The Prophetic: The Life and Legacy of Marc H. Ellis (1953 – 2024)

Marc H. Ellis, Jewish liberation theologian and former professor of history and Jewish studies at the Maryknoll School of Theology and Baylor University, was one of the most critical liberation theologians of our time. Influenced by the Jewish prophetic and ethical tradition and the dissonance of post-Holocaust Jewish life, Ellis reconstructed Jewish diaspora and exile theology, which was critical of Jewishness tethered to the relations of imperial ruling in the United States and Israel and the mass suffering of Palestinians. Ellis facilitated Jewish and Christian ethical engagements with the violent political and economic crises. The panel will critically engage with Marc H. Ellis’s scholarship, discussing how Ellis’s life and work will shed new light on religious understanding of violence, the praxis of non-violence, the liberation of margins, and the diaspora.