.:
—David A. Hollinger, University of California, Berkeley

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A Story of Growth and Breaking Down in an American Church

Active for forty years, Circle of Hope was a web of four interconnected churches in the Philadelphia area. Committed to the causes of justice and service, Circle of Hope became a haven for Christians who were seeking something different from what traditional evangelicalism had to offer, or more ‘countercultural’ modes to follow Christ. Informed by her years of experience in journalism, Eliza Griswold recounts the moment that Circle of Hope approached a pivotal point of breakdown in its history. Met with a pandemic, internal strife, political division, and changing tides of activism, Circle of Hope was forced to reckon with its vulnerabilities as questions about its inner structures of power arose. Tender, respectful, and honest, Griswold’s book acts as a microcosmic view of the things that we love and the things that hurt us in the American Church.

Eliza Griswold is the Ferris Professor and Director of Princeton University’s Journalism program. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2019 book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America. Griswold is the author of six books and also writes for The New Yorker.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“A compassionate narrative . . . propulsive and immersive . . . An ardent, distinctive work, generous and character-driven, with concerns that speak directly to the current moment and beyond

-Ayana Mathis, The Washington Post

“Eliza Griswold is a dazzling reporter: ever observant, wise, sympathetic, and honest. And in this spellbinding book, she not only immerses herself in a radical religious community but also reveals its fracturing in real time, raising questions about the nature of faith and justice and what binds us as Americans.”

– David Grann, author of The Wager

“Set against the backdrop of race, sexuality, and belief, Circle of Hope is a deeply captivating and sometimes troubling dive into a world of faith and frustrations often hidden by the political, antagonistic, and triumphalist projections of American Evangelicalism.”

– Anthea Butler, author of White Evangelical Racism

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