Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo

by Bruce Ellis Benson (Editor), Peter Goodwin Heltzel (Editor), Nicholas Wolterstorff (Foreword by), Michael Hardt (Afterword), Antonio Negri (Afterword)

Overview

This groundbreaking collection considers empire from a global perspective, exploring the role of evangelicals in political, social, and economic engagement at a time when empire is alternately denounced and embraced. It brings noted thinkers from a range of evangelical perspectives together to engage the most explosive and discussed theorists of empire in the first decade of the twenty-first century--Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Using their work as a springboard, the contributors grapple with the concept of empire and how evangelicalism should operate in the world of empire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441201898
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	613 KB

About the Author

Bruce Ellis Benson (PhD, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is distinguished visiting scholar in philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and executive director of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology. He previously taught at Wheaton College for more than twenty years. Benson is the author of Graven Ideologies and Pious Nietzsche. Peter Goodwin Heltzel (PhD, Boston University) is assistant professor of systematic theology at New York Theological Seminary in New York, New York, and coeditor of Theology in Global Context.
Bruce Ellis Benson (PhD, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is distinguished visiting scholar in philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and executive director of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology. He previously taught at Wheaton College for more than twenty years. Benson is the author of Graven Ideologies, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, and Pious Nietzsche, and the coeditor of several books, including Evangelicals and Empire.

Table of Contents

Foreword Nicholas Wolterstorff 7

Introduction Bruce Ellis Benson Peter Goodwin Heltzel 11

Section I Present

1 Dangerous Religion: George W. Bush's Theology of Empire Jim Wallis 25

2 The Contested Church: Multiple Others of Evangelical Multitude Helene Slessarev-Jamir Bruce Ellis Benson 33

3 Acting in Common: How the Flesh of Multitude Can Become Incarnate Words against Empire M. Gail Hamner 43

4 Betrayed by a Kiss: Evangelicals and U.S. Empire Charles W. Amjad-Ali Lester Edwin J. Ruiz 54

5 Empire-Building or Democracy-at-Work? The Growing Influence of White U.S. Evangelical NGO Lobbying at the United Nations and in Washington, DC Jennifer Butler Glenn Zuber 67

6 The Gospel of Freedom, or Another Gospel? Theology, Empire, and American Foreign Policy James K. A. Smith 79

7 Liberality vs. Liberalism John Milbank 93

Section II Past

8 Historians and the Past Tense: Evangelium and Imperium as Genealogies of the Concept of Sovereignty Patrick Provost-Smith 107

9 Empire's Future Religion: The Hidden Competition between Postmillennial American Expansionism and Premillennial Evangelical Christianity Sebastien Fath 120

10 Political Complexities and Rivalries of Pneuma and Imperia Kurt Anders Richardson 130

11 Stepchildren of the Empire: The Formation of a Latino Evangelico Identity Juan F. Martinez 141

12 Empire, Race, and the Evangelical Multitude: Jesse Jackson, Jim Wallis, and Evangelical Coalitions for Justice Eleanor Moody-Shepherd Peter Goodwin Heltzel 152

13 Where Are the Pentecostals in an Age of Empire? Elaine Padilla Dale T. Irvin 169

14 Intermezzo: A Discussion between Donald W. Dayton and Christian T. Collins Winnabout Empire and Evangelicals 185

Section III Future

15 Empire and Transcendence: Hardt and Negri's Challenge to Theology and Ethics Mark Lewis Taylor 201

16 Empire and the Ethics of Opacity: The End of Theology and the Beginning(s) of Theological Thinking Corey D. B. Walker 218

17 What Empire, Which Multitude? Pentecostalism and Social Liberation in North America and Sub-Saharan Africa Amos Yong Samuel Zalanga 237

18 In Praise of Profanity: A Theological Defense of the Secular Michael Horton 252

19 The Future of Evangelical Theology in an Age of Empire: Postfoundational and Postcolonial Mabiala Kenzo John R. Franke 267

20 Evangelicalism and/as New Constantinianism: Globalization, Secularity, and the Heart of the Gospel Paul Lim 278

21 Love in Times of Empire: Theopolitics Today Mario Costa Catherine Keller Anna Mercedes 291

Afterword Michael Hardt Antonio Negri 307

List of Contributors 315

Index 319