The Alternative Seminary invites you to Faith and the Search for Justice: Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine

A Four-Session Online Course

Thursday evenings, June 27 – July 25 (no class July 4)

7:00 – 8:30 p.m. EST

“In wrestling with the problem of how to present the teachings of nonviolence in an age of mass violence, it seems to me that the writings of Ignazio Silone are of immense importance.”  – Dorothy Day

Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day often cited the novel Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone as one of the most influential works of fiction in her life.   A deeply humane and compassionate novel, it was written in 1936 while Silone was in exile from his native Italy for his resistance work against the fascist government of Benito Mussolini.  He recounts the story of an idealistic revolutionary who tries to organize Italian peasants against a repressive regime. 

Silone had been a revolutionary who became deeply illusioned with the oppressive and hypocritical policies of the international communist movement, particularly in Stalinist Soviet Union.  Silone saw himself as “a socialist without a party and a Christian without a church.”

In this new Alternative Seminary course, we will read Bread and Wine together and grapple with the profound questions Silone raises about what it means to struggle for a just society, about the role of the church in society, and about the relation of Christian faith to justice.  Join us for some provocative literary and theological adventures – which are especially timely given the stirrings of fascism and despair in our world today.

The course will be led by Will O’Brien, coordinator of the Alternative Seminary.  The cost for this course is $60, which includes a paperback copy of the novel (or whatever you can afford).

To register, go to bit.ly/BreadandWineAS or contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com or 267-339-8989 by June 15.

The Alternative Seminary is an informal program of biblical and theological study and reflection designed to foster an authentic biblical witness in the modern world.  http://www.alternativeseminary.net