World Christianity and Covid-19 Looking Back and Looking Forward

This volume explores how Christians around the world have made sense of the meaning of suffering in the context of and post-COVID-19. It interrogates the question of God, suffering, and structural injustice. Further, it discusses the Christian response to the compounded threats of racial injustice, climate injustice, wildlife injustice, gender injustice, economic injustice, political injustice, unjust in the distributions of the vaccine and future challenges in the post-COVID-19 era. The contributions are authored by scholars, students, activists and clergy from various fields of inquiry and church traditions. The volume seeks to deepen Christian understanding of the meaning of suffering in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the fresh ways the pandemic can contribute to reconceptualizing human relations and specifically, what it means to be human in the context of suffering, the place of or justifications of God in suffering, human place in creation, andthe role of the church in re-articulating the theological meanings and praxes of suffering for today.

1. Introduction: Faith Facing Suffering, Faith Looking Forward.- 2. From Lisbon to Auschwitz and from Wuhan to Cape Town: Covid-19 as a Test Case for the Theodicy Problem.- 3. Who is the Body? Weaponization of Faith during COVID-19.- 4. Psalms of Lament as Response to Suffering in the context of Korean Lament Psalms to express Han.- 5. “Where is Your God?”: A Pastoral Reflection on Theodicy, the Black Experience, and COVID-19.- 6. Punisher, Healer, or Sufferer? Toward a Theological Response to Marginalization in times of Covid-19 Pandemic.- 7. Faith in Internationalism: COVID-19 and the International Order.- 8. The Purpose of the Book of Job and its Implications on Malawi’s Covid-19 Situation.- 9. Silence as a means of prayer in suffering: Reading Lamentations from the context of Kerala Pentecostalism in the Context of COVID-19.- 10. Lament in The City.- 11. Interpreting Covid-19 Epidemics in Light of Old Testament: An Attempt to Define Humanity’s Response to Suffering.- 12. MakingSense of Suffering in The Midst of COVID 19: A Reflection on Psalm 88.-13. COVID 19 Disrupts and Upends Tradition and Everyday Life: The Case of Death Rituals in Africa.- 14. COVID-19 and Prosperity Preaching in Ghana: Intercultural and Pragmatic Reading of the Debate between Job and his Friends.- 15. Praying With Each Other During Holy Infected Week – COVID19 and The Possibilities of Our Resurrection.- 16. Worship and Suffering in the Kingdom of God: A Trinitarian Ecclesiology for Holistic Mission.- 17.  Salo-Salo Sa Hapag: Filipino Family Eucharist a Response On COVID-19 Pandemic.- 18. The Sanctuary of the Home? Covid-19, Lockdown and Expendability of Girls.-19. Covid - 19 and Suffering: A Pastoral and Theological Response.- 20. COVID-19 and the challenge to anthropocentric and white supremacist notions of God.- 21. Covid-19 as a Wake-Up Call Related to Animal Suffering.- 22. Covid-19 - When Human Suffering Aligns with a Concern for the Environment:  A Pentecostal Marian Reflection.- 23. Disaster Socialism? U.S. Ecclesial Economic Practices in the Time of COVID-19.- 24.  The Spiritual Challenge of Covid-19.