the church and postmodern culture

We Are Still Them: Non-Denominationalism and the Hermeneutics of Silence

By: J. Aaron Simmons – Department of Philosophy – Furman University – aaron.simmons@furman.edu  I. I was raised in the American evangelical subculture and have recently been part of several different non-denominational, generally evangelical, (mega)churches in the American South.  As a result of these experiences, I have become increasing concerned about the... 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

Genealogy, Memory, and the Danger in Political Theology

This guest post by David Horstkoetter and the previous post come from the recent panel discussion hosted by the new Political Theologies Seminar at Marquette University.  The seminar is interested in theologies that intersect with contemporary political, social, economic, and cultural life. Participating faculty are  Dr. D. Stephen Long and Emeritus Fr. Thomas Hughson and the... Read More

Against ‘Political’ Theology

This and the following post come from the recent panel discussion hosted by the new Political Theologies Seminar at Marquette University.  The seminar is interested in theologies that intersect with contemporary political, social, economic, and cultural life. Participating faculty are  Dr. D. Stephen Long and Emeritus Fr. Thomas Hughson and the coordinator is David Horstkoetter. ... Read More

Review of ‘Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty’

  Paul Kahn’s new work Political Theology: Four new chapters on the concept of sovereignty is not an immediate choice for a Brit like me to pay attention to.  For its immediate focus and concern is an examination of how the imagination for American political life is funded by ideas of revolution before notions of social contract (constitution). So for all non Americans... 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

The Gift of Difference – Part II – Review of the Parts

(x-posted at the de-scribe) In Part I I addressed some of the shortfalls of the overall project while affirming what was perhaps the inevitable 'shortfall' of the two dialogue camps. Putting aside any larger intentions of this collection the chapters themselves maintained a steady offering of what it means to "to be differently ethical and differently political"... Read More

The Gift of Difference – Part I – A Review of the Whole

(x-posted at the de-scribe) Jaime's previously posted blurb gave me a shot in the arm to offer my first post here at church & pomo. The Gift of Difference is perhaps best understood in its ambiguous subtitle, “Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation.” Just what is the relationship between these two expressions? Any number of conjunctives or disjunctives could have... 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

Frederick Douglass on the Economics of Human Stock and “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

The following post comes from Cynthia Nielsen who is a PhD candidate at the University of Dallas and blogs at percaritatem.com. By the shedding of whose blood have we become one of the wealthiest nations in the world?  To begin an answer, why not turn to one whose back bore many a bloody lash for the sake of the so-called “American dream.”  In his 1852 oration,... Read More