Reading the Bible in an Age of Crisis

Introduction

We live in an age in which economic, ecological, and political crises are not the exception, but the rule. The Cold War polarities that shaped an earlier “political exegesis” have been replaced; Bruce Worthington argues that increasingly, crisis is the engine of a global “turbo-capitalism.”

Overview of the Volume

In this volume, edited by Worthington, biblical scholars and activists describe and exemplify the shape of a biblical interpretation that takes contemporary crisis seriously as its most important context. Succinct opening essays summarize the salient aspects of our critical situation, especially in relation to the dominance of capitalism and its pervasive values; in later parts, contributions address themes of economic, political, and environmental crisis in dialogue with texts from the First and Second Testaments.

Methodology and Approach

Throughout the volume, the authors are careful to describe the basis for making interpretive analogies across historical, cultural, and socioeconomic distances between the world of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and our own.

Postscript

Richard A. Horsley writes a postscript pointing to next steps in political interpretation.