Book Recommendation: Deliver Us From Evil

I was glancing through my library today and rediscovered an excellent book. James Newton Poling is the Professor of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Colgate Rochester Divinity School/Bexley Hall/Crozer Theological Seminary. His Deliver Us From Evil: Resisting Racial and Gender Oppression addresses the nature of evil and emphasizes the need for communities of resistance. It has been years since I've read this.  It's time to read it again with a fresh set of eyes.

Here's an excerpt:

Evil has a personal dimension. In situations if interpersonal violence, for example, someone decides to cause physical harm to another, and someone is inured. Even in situations usually understood as impersonal evil, someone's life and health is always at stake. ... Evil has a social dimension. By social dimension I mean the economic, institutional, and ideological forces that create the likelihood that various forms of evil will occur. Violent parents are able to injure their children because societies grant parental authoirty. All power is socially constructed and its use and abuse is a social event. ... Evil has a religious dimension. Every personal and social event is embedded in religious horizons of meaning and value. In fact, the very concepts of good and evil make religious value judgments about ultimate reality. When they struggle against evil, resistance communities appeal to a religious worldview. Religious evil occurs whenever the theology and/or practices of religious groups are used to destroy bodies and spirits. Religious evil is the most dangerous kind of evil, because it obscures the possibility of a transcendent reality to which communities of resistance appeal.

Off to eat my buffalo wings now!