The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America, 2nd Edition

by Mark Lewis Taylor

Overview

The new edition of Mark Lewis Taylors award-winning The Executed God is both a searing indictment of the structures of Lockdown America and a visionary statement of hope. It is also a call for action to Jesus followers to resist US imperial projects and power. Outlining a theatrics of state terror, Taylor identifies and analyzes its instrumentsmass incarceration, militarized police tactics, surveillance, torture, immigrant repression, and capital punishmentthrough which a racist and corporatized Lockdown America enforces in the United States a global neoliberal economic and political imperialism.

Against this, The Executed God proposes a counter-theatrics to state terror, a declamation of the way of the cross for Jesus followers that unmasks the powers of US state domination and enacts an adversarial politics of resistance, artful dramatic actions, and the building of peoples movements. These are all intrinsic to a Christian politics of remembrance of the Jesus executed by empire.

Heralded in its first edition, this new edition is thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded, offering a demanding rethinking and recreating of what being a Christian is and of how Christianity should dream, hope, mobilize, and act to bring about what Taylor terms a liberating material spirituality to unseat the state that kills.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506401454
Publisher:	Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
Publication date:	11/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mark Lewis Taylor is the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. Among his numerous books are The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World (Fortress Press 2011), Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers in American Empire (Fortress Press 2005), and Remembering Esperanza: A Cultural-Political Theology for North American Praxis (2005).

Mark Lewis Taylor is the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is author of The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America (Fortress Press, 2001) and Remembering Esperanza: A Cultural-Political Theology for North American Praxis. He is also editor of Paul Tillich: Theologian of the Boundaries (Fortress Press, 1991) and co-editor of Reconstructing Christian Theology (Fortress Press, 1994).

Editorial Reviews

As more Christians begin taking stands on the justice system (see review of Charles Colson's Justice That Restores, this issue), some are critiquing it as an "injustice" system. In The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America, Princeton Theological Seminary professor Mark Lewis Taylor attacks U.S. prisons as racist and unjust. Taylor discusses violations such as prison rape, excessively long sentences and capital punishment, employing the example of Jesus as a means of transforming an evil system. "It is time to confess forthrightly that in Jesus of Nazareth, God suffered not just death but execution... supported by religious officials," he notes. Taylor's voice is strident and uncompromising, making this a moving if controversial read. ( Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this work, Taylor (theology and culture, Princeton Theological Seminary) discusses the similarities between the current U.S. prison system and that of imperial Rome, where Jesus Christ and his followers were considered a criminal element. He explains how economics, a culture of terror, and other methods of catalyzing people have created a "lockdown society" in which the downtrodden suffer punitive indignities. The rise of the prison population, under the premise of protecting society, has diminished the freedom for society as a whole, with the United States leading the way for a global lockdown. Taylor shows how ancient Rome saw the crucifixion as a just deterrent and method of control over poorer and slave populations who might threaten the system of imperial privilege if they resisted authority. Jesus created a popular movement that dared to challenge the elite, leading Pontius Pilate to deploy his only means of control over the unrest execution. Taylor points to a current movement that also seeks to undermine police brutality, prison industries, and the death penalty. This book serves as a reminder and expos of the systemic failure of criminal justice as it creates more victims of crime and dishonors those already victimized, but Taylor strays from his premise. This is recommended only for larger religious and sociology collections. Leo Kriz, West Des Moines P.L. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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