Cloth: 978-90-485-7734-7

eISBN: 978-90-485-7794-1 (ePub)

eISBN: 978-90-485-7793-4 (PDF)

Where can we find hope when the world seems so hopeless? Ours is not the first generation to pose this question. Across different eras and cultural contexts, people have sought ways out of despair. This volume assembles voices of hope drawn from multiple generations, faith traditions, scholarly disciplines, and regions of the world. These voices range from Thomas Aquinas and Pope Leo XIV to Jane Goodall and Imtiaz Sooliman, and from Desmond Tutu and Jonathan Sacks to Amanda Gorman and Yahya Mahmmoud. Together, they remind us that hope is not the same as optimism. It is neither an emotion nor a feeling. Hope is a personal and public practice, a way of living in tension, oriented toward what is not yet. It is something we practice because it is good in itself. This book is an invitation to join this conversation and explore whether and how it is still possible to be surprised by hope in our own time and our own contexts.

Dr. Jan Jorrit Hasselaar, theologian and economist, is Director of the Amsterdam Centre for Religion and Sustainable Development, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is research fellow of the University of the Western Cape (South Africa). Hasselaar chaired the working group ‘Sustainable Development’ of the Council of Churches in the Netherlands (2011-2018).Mark van Vuuren is associate professor of positive organizing at the University of Twente, the Netherlands.Julieta Matos Castaño is a research associate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a practitioner in the field of futures thinking and design at Futures Compass, based in the Netherlands.Erik Borgman is a lay Dominican and professor emeritus of public theology at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

Theology, Ethics, Philosophy, Religion

License: OA CC BY-NC-ND