Marc H. Ellis
University Professor of American and Jewish Studies
Director, Center for American and Jewish Studies

PO Box 97308, Waco, TX 76798-7308
Ph. 254-710-3609; Fax: 254-710-1571
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Marc H. Ellis received his B.A. (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and M.A. degrees in Religious and American Studies from Florida State University, where he studied with the Jewish Holocaust theologian Richard Rubenstein. He then spent two years working with the poor, and thereafter entered a three year course of study and received his Ph.D. from Marquette University in Contemporary Intellectual and Religious History, where he was inducted into the Jesuit Honorary Society, Alpha Sigma Nu.

In 1980, Dr. Ellis joined the faculty of the Maryknoll School of Theology where he founded the M.A. program in Justice and Peace Studies and was coordinator of that program until 1995.

In 1988, Dr. Ellis was promoted to full Professor of Religion, Culture and Society Studies.

In 1998, Professor Ellis joined the faculty of Baylor University as Professor of American and Jewish Studies. In 1999 Professor Ellis was appointed University Professor of American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University. He was also appointed Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University.

Professor Ellis has authored nine books and three collections of essays: A Year at the Catholic Worker; Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century; Faithfulness in an Age of Holocaust; Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation; Beyond Innocence and Redemption: Confronting the Holocaust and Israeli Power; The Renewal of Palestine in the Jewish Imagination, Ending Auschwitz: The Future of Jewish and Christian Life, Uber den Judisch-Chritlichen Dialog Hinaus, and Unholy Alliance: Religion and Atrocity in Our Time. Professor Ellis has just published his latest book titled O Jerusalem: The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant . His book of essays, Revolutionary Forgiveness: A Jewish Journey among Christians will be published in 2000. Currently he is finishing a book titled Practicing Exile: Traveling the New Diaspora.

Of Professor Ellis' work, Professor Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes, "Marc Ellis has demonstrated great courage, integrity, and insight in the very important work he has been doing for years. It has been an inspiration for all of us." Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmund Tutu writes that Ellis provides a "vital contribution to solving one of the few remaining intractable problems of our time."The internationally renowned literary and cultural critic and University Professor at Columbia University, Edward Said, writes: "Marc Ellis is a brilliant writer, a deeply thoughtful and courageous mind, an intellectual who has broken the death-hold of mindless tradition and unreflective cliche to produce a superb account of post-Holocaust understanding, with particular reference to the Palestinian people and the moral obligation of Israelis and diaspora Jews. He is a man to be listened to with respect and admiration."

Of Unholy Alliance, Senator George McGovern comments, "This perceptive and well-conceived book offers the reader a masterful analysis of one of the most compelling issues of our age." George Steiner, Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, writes that Ellis' evocation of the geography of horror is "planetary" and that his phenomenologies of terror and genocide form a "tormenting indictment." Steiner concludes his review after noting partial dissents: "The main failing is, of course, the solution offered. The concept of a "God" whom man "makes exist" is ontologically and ethically naive. It is an abuse of language. As it happens, I urge something similar in a forthcoming book, but wit a sharp sense of its inadequacy. But then neither Dr. Ellis nor I are St. Augustine or Pascal or Karl Barth. And even they...." Donald Wagner, Director of the Middle East Study Center at North Park University, sees Unholy Alliance as "Ellis's most important work and forms an excellent entry point into his many other writings...Ellis is a remarkably lucid writer and an expansive thinker, able to interpret complex political, ethical, theological and philosophical concepts in writing that is both understandable and exceedingly challenging. His ability to combine human-interest stories, poetry and an informed cross-cultural and gender sensitivity enrich the book. Although he will make many readers uncomfortable, Ellis is an authoritative interpreter of today's events and intellectual landscape. His hermeneutic of universal justice and truth is sorely needed in a world moving toward increasing ethnic and religious particularism...The time is long overdue for his views to be taken seriously and debated openly." Rabbi Hadassah Davis of Reading, England writes that Unholy Alliance is "one of those books that metaphorically takes you by the shoulders and shakes you. Every Jew, Christian and Muslim should read this... Ellis is courageous, bold and accurate when he states: `Nazis come in many different forms and dress and carry different labels, even at times the religious designation of Jew and Christian." Michael Taylor, President of Selly Oak Colleges, reflects that Unholy Alliance "has been described as searing. It is also brilliant and bleak, throwing us back on our own resources and underscoring our need to be open to one another. Despite a prologue which usefully maps out its shape, this is not a book to be read all at once. It will however repay the reader's efforts a hundredfold, though not in the coinage of even the most tentative theodicies. Marc Ellis finds himself without a God, but not without hope."

Of Ending Auschwitz, Richard L. Rubenstein, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Religion at Florida State University, has written, "I find everything Marc Ellis writes to be a 'must read,' and never more so than Ending Auschwitz, even when I disagree with him. Ellis skillfully combines excellent writing, fascinating narrative, and thoughtful reflections on Judaism, Christianity, Auschwitz, Israel and the Palestinians. Ellis is representative of neither the Jewish nor the Christian mainstream. Nevertheless, he is one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of his generation." Rosemary Radford Ruether, Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, states that "Marc Ellis is emerging as perhaps the most important contemporary Jewish theologian. Ending Auschwitz continues his quest for a truthful and liberating Judaism in the late twentieth century, both in relation to the two thousand year old conflict with Christianity and in relation to the challenge to find a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His work is mandatory reading for anyone concerned with these issues." James H. Cone, Briggs Distinguished Professor at Union Theological Seminary, describes Ending Auschwitz as "A refreshing, courageous, important, forcefully argued essay." And Harvey Cox, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, writes: "I have followed Marc Ellis's work with great interest and profit as I read this book with growing fascination. I think it is his best and most mature work to date. I was especially taken by his exposure of the misleading ways in which the now widely acknowledged 'Jewishness of Jesus' is still used in ways that distort Judaism. A sobering revelation. The whole book is sobering, and would turn sour, but the author's broad and inclusive grasp of human suffering and his hopeful spirit bring it to a positive conclusion. This book now takes its place in the growing canon of essential texts in the Christian-Jewish dialogue and in the larger conversation about how our faiths engage each other and the salient crises of our time."

Professor Ellis has co-edited five books: Remembering Deir Yassin: The Future of Israel and Palestine, The Future of Liberation Theology: Essays in Honor of Gustavo Gutierrez; Beyond Occupation: Jewish, Christian, and Palestinian Voices for Peace; Expanding the View: Gustavo Gutierrez and the Future of Liberation Theology and Faith and the Intifada: Palestinian Christian Voices. His many articles have been published in diverse American and international journals, including International Herald Tribune (Paris) European Judaism (London), New Outlook (Tel Aviv), Jordan Times (Jordan) Ecumenical Review (Geneva), Common Ground (Korea), Ord & Bild (Sweden), Christian Century (Chicago), and Journal of Palestine Studies (Washington, D.C.). In 1988, an entire issue of Christian-Jewish Relations, edited by Rabbi Norman Solomon, was devoted to responses to Professor Ellis's work by Jewish and Christian theologians around the world. In 1991, a book-length response to his work titled Jews, Christians and Liberation: An Agenda for Dialogue was published by Orbis Books, and included essays by Leonardo Boff, Pablo Richard, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Dorothee Solle and Richard Rubenstein. Professor Ellis' essays have been published in a number of anthologies, most recently in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader, edited by Elliot Dorff and Luis Newman and published by Oxford University Press.

Professor Ellis's books and articles have been translated and published in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Flemish, Dutch, Korean, Hebrew and Arabic. He has traveled and lectured extensively in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In 1988 Professor Ellis delivered the luncheon address at the international conference "Theology, Politics and Peace," organized by the Carter Presidential Center and Emory University. In 1991 he addressed the United Nations N.G.O. Conference on the Question of Palestine in Vienna, Austria. In 1992 Professor Ellis traveled to Auschwitz, Poland, where he was a member of a Jewish delegation on the future of Auschwitz, organized by the Oxford University Centre for Post-graduate Hebrew Studies at the invitation of the Polish government. In 1993 Professor Ellis delivered the annual Van der Zyl Memorial Lecture at the Leo Baeck Seminary in London. In 1995 Professor Ellis delivered a lecture at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In 1997 Professor Ellis delivered lectures at symposia in honor of Dorothy Day and Edward Said at Marquette University and the University of Windsor respectively. In 1998, Professor Ellis lectured at Harvard University, Cambridge University. Oxford University, Bethlehem University, Baylor University and delivered the Newcombe Lectures on Religion and the Human Condition at the University of Winnipeg. He also delivered the plenary address at the United Nations NGO Symposium on the Question of Palestine.

Professor Ellis has served as a consultant to the Committee to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches and as a member of the steering committee of the Religion, Holocaust and Genocide Consultation of the American Academy of Religion.

Among other honors, Professor Ellis has been inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia and was a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University in 1994-95. In 1995-1996 he was a Visiting Professor of Religion at Florida State University and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Professor Ellis returned to Harvard University for the 1997-1998 academic year as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. In 1998, Professor Ellis became a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Church and State at Baylor University.