God, Pandemics, and the Holocaust - Hardcover

by Clifford Chalmers Cain (Author), Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (Foreword by)

How is a loving, powerful, good, and cognizant God related to human lives that are beset with pain and suffering and plagued by diseases and natural catastrophes? What is the role and activity of God in history and nature? How does God help us in our struggles and our tragedies? God, Pandemics, and the Holocaust suggests answers to these questions and others through the prisms of the bubonic plague, the Spanish flu, COVID-19, and the attempted genocide of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. Religious insights from these time periods are noted and additional and alternative points of view are also considered. The existence of God is not examined; what is explored is the kind of God who God is: What conceptions of God are no longer satisfactory to human experience, and what understandings of God can make sense in a world that is both wonderful and woeful?

Author Biography

Clifford Chalmers Cain is Theologian-in-Residence at First Presbyterian Church, Greenwood, South Carolina, and Harrod-C.S. Lewis Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus at Westminster College of Missouri.. The holder of two doctorates, Professor Cain's academic work is situated at the intersection of religion and the environment, the current conversation between theology and science, and in dialogue among the world's religions. He is also a clergyman with credentials recognized by several Christian traditions. This is his twelfth book.