Birth in times of despair: reproductive violence on the U.S.-Mexico border

Given the state of the world, it is perilously easy—for some, including, at times, the author—to fall prey to despair, including the supposition that the world is moving inexorably downward, perhaps even toward some cataclysmic end. Alluring though despair may sometimes be, and impertinent though hope may sometimes seem, it is precisely in a time of despair that hope becomes most urgent. To succumb to despair is not only fatalistic but problematically “safe.” Hope, predicated as it is on uncertainty about the future, is decidedly more risky. Difficult though it may be to fully embrace hope, it is imperative to hold on to it, for only then can a sense of the possible be sustained.

Hope is an important topic in spiritual care in palliative care but the experiences of chaplains with hope have hardly been explored. The objective of this study was to explore Dutch chaplains’ experiences with hope in palliative care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, which were thematically analyzed. The 10 chaplains had a variety of ordinations: Muslim, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Humanistic, or otherwise. Participants spoke about changes in patients’ hope, often implying despair and surrender, in which patients’ self-reflection was pivotal. Participants felt witnesses of hope, not by offering hope, but by acknowledging patients’ hope and despair while being with their patients. They criticized other professionals who, not bearing witness to these experiences, tried to offer hope to patients. We conclude that chaplains may become witnesses of hope in times of despair, which includes the (ideological) critical function of spiritual care.

Optimism in times of despair– a perspective from a forensic mental health rehabilitation unit

A major thrust of the decentralization policy was the politicization of the ethnic, which was usually the ideological backbone of the native’s resistance against the settlers. The ethnic as a “territorial parameter of indigenous defense” had to be broken. If native resistance was to be broken, then it had to start with this ideological backbone, for the ethnic represented an unconscious, imaginary community, a platform on which the natives could muster a common resistance. When the ethnic is broken, the people are broken. It is in this state of affairs that the apocalypse gives hope, offering meaning, empowerment, and unity of purpose. In times of despair, a message of hope unites a conquered people. When the life of a people becomes terrible and poverty stricken, the apocalypse has always looked good.1 The apocalypse symbolizes hope in this time of despair as the people’s consolation is pinned on the messianic figure. As their life becomes unbearable, “revolution” would become desirable. One of the ways of creating a revolution is by creating the ideal of Apocalypse, a messianic figure who embodies the people’s hope. In Hebraic religions, we see such great icons of hope represented by the prophets and patriarchs with a resounding hope of a messiah. In Christianity specifically, this hope is expressed in the Parousia, the Second Coming of Jesus the “Christ.”2 The lot of most conquered people hinges on this hope, which inspires revolutionary millennialism.

Authors in this issue, from around the world, have contributed to finding hope in times of despair with writings from the deeply personal to the theoretical. In an April 2020 blog, David Cooperrider wrote, ‘It’s not about positive or negative human experience but inquiry into life: the task of AI is the quest and search for what gives life and deep meaning – even in the midst of the tragic.’ These articles join that quest.

Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans during Reconstruction

A Beaked and Feathered God

Conventional Development forecasts escalation of global food scarcity, of energy limitations, and, clearly, of climate change. Paul D. Raskin presents an alternative – a hypothesis of hope articulating the possibility of more positive futures associated with a global Great Transition.

What 13th-century Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas can teach us about hope in times of despair

CHARLES E. CULVER, A RECONSTRUCTION AGENT IN TEXAS: THE WORK OF LOCAL FREEDMEN'S BUREAU AGENTS AND THE BLACK COMMUNITY James Smallwood During Reconstruction in Texas as in the rest of the South, members of the "Democracy" vilified Negroes, "scalawags," and "carpetbaggers." Echoing those sentiments, later historians pointed to the "crimes" of Reconstruction. One group that particularly drew the ire of ex-Confederates and later historians was the personnel of the Freedmen's Bureau, an agency which was composed almost exclusively of northerners . Sometimes seriously threatened, sometimes simply insulted as "Damn Yankee bureau men," the agents who staffed local bureau stations were regarded by many southerners as interlopers who upset the "Southern way of Life."' Most importantly, southerners believed that bureau personnel lacked understanding of the "Negro problem." Contemporary whites and some later historians tended to believe that the bureau's only purpose was to subjugate the South politically and that individuals who worked for the agency wanted only monetary rewards.2 1 Charles E. Culver to James Kirkman, June 15, 1867, Letters Sent, vol. 78, Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Cotton Gin, Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, National Archives, Washington, D.C, hereafter abbreviated as BRFAL, RG105, NA; also see James M. Smallwood, Time of Hope. Time of Despair: Black Texans During Reconstruction (New York, 1981), passim. 2 See, for example, the comments of Culver to Kirkman, July 13, Aug. I, 1867, Letters Sent, vol. 78, Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Cotton Gin, Texas, BRFAL, RG105, NA; see James M. Smallwood, "Black Texans During Reconstruction," (Ph.D. diss., Texas lech University, 1974), pp. 1-30, for an historiographical overview of the Reconstruction "schools"; also see Francis B. Simkins, "New Viewpoints of Southern Reconstruction," Journal of Southern History 5 (Feb. 1939): 49-61, and Bernard A. Weisberger, "The Dark and Bloody Ground of Reconstruction Historiography," Journal of Southern History 25 (Nov. 1959): 427-47. Civil War History, Vol. XXVII, No. 4 Copyright © 1981 by The Kent State Universitv Press 0009-8078/81/2704-0004 $01.00/0 RECONSTRUCTION IN TEXAS351 Recent scholarship reveals, however, that such a view needs a reanalysis . This writer's previous examination of the attitudes and performance of a local bureau agent in Texas, William S. Kirkman, demonstrates that a more balanced view of the agency's personnel may be warranted.3 Charles E. Culver's Reconstruction career is another case in point. Perhaps the findings about Kirkman and the following report about Culver might spur other investigators to begin a close examination of the careers of more local agents in districts throughout the South to discover if Culver (and Kirkman) are typical or atypical. If future findings prove their cases typical, then the old depiction of local bureau agents stands in need of revision. Certainly, the United States Congress had in part noble motives when it established the bureau in 1865. Northern leaders originally planned for the agency to continue for only one year after the end of the Civil War. But when southern states passed the black codes and thus made known their determination to resist equality for Negroes, Congress renewed the bureau in 1866 over President Andrew Johnson's veto and every year thereafter until 1870. As first conceived, the agency had varied responsibilities , including programs to resettle abandoned lands and to help any white refugees who needed aid, but its main function was to help exslaves adjust to their new status as free men. In Texas, because there were no abandoned lands to adjudicate, agents supervised relief projects, took jurisdiction over blacks if state courts appeared prejudicial , and tried to limit widespread violence which victimized segments of both black and white communities. Bureau officials also encouraged freedmen and their employers to honor labor contracts which followed bureau guidelines and sought to found and maintain schools and churches for Negroes.4 Problems beset the bureau in Texas. Not only did the agency enter the state at a late date, but it only slowly recruited personnel and established local offices. After the first assistant commissioner of the bureau for Texas, General E. M. Gregory, reached the state in September of 1865, he established headquarters in Galveston and named subassistants who staffed sixteen...

In this article I formulate a theological response to the shocking event of the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 (MH17), which was shot down over Eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014. None of the 298 passengers survived the crash. Moreover, since the plane crashed in territory where separatist militias were involved in an armed conflict with the Ukrainian military, the victims’ bodies could not be removed from the crash site for several days. I address how displays of public grief, such as those in the aftermath of MH17, are embedded in a ‘politics of mourning’ in which feelings of loss and despair are expressed against the backdrop of particular political entanglements and national histories. In the case of MH17, these entanglements included a construction of the civilized Western mourner versus the barbaric Ukrainian separatist who does not know how to properly treat a body. Taking the body as my point of departure and using Mario Aguilar’s notion of a ‘hermeneutics of bones’, I trace some of the ‘past narratives of God and bones’ in the Old Testament. These narratives show that Old Testament accounts of bones testify to the deep notion of human beings as created by God and are therefore a place to locate God in times of despair (e.g. in Job). Moreover, Old Testament renderings of bones can offer the comfort of language and speakability. They show how bones can be a site of ultimate humiliation, but also the site where dignity is restored. I then turn to a more in-depth reading of Rizpah, who in 2 Samuel 21 publicly mourns over the bones of her sons for six months until they receive a proper burial at the hands of King David, thereby changing the power constellations that had led to their deaths in the first place.

Luther’s understanding of God saturates his oeuvre, and in turn, this understanding is saturated by his doctrine of the justification of the sinner. God is the sovereign source and origin of all that is, and Luther develops his understanding of God in a manner that tries to safeguard this position in such a way that the personal relationship to God becomes the focus point for all he says. The doctrine of God as creator and as savior is modeled in a parallel way in Luther, as he sees God as the source of everything positively in both contexts. God is the sole giver of the gifts that human life requires. As creator, God is omnipresent, omniscient, and sovereign. Nothing can determine God. God is accordingly also the only instance in reality that has free will. Everything else is dependent on God, God’s foreknowledge, and God’s predestination. It is possible to see Luther’s position as an attempt to offer the human being a reliable and trustworthy notion of God, someone he or she can cling to in times of despair and desolation. The only God who deserves to be God, who is trustworthy with regard to being able to provide a safe and reliable basis for human life, is the God who justifies the sinner because of God’s own righteousness. In contrast, a human who puts her trust in herself and her own works or merits makes herself a god and will not be able to stand justified coram deo in the last judgment. Luther develops the idea about God’s hiddenness in different ways, most notably in his ideas about the hidden God in De servo arbitrio. But also in his notion of the theology of the Cross in the Heidelberg Disputation, and in other places where he writes about the masks of God, behind which God hides in order to do God’s work, we can see related or similar ideas. Thus, Luther develops an ambiguous element in his understanding of God.

This article focuses on Czesław Miłosz’s translations of parts of the Psalms and their influence on his poetry. For Miłosz, poetry had an eschatological dimension, a view deeply influenced by his distant cousin, the Lithuanian poet and playwright Oscar Miłosz. In his essay “A Few Words on Poetry,” Oscar Miłosz claimed that since prehistoric times, poetry has always followed the mysterious movements of the great soul of the people. He criticized his contemporaries—the French Symbolists—for their elitism, which perpetuated the schism between the poet and the great human family. He predicted that the new poetry would be that of the Bible: “a spacious prose hammered into verses.” For him, a truly inspired poet of the future will be able to transcend his paltry ego. Czesław Miłosz—thanks to this significant influence—resisted literary fashions. Moreover, in times of despair or dry spells in his writing, Miłosz would turn to translating the Bible. In his poem “Ars Poetica?” he writes: “I have always aspired to a more spacious form / that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose/and would let us understand each other without exposing / the author or reader to sublime agonies.”

Reviewed by: Spirit and Sport: Religion and the Fragile Athletic Body in Popular Culture by Sean Samuel O’Neil Dr. Nick J. Watson Sean Samuel O’Neil, Spirit and Sport: Religion and the Fragile Athletic Body in Popular Culture (Sport and Popular Culture Series, The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville), 2022. During the last two decades there has been a marked increase in publications, events and practical initiatives surrounding sports and the Christian faith. Within this corpus of work there has been limited explorations of the theology of disability sport, in particular, scholarship that specifically addresses bodily fragility and vulnerability. Therefore, Sean O’Neil’s book is a welcome and timely contribution to the literature, especially because of its rich and provocative content rooted in popular culture, which makes it ideal for classroom discussion and study—the author himself teaches a sport and religion class from which some of the book’s content emerged. This book’s content is provocative (in a good way). The book comprises six thematic chapters, a conclusion and afterword. Chapter titles such as, Eunuchs and Suicidal Athletes: Co-Creating Meaning in Times of Despair (Ch. 2), Pilgrimage, Prozac, and Pentecostals: Synchronicity on God’s Path (Ch. 3) and Cowboys and Soul Surfers: Gender, Disability, and Nature from Bethany Hamilton to The Rider (Ch. 6), reflect the provocative, challenging and engaging content of the text. An auto-ethno-graphic approach is adopted by the author—a hospital chaplain, bishop and pastor—who carefully weaves parts of his own life story into the book’s narrative. One methodological reason to deploy an auto-ethno-graphic approach in scholarly writing or empirical research, is that the author/researcher has an in-depth and experiential understanding of some, or all, of the subject matter. The following excerpt from the Preface, which was written by the author, demonstrates how the use of autoethnography organically emerged during the book project: When I began this project, I did not plan to use personal details. I did not anticipate that body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a personal antagonist that I thought had weakened over the years would revive [End Page 67] with such overwhelming force in my life. My mental health struggles became so acute when I worked as a hospital chaplain during the pandemic that I wondered tearfully at times whether my wife would ultimately end up completing this book in my post-humous absence. . . . Something happened, though, even before that grueling emotional stretch, that made me determined to include aspects of my personal life in this book. As is the case for so many of the meaningful events I describe in this book, the turning point was the result of a coincidence [at] a Christian writer’s conference. (p. xiii) Vulnerability, coincidence (some would say God-incidence), God’s providence and what the psychoanalyst Carl Jung called synchronicity, are frequent themes in the book, both in the description of the author’s life and of those athletes whose stories of bodily vulnerability and fragility are included within the narrative—Bethany Hamilton, Oscar Pistorius and Steve Gleason, for instance. Other strong themes in the book are the secular-sacred dyad, depression and anxiety, race, pilgrimage, brain trauma from participation in violent sports, intersectionality, platform ministry-evangelism, embodiment, human limitations and the American dream (and the myth of individual opportunity), the Great Sports Myth (the widespread belief that sports are always intrinsically good) and the use of fictional accounts of the sport-religion relationship, for example, A Prayer for Owen Meaney. And so, this book is truly interdisciplinary, broad in its scope and in some ways polemic in that it provides a critique of the dominant big-business American sports model and ableist attitudes in wider US culture. Given the diversity of themes presented in the book it is challenging to know which to highlight and discuss in a brief review essay, so to best represent the book’s overall content and merits (and limitations). Arguably, chapter four—The Perils of Black Athletic Success: What ‘Get Out’ Gets Right about Inspiration Porn—is an important one, if one measures importance by the number of people across America that its content may impinge upon. The...

The epigraph of this essay was written in 1930 during the global economic depression that followed in the wake of the First World War. The strong note of optimism in this quote—Dewey’s belief that discovery and growth are possible “even in the midst of trouble and defeat”—is important because I believe it can provide support for us in our own time: our post-September 11 atmosphere of uncertainty and despair. Thus, in this essay, I compare Dewey’s hopefulness in the years following World War I to our own reactions to September 11 in an effort to help teachers at all levels who, like me—a philosophy instructor at the post-secondary level—need to rebuild their confidence that teaching can truly serve to strengthen and extend American democracy. More particularly, I investigate the parallels between the shortcomings of American society that, in the World War I era, became apparent to Dewey and the shortcomings that September 11 have made apparent to contemporary commentators. I then examine the philosophic roots of Dewey’s conviction that he could help ameliorate these shortcomings, his sources of hopefulness in his own period of national crisis. I conclude by outlining three touchstones of optimism for contemporary teachers, touchstones that I draw from Dewey’s hopefulness and his unwavering efforts to realize his vision of a more democratic society.KeywordsHuman NatureAcademic FreedomCivil LibertySocial IntelligenceCollaborative CommunityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.