Postmodern Belief

How can intense religious beliefs coexist with pluralism in America today? Examining the role of the religious imagination in contemporary religious practice and in some of the best-known works of American literature from the past fifty years, Postmodern Belief shows how belief for its own sake--a belief absent of doctrine--has become an answer to pluralism in a secular age. Amy Hungerford reveals how imaginative literature and religious practices together allow novelists, poets, and critics to express the formal elements of language in transcendent terms, conferring upon words a religious value independent of meaning. Hungerford explores the work of major American writers, including Allen Ginsberg, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and Marilynne Robinson, and links their unique visions to the religious worlds they touch. She illustrates how Ginsberg's chant-infused 1960s poetry echoes the tongue-speaking of Charismatic Christians, how DeLillo reimagines the novel and the Latin Mass, why McCarthy's prose imitates the Bible, and why Morrison's fiction needs the supernatural. Uncovering how literature and religion conceive of a world where religious belief can escape confrontations with other worldviews, Hungerford corrects recent efforts to discard the importance of belief in understanding religious life, and argues that belief in belief itself can transform secular reading and writing into a religious act. Honoring the ways in which people talk about and practice religion, Postmodern Belief highlights the claims of the religious imagination in twentieth-century American culture.

This book provides a philosophical argument for the reasonableness of Christian faith in today's world. Diogenes Allen shows how Christian belief is now being supported by scientific and philosophical principles--perhaps for the first time in 300 years.

This volume deploys theology in a reconstructive approach to contemporary literary criticism, to validate and exemplify theological readings of literary texts as a creative exercise. It engages in a dialogue with interdisciplinary approaches to literature in which theology is alert and responsive to the challenges following postmodernism and postmodern literary criticism. It demonstrates the scope and explanatory power of theological readings across various texts and literary genres. Theology and Literature after Postmodernity explores a reconstructive approach to reading and literary study in the university setting, with contributions from interdisciplinary scholars worldwide.

Psychologist and ethicist Robert Rocco Cottone takes readers on a religious journey infusing postmodern philosophy positive psychology and ethics into a comprehensive vision of religion in the future. Defining postmodern religion in a positive engaging and educational way he answers questions like What is the nature of belief Is there a universal god When does life begin and Is there an afterlife This book may profoundly change your understanding of religion and affect your practice of religion in a significant way. His method is entertaining compelling and sometimes perturbing as he addresses both ancient and postmodern religion in a way that is personal and scholarly. He also provides a postmodern religious framework that is inclusive affirming positive and drawn from the power of the human spirit.

Analyzes contemporary texts that bond together two seemingly antithetical sensibilities: the sentimental and the postmodern. This book presents case studies of audience responses to "The Piano", "Kiss of the Spider Woman", and "Northern Exposure". It argues that sentimental postmodernism deepened leftist political engagement.

This book offers a broad-ranging account of contemporary American culture, the complex network of symbols, practices, and beliefs at the heart of our society. Lundin explores the historical background of some of our "postmodern" culture's central beliefs and considers their crucial ethical and theological implications.

J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh offer an introduction, evaluation and response to postmodern culture that comes straight from the heart of the gospel.

This fully revised third edition of The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism provides the ideal introduction to postmodernist thought. Featuring contributions from a cast of international scholars, the Companion contains 19 detailed essays on major themes and topics along with an A-Z of key terms and concepts. As well as revised essays on philosophy, politics, literature, and more, the first section now contains brand new essays on critical theory, business, gender and the performing arts. The concepts section, too, has been enhanced with new topics ranging from hypermedia to global warming. Students interested in any aspect of postmodernism will continue to find this an indispensable resource.