Subversive Scriptures: Revolutionary Christian Readings of the Bible in Latin America

by Leif E. Vaage (Editor)

Presented here for the first time in the English language are studies that originally appeared, some in Spanish and some in Portuguese, in the journal Revista de Interpretacion Biblica Latinoamericana.
In Latin America the Bible has always been a site of partisan debate about the legitimacy of prevailing cultural practices and the utopian demand for the proper, better construction of a new world order. These studies represent a contemporary instance of the same insistence, on the basis of biblical reasoning, that a more satisfying social arrangement be developed in Latin America.

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

A pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada he also teaches every year on the behalf of the United Church of Canada at the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana Recinto Lima in Perú (South America). During the last 20 years, since completing doctoral studies at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, his scholarly interests have revolved around the following four issues: i) the social practices of biblical interpretation, especially in Latin America; ii) the social projects of earliest Christianity, especially those associated with the historical Jesus and his first followers in Galilee and with the historical Paul; iii) the diverse modes of social critique and alternative social construction, especially in ancient Cynicism, Christian asceticism, and modern anarchism; and iv) the social significance of the human body in and for these practices and projects. These projects have made him otherwise an avid exponent of arboreal exegesis with a chain-saw, German shepherding into the woods, writing for poetic vengeance, and learning how to dance with progressive rigor mortis.