This issue of The Other Journal aims to address the topic of evil, both with regard to its obvious manifestations and its haunting opacity. At times our contributors lament the presence of evil and at times they call us to work against it. At times they analyze the Christian response to evil, critiquing it and offering some correctives, and at times they merely try to bring evil’s more insidious or systemic forms to light. These essays, interviews, poems, and short stories resist easy definitions and explication. They suggest that evil is not always as easy to name as we Christians might think and that we may even, at times, be its willing and unwilling accomplices.
In this two-part interview, J. Kameron Carter discusses his current work regarding political theology and the construction of the modern racialized world; speaks about the Obama presidency, the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and the recent Occupy Movement; and reflects on the task of theological education in the wake of modernity.
In this interview, Ward contrasts the way evil is used in public discourse with the Christian understanding of evil and then calls on theology to help us imagine a different future.
John Totten explores the perceptions of one of the greatest American rock bands, and why they might be evil – but for different reasons than people may think.
Reverend Elaine Jordan encounters a haunting creature in this poem, a creature whose thin frame and violent actions remind her of a distant, almost-forgotten self.
In this interview Paul Griffiths discusses the contours of a Christian understanding of evil—what it is, what it isn’t, and how Christians can acknowledge it without succumbing to it.
In this interview, Snarr shares insights about the living wage movement and reflects theologically and ethically on the role of religious activism as a response to economic injustice.
In “O For a Thousand Tongues to Mutter,” Jennifer Strange tracks traces of corruption—a fallen soldier’s body, a swarm of ravenous ants—in the “pale business” of our passage “in and out of life.”
In response to evil Christ-centered lament is a performative action that both acknowledges the evil and injustice present in the world and simultaneously defuses our vengeful feelings by focusing on the sacrifice of Christ.
In Luci Shaw’s “Hate Invasion,” anxieties, like crows, “clot” and “colonize” the mind and heart of the poet, who longs for divine answers to earth’s evils.
