Christians and Sexuality in the Time of AIDS

After a meandering, almost irrelevant foreword by James Alison, readers will be tempted to give up on this short volume whose title promises a timely, theologically appropriate response to the AIDS crisis. However, some provocative contributions lurk throughout this little collection, so more academic readers who are not put off by the book's awkward translation from the French will want to persevere. These essays originated at a Paris colloquium on AIDS in 2006, and though some are mired in jargon and are all but inaccessible to those who lack grounding in theorists such as Ricoeur and Lévi-Strauss, others are memorable, including a debate between Radcliffe and Basset and some personal accounts of various individuals who are struggling with AIDS. (Apr.)