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After God

Religion, Mark C. Taylor argues in After God, is more complicated than either its defenders or critics think and, indeed, is much more influential than any of us realize. Our world, Taylor maintains, is shaped by religion even when it is least obvious. Faith and value, he insists, are unavoidable and inextricably interrelated for believers and nonbelievers alike.

The first comprehensive theology of culture since the pioneering work of Paul Tillich, After God redefines religion for our contemporary age. This volumeis a radical reconceptualization of religion and Taylor’s most pathbreaking work yet, bringing together various strands of theological argument and cultural analysis four decades in the making.

Praise for Mark C. Taylor
“The distinguishing feature of Taylor’s career is a fearless, or perhaps reckless, orientation to the new and to whatever challenges orthodoxy. . . . Taylor’s work is playful, perverse, rarefied, ingenious, and often brilliant.”—New York Times Magazine

 


416 pages | 27 line drawings, 13 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2007

Religion and Postmodernism

Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion

Religion: Christianity, Philosophy of Religion, Theology, and Ethics

Reviews

"A most engaging example of contemporary American religious thought. . . . Much can be learned from the historicity of critical theory and its expansive socio-cultural analysis."

Marc P. Lalonde | Journal of Religion and Culture

"If you have never been able to figure out what Mark Taylor is up to, read After God. It brings to a head everything he has been saying over the years in an engaging summa theologiae tayloriensis. Composed in readable English, it is a work of maturity of a major American thinker—clear, sober, interdisciplinary, full of theory, and ending with down-to-earth warnings about what we are doing to the water. Taylor has never made more sense, never made it more sensibly, cognetly, and cautiously. He makes it clear that the ’death of God’ . . . is all about life, just the way the seed must die in order to give life."

John D. Caputo | Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Table of Contents

Figures
Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1.  Theorizing Religion
     Religion Visible and Invisible
     Against Theory
     Networking Symbols
     Three Ways of Being Religious
2.  The Protestant Revolution
     The Divided Subject
     The Invisible Hand
     Privatization, Decentralization, and Deregulation

3.  Subjectivity and Modernity
     Freedom and Representation
     Figuring Subjects
     World as Work of Art
 
4.  Religious Secularity
     Immanence and Transcendence
     Incarnation and Trinity
     Self-Embodiment of God
     Theology and Theory
5.  Eclipse of the Real
     Deaths of God
     Consuming Images
     Cultivating Diversity

6.  Recovering the Real
     Counterculture
     Securing the Base
     Marketing the New Age
     Base Closures

7.  Religion without God
     Refiguring Life
     Emergent Creativity

8.  Ethics without Absolutes
     Guide for the Perplexed
     Fluid Dynamics

Notes
Index

Awards

American Academy of Religion: AAR Award for Excellence - Constructive-Reflective Studies
Won

American Academy of Religion: American Academy of Religion Awards for Excellence
Won

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