Open Access and the Theological Imagination

The past twenty years have witnessed a mounting crisis in academic publishing. Companies such as Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, and Taylor and Francis have earned unprecedented profits by controlling more and more scholarly output while increasing subscription rates to academic journals. Thus publishers have consolidated their influence despite widespread hopes that digital platforms would disperse control over knowledge production. Open access initiatives dating back to the mid-1990s evidence a religious zeal for overcoming corporate interests in academic publishing, with key advocates branding their efforts as archivangelism. Little attention has been given to the legacy or implications of religious rhetoric in open access debates despite its increasing pitch in recent years. This essay shows how the Protestant imaginary reconciles–rather than opposes–open access initiatives with market economics by tracing the rhetoric of openness to free-market liberalism. Working against the tendency to accept the Reformation as an analogy for the relationship between knowledge production, publishers, and academics, we read Protestantism as a counterproductive element of the archivangelist inheritance

Normative Political Theology as Intensified Critique

Some theorists are suspicious of normative political theology because they believe it undermines critical rationality. In my view, these theorists neglect theological traditions that resist dogmatism through intensified critique. Because authoritarian dogma is not unique to religion, theology offers sophisticated techniques that may be useful for those who are not themselves religious. A normative theology that intensifies critique represents a valuable resource for political reflection, and not only for the faithful

Literature and the Evolution of Religious Discourse: A Concluding Essay

Religion and literature do not play identical roles in society, but they both rely heavily on imagination. This book has provided an examination of representative writings from both fields to demonstrate this fact, and to suggest points at which the differences between the two disciplines become less important. Viewed together, these examples. raise interesting questions regarding the viability of discussing enduring truths outside the realms of imagination. This paradox, in turn, points to the limitations of rationality · in the pursuit of such truths, and the inevitability of subjectivity in the quest for the objectively true. These are important philosophical questions, but some readers will be more interested in the historical and sociological aspects of the topic. Some may characterize the trajectory trac~d by these chapters as an example of Arnold Toynbee\u27s model for the collapse of a civilization - the civilization in question here being western Christianity. The first six studies focus on the words of Scripture, especially as they were reflected upon in sermons to imagine the end of time, and to call the congregation to personal conversion: as it happens, all six chapters demonstrate the sense of crisis culminating in the Reformation. A return to the Word was seen to be the best and effective Response to the clarion Challenge heard throughout Europe (I here use Toynbee\u27s vocabulary for the dialectical movement typical within civilizations). Subsequent chapters in this volume, however, use a similar vocabulary but take an increasingly secular tone. The movement in many is inward, a psychological self-analysis that yearns for conversion, as in the earlier chapters - but the desired movement of soul is not forthcoming. By the time we reach the volume\u27s closing chapters, the individualistic response has broadened: institutionalized religion has become not only irrelevant, but a hindrance to self-understanding and any hope for epiphany. In the place of religion, the scriptural Word conti nues to speak - but no longer with the commanding eloquence of unique revelation. What had formerly been accepted as sacred has become, for many contemporary writers, an unusually rich story from which one\u27s own imagination can extrapolate - one tool, among others, for the modern prophet\u27s idiosyncratic search. Validation of truth has moved away from the community

Repetition, difference and liturgical participation in Coleridge's 'The ancient mariner'

Theological interpretations of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ have sometimes been judged to do little more than to compound the problem of interpretation. This essay reflects on a contrasting response from the Welsh poet David Jones which challenges the ‘Rime’ for a theological incoherence in itself constituting a failure of imagination, and then considers the relation of language to liturgy in recent postmodern theology. What emerges from Coleridge’s poem is a divergence between the identical repetition of the tale itself and a ‘repetition with difference’ implied in the Mariner’s vision of a procession to the kirk. Coleridge’s ‘Gothic’ imagination can do little more than stage this difference of repetition on the margins of his poem, but there are implications for his later writing career, as he moves away from the predominance of imagination towards the counter-horizons of speculative theological prose

Adams\u27 Top 10 United Methodist beliefs (Book Review)

A review of Adams, D. (2016). Top 10 United Methodist beliefs. Nashville, TN: Abington Press. 162 pp. $14.99. ISBN 978150180422

An introduction to the Old Testament: the canon and Christian imagination

Title: An introduction to the Old Testament: the canon and Christian imagination. Author: Brueggemann, Walter Introduction to the Old Testament xiv, 417 p. Publisher: Louisville : Westminster John Knox Pr, 2003

Lambert\u27s A theology of biblical counseling: The doctrinal foundations of counseling ministry (Book Review)

A review of Lambert, H. (2016). A theology of biblical counseling: The doctrinal foundations of counseling ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 344 pp. $24.99. ISBN 978031051816