Fasching, Darrell J. 1944- (Darrell Joseph Fasching)

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Fasching, Darrell J. 1944- (Darrell Joseph Fasching)

PERSONAL:

Born April 13, 1944, in Green Cove Springs, FL; son of Bert (an automobile body shop owner) and Irene (a homemaker) Fasching; married Laura L. Gushin (an advertising copywriter), October 6, 1974. Ethnicity: "Caucasian (German/Austrian)." Education: University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, B.A., 1968; Syracuse University, M.A., 1971, Ph.D., 1978.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Lutz, FL. Office—Department of Religious Studies, CPR 309, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620; fax: 813-926-8459. E-mail—fasching@cas.usf.edu.

CAREER:

Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, assistant dean of Hendricks Chapel, 1975-80; LeMoyne College, Syracuse, assistant professor of religious studies, 1980-82; University of South Florida, Tampa, assistant professor, 1982-85, associate professor, 1985-89, professor of religious studies, 1989—, affiliate assistant professor of medical ethics, 1983-85, also affiliate teacher of special education and philosophy, director of graduate studies in religion, 1984-89, department head, 1993-98. Presenter at international conferences. Member of editorial advisory board, Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Studies in Religion, Culture, and Social Development.

WRITINGS:

The Thought of Jacques Ellul, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 1981.

(Editor and contributor) The Jewish People in Christian Preaching, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 1984.

Narrative Theology after Auschwitz: From Alienation to Ethics, Augsburg Fortress Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1992.

The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Apocalypse or Utopia?, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1993.

The Coming of the Millennium: Good News for the Whole Human Race, Trinity Press International (Valley Forge, PA), 1996.

(With Dell DeChant) Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach, with teacher's manual, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2000.

(With John Esposito and Todd Lewis New) World Religions Today, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000, 2nd edition, 2006.

(With John Esposito and Todd Lewis New) Religion and Globalization: World Religions in historical Perspective, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor to anthologies, including Remembering for the Future, Pergamon, 1989; Research in Philosophy and Technology, Jai Press, 1991; and The Human Search: Proceedings of the Second Annual Thurman Convocation, edited by Mozella Mitchell, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1992. Contributor to a wide variety of academic journals. Founding editor, Ellul Forum; member of editorial staff, Religion and the Social Order.

SIDELIGHTS:

Darrell J. Fasching once told CA: "My work has come progressively to focus on a single question, ‘How do you tell the difference between God and the devil?’ This is a somewhat poetic way of engaging in an ethical critique of religion. Paradoxically, religion inspires both selfless compassion and violent hatred. By studying two of the most violent events of the twentieth century—Auschwitz and Hiroshima—I have tried to understand how religion shapes public behavior to create demonic consequences. At the same time, I have tried to gain ethical insight into the lessons learned from these events, so as to learn how to subvert the human propensity for the demonic. Along the way, I have found inspiration in the cross-cultural movement begun by Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., for nonviolent civil disobedience as a strategy for subverting demonic behavior without emulating it."