Opened by the World

What this episode covers

In this episode of OP Talks, Rebecca Rhodes Blackburn, a PhD student at Chicago Theological Seminary, talks to Rev. Dr. José Francisco Morales Torres, Assistant Professor of Latino Studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary, about his recent book Wonder as a New Starting Point for Theological Anthropology: Opened by the World (Lexington Books, 2023), in which he creates “a new theological anthropology that begins with wonder.” In a capitalistic world, says Rev. Dr. Morales, “everything and everyone becomes a commodity.” He goes on to describe his line of thinking: ”And so what I debated is, in fact, [that] we become so much [of] a commodity that it flattens what it means to be human. And so I talk about not just humans as commodities but also [about] humans as being kind of valued by what they can produce for profit—and usually for somebody else's profit. So really, that was kind of the overarching problem.” According to Rev. Dr. Morales, this has “affected the way we talk about God and the way people who say they talk about God—i.e., churches, religious communities—the way they talk about God. And so I said, there needs to be another way to address this issue.” At its core, the book aims “to reignite mysteries in terms of mystery, what it means to be human.”

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