In a diverse and innovative selection of new essays by cutting-edge theologians and philosophers, Suffering Religion examines one of the most primitive but challenging questions to define human experience - why do we suffer?

As a theme uniting very different religious and cultural traditions, the problem of suffering addresses issues of passivity, the vulnerability of embodiment, the generosity of love and the complexity of gendered desire. Interdisciplinary studies bring different kinds of interpretations to meet and enrich each other. Can the notion of goodness retain meaning in the face of real affliction, or is pain itself in conflict with meaning?

Themes covered include:

philosophy's own failure to treat suffering seriously, with special reference to the Jewish tradition

Martin Buber's celebrated interpretations of scriptural suffering

suffering in Kristevan psychoanalysis, focusing on the Christian theology of the cross

the pain of childbirth in a home setting as a religiously significant choice

God's primal suffering in the kabbalistic tradition

Incarnation as a gracious willingness to suffer.