Doing Theology In The Age Of Trump

This book is a work of theological resistance. It is not so much about the presidency of Donald Trump as it is about what his popularity and rise to power reveal about the state of Christianity and the moral character of the evangelical Right in the United States today. More specifically, it is about the threat of white Christian nationalism, which is the particular form that the nationalist populist movement of Trumpism has adopted for itself. The contributors are all fellows from the Westar Institute's academic seminar on God and the Human Future, and include many of the leading figures in theology and Continental philosophy of religion. This volume provides a form of theopolitical resistance based on intersectionality. The authors recognize how the various forms of oppression interrelate to contribute to a vast, dynamic, and seeming impenetrable network of systemic injustice and marginalization. These essays demonstrate that politics need not be played as a zero-sum game with a winner-take-all mentality, and that a critical theology is as urgently needed and as relevant now as ever.

»What Does Theology Do, Actually? Observing Theology and the Transcultural« is to be the first in a series of 5 books, each presented under the same question – »What Does Theology Do, Actually?«, with vols. 2–5 focusing on one of the theological subdisciplines. This first volume proceeds from the observation of a need for a highly inflected »trans-cultural«, and not simply »inter-cultural«, set of perspectives in theological work and training. The revolution brought about across the humanities disciplines through globalization and the recognition of »multiple modernities« has introduced a diversity of overlapping cultural content and multiple cultural and religious belongings not only into academic work in the humanities and social sciences, but into the Christian churches as well.

Writer/director Robert Orlando, locked down during the Covid-19 pandemic, learned Citizen Kane was Trump’s favorite film, and the parallels were astonishing. Both Kane and Trump are swaggering masters of media, and both claim to stand for the working man. “Orson Welles, the boy genius of Kane, was possessing me from the grave,” states Orlando. In Orlando’s acclaimed documentary Citizen Trump, we witness Trump, like Kane, trying to escape unglamorous beginnings. A decades-long effort to rise as aspiring Hollywood mogul, real estate player, darling of gossip columnists, casino owner, dabbler in politics, and reality TV star. Each new stage was a rehearsal for his role as president. In this follow-up to the film, Orlando takes an even deeper dive into the nature of Trump’s background as an entertainer—and how it led to the miraculous upset of Clinton and his rise as president. Truth-be-told, Kane was crushed by scandal; Trump was not. He triumphed above front-page divorces, bankruptcies, unprecedented media attacks, and political chaos. Did his failed attempt at re-election end his star power? Citizen Trump gives us our looking glass. “Filmmaker Robert Orlando probes some of the secrets of Trump’s obsessions, and finds answers in what the president has described as his favorite film [Citizen Kane]…. Striking, very watchable. Fascinating film!” —Michael Medved, Movie Critic “Robert Orlando’s 2020 documentary shows Trump’s favorite film is a road map to his methods.” —Joseph Serwach, Medium “To do so, he tells President Trump’s life story in the cinematographic style of Citizen Kane, incorporating the iconic snow globe, the campaign poster, and even the mysterious word (‘Rosebud’) that is central to Orson Welles’ masterpiece.” —Gabriel Andrade, Merion West “Through the lens of the 1941 classic Citizen Kane, a documentary filmmaker seeks to understand the life journey of President Trump and his successful venture into politics.” —Josh Shepherd, The Federalist “This is the fascinating parallel that inspired Robert Orlando. The film is remarkable—truly in the literal sense. It’s visually engaging, if not riveting.” —Paul Kengor, The American Spectator

Based on extensive inside sources, including exclusive interviews with the President and Vice President, The Faith of Donald J. Trump explores his rarely discussed, but deeply important, religious beliefs and relationships with leading Evangelicals. The Chief Political Correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network and the "Jesus in the Public Square" columnist for the Washington Times explore the rarely discussed, but deeply important, religious beliefs and worldview of Donald J. Trump and his advisors. Donald J. Trump was raised as a Presbyterian and has praised both Christianity and the primacy of the Bible. In the Oval Office, he has surrounded himself with close advisors who share his deep faith. In this deeply reported book, David Brody and Scott Lamb draw on unparalleled access to the White House to explain President Trump’s connection to the Christian faith, the evangelical right, the prosperity gospel, and the pressing moral and ethical issues of our day. In part, the authors argue, President Trump won over evangelicals not by pandering to them, but by supporting them and all their most important issues without pretending to be something he’s not. Though the forty-fifth president is far from the perfect vessel—he has been married three times—his supporters argue that Donald Trump may be just what America needs. This book reveals how he has surrounded himself with believers who think he is the one guiding figure who can return us to the traditional values—hard work, discipline, duty, respect, and faith—that have long been the foundation of American life, and truly make America great again in all ways.

These sparkling essays from a seasoned scholar are “a great breath of fresh air in our claustrophobic and catastrophic time” (Cornel West). Capturing a career’s worth of thought and erudition, this rich volume treats readers to creative thought, careful argumentation, and sophisticated analysis transmitted through the lucid, accessible prose that has earned the author a wide readership of academics and non-academics alike. In tackling “radical theology,” John D. Caputo has in mind the deeper stream that courses its way through various historical and confessional theologies, upon which these theologies draw even while it disturbs them from within. They are well served by this disturbance because it keeps them on their toes. When we read about professional theologians’ losing their jobs in confessional institutions, the chances are that, by earnestly digging into what is going on in their tradition, they have hit upon radical theological rock. Unlike modernist dismissals of religion, radical theology does not debunk but re-invents the theological tradition. Radical theology, Caputo says, is a double deconstruction—of supernatural theology on the one hand and of transcendental reason on the other, and therefore of the settled distinctions between the religious and the secular. Caputo also addresses the challenge for radical theology to earn a spot in the curriculum, given that the “radical” makes it suspect among the confessional seminaries while the “theology” renders it suspect among university seminars. Journeying from the academy to contemporary American culture, In Search of Radical Theology includes a captivating presentation of radical political theology for the time of Trump. This utterly unique volume not only brings readers on an enlightening tour of Caputo’s thought but also invites us to accompany the author as he travels into intriguing new territories.

Exploring novels by Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, and Sylvia Townsend Warner as political theology – works that imagine a resistance to the fusion of Christianity and patriotism which fuelled and supported the First World War – this book shows how we can gain valuable insights from their works for anti-militarist, anti-statist, and anti-nationalist efforts today. While none of the four novelists in this study were committed Christians during the 1920s, Andrews explores how their fiction written in the wake of the First World War operates theologically when it challenges English civil religion – the rituals of the nation that elevate the state to a form of divinity. Bringing these novels into a dialogue with recent political theologies by theorists and theologians including Giorgio Agamben, William Cavanaugh, Simon Critchley, Michel Foucault, Stanley Hauerwas and Jürgen Moltmann, this book shows the myriad ways that we can learn from the authors' theopolitical imaginations. Andrews demonstrates the many ways that these novelists issue a challenge to the problems with civil religion and the sacralized nation state and, in so doing, offer alternative visions to coordinate our inner lives with our public and collective actions.

Amid melting glaciers, rising waters, and spreading droughts, Earth has ceased to tolerate our pretense of mastery over it. But how can we confront climate change when political crises keep exploding in the present? Noted ecotheologian and feminist philosopher of religion Catherine Keller reads the feedback loop of political and ecological depredation as secularized apocalypse. Carl Schmitt’s political theology of the sovereign exception sheds light on present ideological warfare; racial, ethnic, economic, and sexual conflict; and hubristic anthropocentrism. If the politics of exceptionalism are theological in origin, she asks, should we not enlist the world’s religious communities as part of the resistance? Keller calls for dissolving the opposition between the religious and the secular in favor of a broad planetary movement for social and ecological justice. When we are confronted by populist, authoritarian right wings founded on white male Christian supremacism, we can counter with a messianically charged, often unspoken theology of the now-moment, calling for a complex new public. Such a political theology of the earth activates the world’s entangled populations, joined in solidarity and committed to revolutionary solutions to the entwined crises of the Anthropocene.