Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire

One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year

A fascinating theological study of how early Christianity's message of love and community has evolved into one of punishment and empire

During their first millennium, Christians filled their sanctuaries with images of Christ as a living presence--as a shepherd, teacher, healer, or an enthroned god. He is serene and surrounded by lush scenes, depictions of this world as paradise. Yet once he appeared as crucified, dying was virtually all Jesus seemed able to do, and paradise disappeared from the earth.

Saving Paradise turns a fascinating new lens on Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, asking how its early vision of beauty evolved into a vision of torture, and what changes in society and theology marked that evolution. It also retrieves, for today, a life-affirming Christianity that the world sorely needs.

Author: Rebecca Ann Parker, Rita Nakashima Brock
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 05/01/2009
Pages: 576
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.80d
ISBN13: 9780807067543
ISBN10: 0807067547
BISAC Categories:
- Art | Subjects & Themes | Religious
- Religion | Christian Theology | History
- Religion | Religion, Politics & State

About the Author
Rebecca Ann Parker was President of and Professor of Theology at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, until 2014, and coauthor of Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us and Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. An ordained United Methodist minister, Parker has dual fellowship with the United Methodist Church and the Unitarian Universalist Association. She currently serves on the board of an interfaith think tank focused on progressive religion and politics called Faith Voices for the Common Good.

Rita Nakashima Brock is Research Professor of Theology and Culture and Director of the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School, Ft. Worth, Texas. She is author, with Gabriella Lettini, of Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War and author, with Rebecca Ann Parker, of Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us and Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. She lives in Oakland, California.