God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys

by Catherine Keller (Editor)

The questions raised by use of American power and the advent of an "American empire," Keller argues, reveal a deeply troubled political unconscious that is wrestling with basic religious issues of power, terror, territory, and love. Keller traces our response to the current national, international, and religious situation to the deeply fraught legacy of Christian apocalypticism. Religious and political factions both left and right, she argues, read our situation in apocalyptic terms without truly understanding that complex legacy. After diving deeply into the multiple and conflicting political and religious meanings of the Book of Revelation, she proposes a counter-apocalypse, an anti-imperial political theology of love.

Genres: Theology

196 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

Catherine Kelle is a contemporary Christian theologian and Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University's Graduate Division of Religion. As a constructive theologian, Keller's work is oriented around social and ecological justice, poststructuralist theory, and feminist readings of scripture and theology. Both her early and her late work brings relational thinking into theology, focusing on the relational nature of the concept of the divine, and the forms of ecological interdependence within the framework of relational theology. Her work in process theology draws on the relational ontology of Alfred North Whitehead, fielding it in a postmodern, deconstructive framework.

Reviews

[Curtis]

The foreword and first chapter deserve 5 stars. After that, I became lost in Keller's writing style. The two stars is more for my inability to understand her than for a lack of content. Then again, with a degree in religion, perhaps she could write a bit easier. :)

[Jared]

An unabashed deconstruction of historical Christianity.