Prosser Auditorium, HUB
Moravian College
Locust & Monocacy Streets

Program Fee: Free
Contact Hours: 3.5 (.35 CEU)

Streaming video available

Ask most people to name the most recognized image of Jesus in the Christian faith, and most will unhesitatingly say, “the crucifixion.”  But in fact, for the first thousand years of the Christian era, images of Jesus depicted him as the restorer and protector of Paradise in this present life and on this earth--and never as the crucified victim.  Theologians referred to the "church as the paradise in this world." They used the Bible to make the case and depicted paradise on the walls of churches at a time when images were the primary texts for faith. Rita Brock, co-author of Saving Paradise, argues that if we were to take this fact with the seriousness it deserves, it would revolutionize a Christianity that should lead movements to bring peace and healing to a broken world. In her lectures, Dr. Brock will expand on the themes introduced in Saving Paradise, and will present her thoughts on how this perspective can help us to read the prophets and passion narratives in a new way and find a life-affirming, this-worldly faith committed to justice, creation, and peace.

Streaming video for this event is available via a high-speed Internet connection. Watch the lectures live from your own computer, and interact with the speaker by email, IM or text message. Details

The Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock, a noted speaker and theologian, is Founding Director of Faith Voices for the Common Good, and she chaired the planning committee of the first Truth Commission on Conscience in War at Riverside Church, March 21, 2010. She is a Visiting Scholar at the Starr King School for Ministry at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA. She was a professor of religion and women’s studies for twenty years and held the Endowed Chair in the Humanities from 1990-97 at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. From 1997-2001, Dr. Brock directed the Fellowship Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, a prominent advanced research institute, and from 2001-2002, she was a Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School Center for Values in Public Life.

Dr. Brock’s latest book, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, co-authored with Rebecca Parker (Beacon, 2008), was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of 2008 and has received critical acclaim by reviewers in the Christian Century, National Catholic Reporter, and Religious News Service. Her first, Journeys By Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power, won the Crossroads/Continuum Publishing Company award for the most outstanding manuscript in women’s studies in 1988.  She is the co-author of Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States, which won the Catholic Press Award in Gender Studies in 1996, and the co-author of the 2001 book in narrative theology, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us.  In addition to publishing many essays, she was an editor and contributor to Guide to the Perplexing: A Survival Manual for Women in Religious Studies, Setting the Table: Women in Theological Conversation, and Off the Menu: Asian and North American Asian Women’s Religion and Theology.

Dr. Brock’s service to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the 1980s and 1990s includes the Presidency of Disciples Peace Fellowship, membership in the North American Pacific Asian Disciples, a term on the General Board and Administrative Committees, two terms on the Committee on Renewal and Structural Reform, as well as the vice-presidency and presidency of the board of the Division of Overseas Ministries, and election as the first chair of the Common Global Ministries Board of the Disciples and the United Church of Christ.

In 1993, Dr. Brock represented the National Council of Churches on an International hi-level ecumenical delegation to support the peace-making processes in Guatemala and El Salvador. She has lectured in Australia, New Zealand, England, Germany, Denmark, China, Japan, the Philippines, Norway, and Canada, as well as throughout the United States and is a member of the U. S. Group of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, the leading global organization of liberation theologians. 

About Saving Paradise:
SAVING PARADISE challenges us to recover an ancient world view that is life transforming and earth affirming. It reminds us of a biblical perspective that does not reserve paradise for the dead but invites the living to find grace, justice, peace and compassion—here and now—amid the jangling discord of violence and war. It may mark the beginning of a paradigm shift in contemporary Christian understanding and interfaith dialogue.
      — Reverend James A. Forbes, Jr., president and founder of the Healing of the Nations Foundation,
           senior minister emeritus of the Riverside Church of New York City

Only rarely is a single book an event. This book is such a rarity. Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker show that solid scholarship can be expressed with passion and literary grace as they recover the beauty of an earth-loving Christianity lost for a thousand years beneath dry creeds and formulae and poisonous myths of sacralized violence.
      — Daniel C. Maguire, author of A Moral Creed for All Christians