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Cultural Afterlives of Jesus
Jesus in Global Perspective 3
Edited by Gregory C. Jenks
Introduction by Val Webb
Series: Westar Studies
Imprint: Cascade Books
This collection of essays explores the impact of Jesus within and beyond Christianity, including his many afterlives in literature and the arts, social just and world religions during the past two thousand years and especially in the present global context.
This third volume focuses on the diverse afterlives of Jesus within contemporary culture and the arts. Moving beyond the explicitly religious afterlives traced in the first two volumes, this set of essay traces selected afterlives of Jesus within Indigenous cultures around the Pacific, as well as in the arts and in the contested fields of gender and sexuality. The contributors include religion scholars from diverse cultural contexts, as well as faith practitioners reflecting on Jesus within their own particular context. While the essays are all grounded in critical scholarship, reflective practice, or both, they are expressed in nontechnical language that is accessible to interested nonspecialists.
Gregory C. Jenks is Executive Director, Centre for Coins, Culture & Religious History, Brisbane, Australia. He was Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton 2017–2022. He is the author of The Once and Future Bible (2011) and Jesus Then and Jesus Now (2014).
“Jesus through the eyes of First Nations, the LGBTQIA, the artistic, women, the homeless, Maoris, Latin Americans, and Asians, and drawing on liberation and indigenous theologies, this book is a sumptuous treat which inspires, challenges, and aids reflections. No longer can Jesus of Nazareth be filtered only through traditional western lenses or medieval doctrines and their successors. This volume will simply leave you wishing for more.”
—Val Webb, author of Like Catching Water in a Net: Human Attempts to Describe the Divine
“This fine volume gives voice to several creative and challenging configurations of Jesus in contemporary Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. Anyone interested in the afterlives of Jesus is urged to engage with the offerings here and make note of the varied ways in which context shapes our understanding of the person, life, and work of Jesus. A fantastic book for use in a class on Christology or the many faces of Jesus. Highly recommended!”
—Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon, University of Divinity
“In this third volume of Afterlives, we again confront the fact that the significance of Jesus, that discomforting peasant, continues to leak out across the globe. Whether reading the Jesus traditions anew through indigenous eyes or recognizing how the tradition itself emerged within the lethal atmosphere of patriarchy, the authors challenge us to nothing less than a radical revisioning of that elusive and alluring figure, dancing in the unnoticed gaps and crevices of our planet.”
—Arthur J. Dewey, Xavier University