In light of the general lack of awareness of the long history of Western-Marxist fascination with the Bible, this article offers a synopsis of part of that history. After showing how the Bible was an important element in the work of Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, it the offers a critique of the current engagements with it by Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Terry Eagleton and Giorgio Agamben. The third section deals with the most significant element of the religious (...) Left in recent years, namely liberation theology. It closes with some comments concerning the growth of Marxist biblical studies and some suggestions for the way Marxism might reconnect with a non-reified biblical tradition. (shrink)

This paper asks if there any hope today, in the midst of the pulls and tugs of current globalizing and counter-globalizing forces, of differing theological outlooks and intestine tensions, that the world Church can constitute a politics of reconciliation instead of one characterized by polarized confrontation. Employing the metaphor of “hands,” it proposes some needed steps towards the realization of that hope. Hands can join in reconciliation when they are open in confession and emptied of the manipulation of money, when (...) all hands are welcome at the table, wounded as they are, and when they are raised in communal praise and supplication. (shrink)