Suffering,
Politics, and Liberation
TH393,
Boston College
Bruce
T. Morrill, S.J.,
Associate Professor, Department of Theology
This course explores the role that
religious faith
plays in people's experiences and responses to the suffering caused by
systemic injustice in societies. Through the reading of biographical
and theological texts, we shall investigate the relationship between
salvation and liberation, the practice of faith and the work for
justice.
This will lead us to question what various people, including academic
theologians,
understand religion to entail, particularly in its rituals, texts,
beliefs,
and authority figures, as well as what people mean by politics in their
various
contexts. We will study Christianity in North and South America and
Europe,
as well as examples of indigenous American religion and Islam, seeking the
perspectives of women and men of a variety of races.
Course
Syllabus
Student
Work
Written requirements for this course
include an in-class essay exam integrating the testimonio
I, Rigoberta
Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, edited by Elisabeth
Burgos-Dubray with the theology of
Dorothee Soelle's Suffering.
There are also two
formal papers analyzing the biographies Romero: A
Life, by James R. Brockman and
Martin and
Malcom and America, by James Cone using the theologies
of Soelle, Metz, and Guitierrez, according to the following required Paper Guidelines.
The final essay exam for 2008 entailed the
students analyzing the text of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's speech (but
not the subsequent questions-and-answers) at the National Press Club in
Washiing ton, D.C., published April 28, 2008, on the New York Times website. The guidelines specified that the
students use Cornel West's Prophesy
Deliverance! as the primary resource for their analysis, while
they might also engage other authors studied in the course. The
professor is delighted to share a few of the stronger papers submitted.
- Liberating the
Captors: What Black Prophetic Theology Can Do for White, Mainstream
America Caitlin A. Peterson, A & S '08,
History
- Jeremiah
Wright's Speech: A Case Study in Cornel West's African American
Revolutionary Christianity Meghan Battle, SOE '09,
Human Development
- Traditional
Response in Modern Times Patrick
Bittorf, SOE '09, Human Development
- Echoes of
Cornel West and Gustavo Gutierrez in Jeremiah Wright's Speech
Jen Wilson, A & S '10, International Studies
(major), French (minor)