Critical Theology: Introducing an Agenda for an Age of Global Crisis

by Carl A. Raschke

What is the future of theology in the midst of rapid geopolitical and economic change? Carl A. Raschke contends that two options from the last century―crisis theology and critical theory―do not provide the resources needed to address the current global crisis. Both of these perspectives remained distant from the messiness and unpredictability of life. Crisis theology spoke of the wholly other God, while critical theory spoke of universal reason. These ideas aren't tenable after postmodernism and the return of religion, which both call for a dialogical approach to God and the world. Rashke's new critical theology takes as its starting point the biblical claim that the Word became flesh―a flesh that includes the cultural, political and religious phenomena that shape contemporary existence. Drawing on recent reformulations of critical theory by Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou and post-secularists such as Jürgen Habermas, Raschke introduces an agenda for theological thinking accessible to readers unfamiliar with this literature. In addition, the book explores the relationship between a new critical theology and current forms of political theology. Written with the passion of a manifesto, Critical Theology presents the critical and theological resources for thinking responsibly about the present global situation.

175 pages, Paperback

Published July 8, 2016

Reviews

[Nicole]

This was a rec from Tim, thanks Tim!

I’m not much around people who do religious studies or theology these days, but I imagine that as a critique of / provocation for both disciplines, it would be really fun to discuss. I recently-ish read an article by Susan Harding about the conventions of scholarly writing, anthropology, religion, and the “objective” scholarly / secular viewpoint academics typically learn to write from. (It was so good—don’t remember the title but came out in Christianity and Lit journal in the last year.) It and Raschke’s book don’t really solve that problem of “objective” scholarship that (I think both scholars say, in different ways) originated from this divide between theory and practice that becomes super central to academic traditions post-Kant. It’s been a minute, but I think Harding suggests that it may not really be possible, at the end of the day, to write without a kind of judgment about your object of study, so long as you are in someway outside of it, and that there is enormous pressure for that judgement to be of a certain type—to the degree that it constitutes a convention of scholarly writing (esp in humanities and soc sciences today). I think Raschke’s argument is that we need to embrace that normative edge/particularity while also embracing transcendence—which he conceptualizes, I think, as practically making it into scholarly work through an embrace of the “radical alterity [difference/otherness] of the other.” (Paradoxes abound here!)

I don’t know what theologians or religious studies folks study, but I wonder how hard this book would be without some basic knowledge of some of the theories. This is a slim 150 pages, and we go through 5ish members of the Frankfurt School (tho not Benjamin, sad), Lacan, Foucault, Saussure, Derrida, Levinas….plus theologians (Barth does not come out looking like quite the hero he is sometimes made out to be.) And then the focus is on Badiou and Žižek. So, I don’t feel confident evaluating these claims and don’t know who I’d recommend this book to, exactly. That said, I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I love how this massive bibliography, digested in the mind of Carl A Raschke, produces all of these different ideas. It feels radically cross-disciplinary to me, and I enjoyed it.

[Anna]

No rating - school book

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this is an important and timely book, although some of it requires some work to understand it. Myself and several others are actually going to be reading and discussing the book at a new Facebook group, as our first book for discussion there. Carl Raschke is actually a member of the group so we hope he has time to participate in the discussions. He has expressed that he would. Here is the link to the group. All are welcomed for what we trust will be civil and profitable discussions.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/15927...