Debate,Prophecy, and Revolution: Notes on Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt

In Prophecy without Contempt, Cathleen Kaveny argues that prevailing scholarly approaches to religious and public discourse misunderstand the actual complexity of moral rhetoric in America. She endeavors to provide a better account through study of the role the Puritan jeremiad has played. Kaveny then offers a normative case for deliberative public moral discourse and the limited exercise of prophetic denunciation. I argue that Kaveny's distinction between deliberation and prophetic denunciation is overdrawn. They are ideal types that elide other rhetorical forms. Moreover, both deliberative discourse and prophetic denunciation assume a social contract or shared tradition. Healthy moral discourse requires revolutionary rhetoric to interrogate and break traditions that are themselves morally compromised.     

Prophecy Without Contempt: Metaphors,Imagination, and Evaluative Criteria

While greatly appreciative of Kaveny's important study of a neglected form of religious/moral discourse in the public square, this essay critically examines her metaphors for prophetic indictments and finds the metaphor of moral chemotherapy particularly problematic and the metaphor of warfare, connected with the just‐war tradition, more promising. It stresses the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of avoiding contempt in prophetic indictments, as Kaveny conceives them, and finds her proposed solutions to this problem—standing with the people and expressing empathy and compassion toward them—inadequate to the task. It further argues that attending to prophetic imagination, in addition to prophetic denunciation, can broaden the scope of practical deliberation and, at the same time, increase possible prophetic contributions to moral and political discourse.     

Rawls and Religious Community: Ethical Decision Making in the Public Square

While most people may initially agree that justice is fairness,as an evangelical Protestant I argue that, for many religiouscomprehensive doctrines, the Rawlsean model does not possessthe resources necessary to sustain tolerance in moral decisionmaking. The weakness of Rawls's model centers on the reasonablepriority of convictions that arise from private comprehensivedoctrines. To attain a free and pluralistic society, peopleneed resources sufficient to provide reasons to tolerate actionsthat are otherwise intolerable. In addition to arguing for thedeficiency of the Rawlsean political model, I sketch out a preliminarymodel of ambassadorship that offers religious communities, andin particular Protestant evangelicals, the necessary resourcesto engage the broader society tolerantly while maintaining theirreligious convictions. As a citizen of the church and a memberof another kingdom, Christians serve as ambassadors to thosewho are not of the heavenly kingdom. I take this model to bemore ambitious than that of a sojourner who lives in the landbut is isolated as much as possible from society, while moremodest than that of reconstructionists who seek to implementtheir own sacred law on all others.     

Naked in the Public Square

Responding to Rawls?? pleas in Political Liberalism against appeals to comprehensive doctrines, be they religious or metaphysical, I argue that such constraints are inherently illiberal??and unworkable. Rawls deems political proposals inherently coercive and judges everyone in a democracy a participant in governance??thus, in effect, complicit in state coercion. He seeks to limit the sweep of his exclusionary rule to core questions of rights. But in an individualistic and litigious society like ours it proves hard to draw a firm boundary around issues that raise core (constitutional) questions. The standards Rawls proposes seem oppressive in effect, their likeliest yield, a kind of doublethink, encouraging many citizens to cloak their deepest normative concerns in neutered language. I worry about the means by which Rawls?? ??overlapping consensus?? might be attained, and about the exclusion (as metaphysical) of policy proposals in behalf of broadly conceived human goods. I find it suppositious in Rawls to presume the innocence of seemingly secular arguments while placing in the stocks the religious appeals critical to many, along with old and new metaphysical arguments that may seek to bridge the gap between religious and secular appeals.     

Religious Claims in Public: Lutheran Resources

Abstract : A cacophony of religious voices seeking to influence public culture, opinion, and policy pervades the public discourse in the United States today. Some publicly‐oriented religious claims are appropriate while others are not. Sorely needed are criteria for making that distinction. This essay asks: What are criteria for appropriate and valid use of religious claims, language, and symbols in deliberation about public policy? What particular gifts do Lutheran traditions bring to shaping those criteria? The essay then draws upon Lutheran theological resources to propose theologically grounded criteria for appropriate and valid use of religious language, claims, and symbols in public discourse.     

Islamic Post-Traditionalism: Postcolonial and Postmodern Religious Discourse in Indonesia

Taking a critical view of the dominance of postcolonial studies by South Asian and Latin American scholars and intellectuals, this article presents a newly emerging discourse among young Indonesian Muslim intellectuals, known as ‘Islamic Post-Traditionalism’. The specific question addressed in the present investigation is to establish to what extent this strand of Muslim thought can be considered a contribution to the engagement with postcoloniality and an application of deconstructionist discourse critique developed by postmodern philosophers within the context of rethinking religion, and Islam in particular, in Indonesia. Identifying a vivid interest among Indonesian Muslim intellectuals in the work of pioneering and controversial contemporary Arab-Islamic thinkers such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, and Mohammed Arkoun, this article will interrogate the influences exercised by these Arabophone and Francophone Muslim intellectuals on the formation of Indonesia's Islamic Post-Traditionalism and how this is reflected in this discourse. An illustration will be provided by a précis of the writings of a key exponent of the Islamic Post-Traditionalist discourse and an examination of a number of other contributors.     

西方马克思主义宗教论说的六个问题领域

宗教在当代社会的"私人化",使基督教不仅作为一种信仰传统、也作为一种文化叙事引起诸多学科的关注,进而在基督教与马克思主义的关系方面形成了新的论说模式。马克思主义与基督教神学是否存在着可能交合的问题领域?这应该对中国目前的宗教学研究具有重要的借鉴价值。本文作者就此归纳为六个方面,并提出相关讨论。     

Torture in the Naked Public Square

Is torture ever ethically permissible? O’Donohue et al. (2014) argued that there are situations in which it is not only morally permissible but actually morally obligatory to torture a prisoner. Arrigo, DeBatto, Rockwood, and Mawe (2015) wrote a critical reply; O’Donohue et al. (2015) have responded. Yet to date, the specifically ethical weaknesses of the O’Donohue et al. position have not been examined; no argument against torture has been offered, nor have the lessons of the CIA’s secret program been taken into account. The present article moves the discussion forward on all three fronts. A case against torture is offered on pragmatic grounds.     

Taking Talk Seriously: Religious Discourse as Social Practice

Talk is easily regarded as having lesser value in studies of social phenomena than action, interaction, and organization. Yet talk is an important way in which humans act, interact, and organize themselves. In this article, I examine how talk has been used in recent decades in the study of religion and in related work on culture and institutions. I argue that careful empirical examination of talk has already significantly increased our understanding of both the micro and macro processes involved in the construction of social life. I discuss four objections to taking talk seriously and show that these objections should not deter investigations in which talk plays a central role. I offer examples of recent work that poses new conceptual and theoretical questions, complements quantitative studies, and provides insights about changing historical and contemporary social conditions.     

广东 扎实推进宗教院校公共课程规范化建设

近年来,广东省深入贯彻落实习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想和全国宗教工作会议精神,按照中央统战部有关部署要求,坚持铸魂育人,注重四性,推动宗教院校公共课程守正创新,确保宗教院校正确办学方向,积极引导宗教与社会主义社会相适应。     

Teaching Contempt: the Jew through Christian eyes

The early Fathers, the mediaeval theologians and the architects of the Protestant Reformation are all guilty of denigrating Judaism by teaching contempt. This article explores the legacy of Christian anti‐Judaism by concentrating on the work of theologians, artists and sculptors, all of whom played their part in propagating the negative stereotype of the Jew. Three biblical texts have been chosen for detailed investigation in order to demonstrate how Christian teaching, based on a fanciful and erroneous interpretation of Scripture, has been reflected in modem anti‐Jewish attitudes. The evidence corroborates the view that much of Hitler's antisemitic propaganda was rooted in Christian thought.