This book explores the possibility of a "liberatory postmodern rhetoric" or, alternatively, a "postmodern liberation rhetoric." The author turns to one of the most ancient disciplines, rhetoric, in order to address a most contemporary concern: how can humans imagine new and better worlds when surrounded by unspeakable pain? After a foray into key terms - rhetoric, postmodern, liberation, pain, imagination, religion - the author places into conversation the theory and practice of four contemporary rhetoricians, two postmoderns, Kenneth Burke and Thomas Merton, and two liberationists, Paulo Freire of Brazil and Oscar Romero of El Salvador.

Explores the possibility of a postmodern liberation rhetoric. Stull (English, Indiana U.-East) uses rhetoric to address the question of how humans can imagine better worlds when surrounded by unspeakable pain. Defines terms such as postmodern, pain, imagination, and religion, and discusses the theory and practice of four contemporary rhetoricians--postmoderns Kenneth Burke and Thomas Merton, and liberationists Paulo Freire of Brazil and Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Francis of Assisi as Artist of the Spiritual Life applies modern psychological understanding to a historical person. While most such studies have sought a comprehensive personality profile, this work focuses on one aspect — Francis' imagination — and seeks greater insight into the imaginatively inspired spiritual vision of St. Francis. An analysis of Francis' writings builds on a survey of modern views of the imagination and the approach of ORT, or Object Relations Theory. ORT, with its contention that the imaginative creation of an infant's world develops out of the earliest interactions with the maternal caregiver, highlights the way Francis formed his way of visualizing the reality around him. While any study of a person 800 years in the grave is more dependent on what is plausible than on what is determinable, this study finds numerous examples where Francis' writings display an adept use of imagination and even encourages others in that use in a manner that corresponds to an ORT perspective on tutoring the imagination.

"In Living Through Pain, Kristin Swenson charts the multifaceted personal and social problems caused by chronic pain. This book also surveys professional efforts to mitigate and manage pain. Because the experience of pain involves all aspects of a person - body, mind, spirit, and community - Swenson consults an ancient resource for wisdom, perspective, and insight. Her close reading of selected psalms from the Hebrew Bible demonstrates that the challenge of living through pain is timeless. Living Through Pain chronicles how these ancient texts offer a vocabulary and grammar for understanding and expressing the contemporary experience of pain. Pain is a universal experience, and this book invites readers to consider more fully what is involved in the process of healing."--BOOK JACKET.

Many of us keep pet animals; we rely on them for companionship and unconditional love. For some people their closest relationships may be with their pets. In the wake of the animal rights movement, some ethicists have started to re-examine this relationship, and to question the rights of humans to "own" other sentient beings in this way. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Stephen Webb brings a Christian perspective to bear on the subject of our responsibility to animals, looked at through the lens of our relations with pets--especially dogs. Webb argues that the emotional bond with companion animals should play a central role in the way we think about animals in general, and--against the more extreme animal liberationists--defends the intermingling of the human and animal worlds. He tries to imagine what it would be like to treat animals as a gift from God, and indeed argues that not only are animals a gift for us, but they give to us; we need to attend to their giving and return their gifts appropriately. Throughout the book he insists that what Christians call grace is present in our relations with animals just as it is with other humans. Grace is the inclusive and expansive power of God's love to create and sustain relationships of real mutuality and reciprocity, and Webb unfolds the implications of the recognition that animals too participate in God's abundant grace. Webb's thesis affirms and persuasively defends many of the things that pet lovers feel instinctively--that their relationships with their companion animals are meaningful and important, and that their pets have value and worth in themselves in the eyes of God. His book will appeal to a broad audience of thoughtful Christians and animal lovers.

The book of Job is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, literary accomplishments of the ancient world, yet in many ways it is just as relevant today as it was then. This book examines Job from a comparative theological perspective in order to help contemporary readers access it, learn from it, and apply its insights to contemporary life.

"To articulate this vision, Stull looks to those who compose from an oppressed place, finding in the works of W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X radical theopolitical practices that can serve as a model for emancipatory composition."--BOOK JACKET.

This book presents a study of the ways in which concepts of pain were treated across a broad range of late Victorian writing, placing literary texts alongside sermons, medical textbooks and the campaigning leaflets. Pain is not a shared, cross-cultural phenomenon and this book uses the examples of fire-walking, flogging, and tattooing to show that, despite the fact that pain is often invoked as a marker of shared human identity, understandings of pain are sharply affected by class, gender, race, and supposed degree of criminality. In arguing this case, Virginia Woolf's claim that there is no language for pain is taken seriously, but the importance of this book lies in its exploration of the ways in which the seemingly incommunicable experience of bodily suffering can be conveyed.

What does it mean to be a father? Society offers a wide range of stereotypes -- pedophiles, deadbeat Mr. Mom. Some of these stereotypes cause destruction and despair ; none of them offers men a worthy model to follow. Dad Incarnate leads the reader through a culture and western literature, exploring how the image of father has been clipped, compressed and otherwise distorted over the years. It then presents the case for a much more informed understanding of fatherhood : one that opens up possibilities rather than shutting them down. Bradford Stull describes a new model -- "dad incarnate" -- that can help dads and the people who love them rediscover fatherhood. Why? Because how we think about "father" informs how we relate to that "other" Father--God, or Abba--and the way we think about God informs the way we think about fathers. -- Provided by publisher

Why would anyone seek out the very experience the rest of us most wish to avoid? Why would religious worshipers flog or crucify themselves, sleep on spikes, hang suspended by their flesh, or walk for miles through scorching deserts with bare and bloodied feet? In this insightful new book, Ariel Glucklich argues that the experience of ritual pain, far from being a form of a madness or superstition, contains a hidden rationality and can bring about a profound transformation of the consciousness and identity of the spiritual seeker. Steering a course between purely cultural and purely biological explanations, Glucklich approaches sacred pain from the perspective of the practitioner to fully examine the psychological and spiritual effects of self-hurting. He discusses the scientific understanding of pain, drawing on research in fields such as neuropsychology and neurology. He also ranges over a broad spectrum of historical and cultural contexts, showing the many ways mystics, saints, pilgrims, mourners, shamans, Taoists, Muslims, Hindus, Native Americans, and indeed members of virtually every religion have used pain to achieve a greater identification with God. He examines how pain has served as a punishment for sin, a cure for disease, a weapon against the body and its desires, or a means by which the ego may be transcended and spiritual sickness healed. "When pain transgresses the limits," the Muslim mystic Mizra Asadullah Ghalib is quoted as saying, "it becomes medicine." Based on extensive research and written with both empathy and critical insight, Sacred Pain explores the uncharted inner terrain of self-hurting and reveals how meaningful suffering has been used to heal the human spirit.