Land of Stark Contrasts

An important new volume showcasing a wide range of faith-based responses to one of today's most pressing social issues, challenging us to expand our ways of understanding.

Land of Stark Contrasts brings together the work of social scientists, ethicists, and theologians exploring the profound role of religion in understanding and responding to homelessness and housing insecurity in all corners of the United States-from Seattle, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley to Dallas and San Antonio to Washington, D.C., and Boston.
Together, the essays of Land of Stark Contrasts chart intriguing ways forward for future initiatives to address the root causes of homelessness. In this way they are essential reading for practical theologians, congregational leaders, and faith-based nonprofit organizers exploring how to combine spiritual and material care for homeless individuals and other vulnerable populations. Social workers, nonprofit managers, and policy specialists seeking to understand how to partner better with faith-based organizations will also find the chapters in this volume an invaluable resource.
Contributors include James V. Spickard, Manuel Mejido Costoya and Margaret Breen, Michael R. Fisher Jr., Laura Stivers, Lauren Valk Lawson, Bruce Granville Miller, Nancy A. Khalil, John A. Coleman, S.J., Jeremy Phillip Brown, Paul Houston Blankenship, Maria Teresa Davila, Roberto Mata, and Sathianathan Clarke.
Co-published with Seattle University's Center for Religious Wisdom and World Affairs

“This may well be the very best collection of essays ever assembled treating religious responses to contemporary street homelessness. The reader encounters revealing accounts of faith-based concern and advocacy for the homeless, with depictions of geographically specific challenges and of the suffering of demographic groups disproportionately affected by this hardship. If we are ever to address adequately the ensemble of social problems that perpetuate homelessness even in affluent societies, the solutions we implement will be rooted in both sound research and genuine religious motivation. This volume sheds abundant light on both of these realities, and deserves the highest recommendation.”

Land of Stark Contrasts offers a much-needed inter-disciplinary exploration of the theme of homelessness through the lens of religious studies and theology. Unlike many texts that speak of the poor or marginalized in abstraction, this volume clearly expresses the concrete realities of homelessness in the United States and current efforts to combat it. This is a powerful effort to destigmatize homelessness and decriminalize the homeless population through a study of religious ethics and faith-based communities.---Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, The University of Scranton
This may well be the very best collection of essays ever assembled treating religious responses to contemporary street homelessness. If we are ever to address adequately the ensemble of social problems that perpetuate homelessness even in affluent societies, the solutions we implement will be rooted in both sound research and genuine religious motivation. This volume sheds abundant light on both of these realities, and deserves the highest recommendation.---Thomas Massaro, SJ, Professor of Moral Theology, Fordham University

Manuel Mejido Costoya has worked for the United Nations in Geneva and Bangkok and has held teaching and research appointments in Chile, Switzerland, and the United States.

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