Alienation and Connection

Alienation and Connection challenges social, cultural, and economic constructs that perpetuate alienation through suffering and powerlessness. The authors, representing Wesleyan backgrounds in this volume, all hold concern for a suffering world, believing that socioeconomic systems, prescribed roles, stereotypes, or power differentials cannot dictate normative destinies for persons or for living systems. Each writer calls for movement from suffering to surviving to thriving in the midst of discussions about how alienation, in a variety of contexts, can be transformed into connection and reconnection through intentional shifts in circumstance and human agency. A hermeneutic of healing and justice focused on human relationship with the environment, economic and social systems that disconnect and reconnect, socio-cultural and economic constructs that divide or heal, encountered difference that brings opportunity, and various manifestations of personal pain that can turn to hope, provides a significant, realistic alternative to suffering and alienation. Meaningful connection to each other and to the earth through the alleviation of suffering provides hope for the integrity and future of humankind and the healing of the planet. This book is an offering to those who are called to work for change and a challenge to those who do not believe that change should or could happen. Alienation is not the final word. Connection and hope can prevail.