My paper “With Two Lamps to Guide Me; Staughton Lynd as Theologian” has been accepted by the Unitarian Universalist Collegium: An Association for Liberal Religious Studies for presentation at their November 19-22, 2014 conference. Here’s my proposal: Staughton Lynd is an American historian, social justice activist, labor lawyer, and, I argue, theologian. He was the only significant white...
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology, trans. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008 [1970]) This text is Schmitt’s sequel to Political Theology I and began as a response to Erik Peterson’s “Monotheism as a Political Problem: A Contribution to the History of Political Theology in the Roman Empire.” In his book Peterson...
“Sermon to the Princes;” “Special Exposure of False Faith;” and “Highly Provoked Defense” in Revelation and Revolution: Basic Writings of Thomas Müntzer, trans. and ed. by Michael G. Baylor (1993) All of these texts are from 1524. Sermon to the Princes An exegesis of the second chapter of Daniel. It consists of four sections. The first three focus on the...
While reading the essay “On Building a Social Movement” in Myles Horton, The Myles Horton Reader: Education for Social Change, ed. Dale Jacobs (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003), I came across this insightful passage: It’s been my experience that, to get started, you have to have unannounced meetings or you can’t have a meeting. What you’ve got to do is to find...
Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997) In this book Tanner argues for the utility of insights from anthropology in theological work. Her main argument is that, rather than accepting H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic formulation of Christ against culture, Christians must recognize that religious community and, by extension, theology are part...
John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman in The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Philips Moulton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 21-192 In his journal John Woolman accounts for his growing belief that slavery is wrong, his transformation into an abolitionist and his efforts to convince Quakers in both America and England to stop practicing the slave trade. His concern...
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999) Aristotle’s major ethical work is the primary source for the tradition of virtue ethics. It is notable, amongst other things, for his teleology, definition of virtue, doctrine of human nature and discussion on friendship. Aristotle believes that, “Every craft and every line of inquiry, and...
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966 [1963]) Thompson’s book, like the title suggests, chronicles the making of the English working class. In the Preface he lays out his methodology and argument. “Making, because it is a study in active process, which owes as much to agency as to conditioning.” “I do not see class as a ‘structure’, nor even as a...
Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Henry Betenson (New York: 1984) Augustine’s City of God was written in the wake of the 410 CE sack of Rome by the Visigoths. It consists of twenty two books and serves several purposes. Primarily, it seeks to distinguish the City of God from the City of Man and, in doing so, offer a Christian theology of history. Secondarily, it...
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 2006 [1963]) Arendt’s comparative study of the American and French revolutions examines one of the two major political issues in the world (the other being war). She finds that war and revolution have an interrelationship and that at, in some sense, both require the glorification or justification of violence. She believes that revolutions are...