the church and postmodern culture

RESOURCE: Jamie Smith on A/Theism

A/Theism is an interesting move within the conversation about postmodern theology and the church. An effort by some to overcome onto-theological concerns, you can find it in the writings of the emerging church leader Peter Rollins and in the academic work of John D. Caputo — to name only a couple of thinkers familiar to readers of this blog. Our own series editor, James K.... Read More

Divine Reciprocity and Epistemic Openness in Clark Pinnock’s Theology

  Written By John Sanders (Professor of Religious Studies at Hendrix College) – sandersj@hendrix.edu   *** This paper was given at a session honoring the work of Clark Pinnock at the American Academy of Religion in San Francisco, November 18, 2011.   Canadian theologian Clark Pinnock was once a renowned defender of the doctrine of meticulous providence (where... Read More

Not at-home: rethinking hospitality and homelessness

This Christmas season I had the privilege of attending a memorial service, a vigil in memory of the homeless from our area who had died. Gathered in the early dark of the winter solstice, a group comprised of homeless persons, service providers, and local residents read from a necrology, including twenty names new to the list this year. As we were asked to remember these lives,... Read More

Hunger and Love – The “Logic of Late Capitalism” Unwinds into the Postmodern Apocalypse

It’s another gray and misty morning here in the second district of Vienna.  The church bells toll to invite the sleepy-eyed revelers from the night before to churches that, except for Christmas tourists, will probably remain mostly empty. The second district is historically the Jewish district of Vienna, where Freud lived and hung out.  For some unfathomable reason Freud is... Read More

Occupy Wall St. – Žižek’s Act or Badiou’s Event?

I was downtown talking with people at Occupy Chicago last Monday, and I met a man named Les, who I mistook for the leader of the movement.  I’m sure you all know that OWS is leaderless, but I’ve always assumed this is reall just code for Leader-Les, who happened to be a 67 year old man, retired and concerned about the future (or lack of) we are leaving for the future generations. Anyway,... Read More

What Is It Like: Imagining and Religion

  (This post is by Bryne Lewis Allport) In preparing for a recent class, I had the opportunity to interact with “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” by Thomas Nagel. Apart from supplying me with interesting directions for my students’ discussion of the mind/body distinction, the article provided me with food for thought concerning my own endeavors in philosophy of religion. To... Read More

The Liturgical Turn: Worshiping Among The Chaos

Earlier this week, David Gelernter posted a really good article over at Big Questions Online that caught my attention. It did so because I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, who works as an aerodynamicist for a major NASCAR team, that centered on the relationship of entropy to eschatology.  That is, if the world is subject to disorder and decay (Romans 8:20,... Read More

Specters of Rage in an Age of Change – Sloterdijk and the “End” of the Postmodern

Multiple Specters Perhaps we can adapt just one more time Marx's well-known and overadapted opening to The Communist Manifesto that a "specter is stalking" us. It was this same "specter" that Derrida back in the mid-1980s adapted in Specters of Marx to rejuvenate what by then was his already aging project of deconstruction to produce first the "political",... Read More

Do we really get Romans? A little Badiou and Žižek can help.

It's been said that reformations and revolutions in Christianity begin with a re-reading of Romans. That is certainly true of the Protestant Reformation with Luther's epoch-shaking insight into the meaning of the phrase "the righteousness of God."    It is true as well of Barth's commentary The Epistle to the Romans, which in the words of a Catholic... Read More

Ecclesiology as a Rival “Ascetic” of Desire

(I have edited this post realising my most of the content was pre-mature, and please forgive any consternation this causes.  And apologies where the comments do not align with this truncated version) Within my PhD work I have ben trying to understand how capitalist markets affect Christian identity formation.  Within the work of Bernd Wannenwetsch, William Cavanaugh,... Read More