FACING THE WORLD: POLITICAL THEOLOGY AND MERCY

There is great interest in mercy in response to Pope Francis declaring a Jubilee Year of Mercy. This declaration has allowed us to give voice to our sense of living in "dark times" amid a "culture of indifference." This book invites readers to consider the topic of mercy from the perspective of the political theology of Johann Baptist Metz. The language of mercy speaks of compassion and solidarity, key terms within political theology. Much of what has been written about mercy shares the political theological conviction that mercy is a praxis, a way of living critically that entails the kind of re-understanding of human subjectivity that political theology has characterized as an "anthropological revolution."This book is being written to use as a text for undergraduate or graduate teaching as well as for a broader audience of educated readers. We are concerned with stimulating the critical imagination to live out the meaning of mercy as we respond to the persons and conditions that call for mercy. We do not offer final answers or an explanatory theory but models for the questioning that is needed. The book consists of essays by individual authors plus a short piece by Metz.