AFTERLIVES OF BIBLICAL HATRED (OT-8310)

An inescapable part of Biblical tradition is the presence of hatred, expressed through statements against the other, exclusion, patterns of persecution and oppression, genocide, and condemnation.  This course will examine the difficult biblical texts that describe such evils, and work toward ethical understandings of the passages in context.  Most of the course will focus on the historical afterlives of these biblical problems over millennia, from religious exclusion, classism, anti-Semitism, genocide, slavery, holocaust, incarceration, margninalization, and more, even into the present.  We will find religious, ethical, and moral ways to resist these evils, in defiance and correction of our own traditions, for the healing of the world.