Sacred Modernities

This past week, 17-19 September, Professor Graham Ward gave a keynote address at the Sacred Modernities: Rethinking Modernity in a Post-Secular Age conference which was hosted at Oxford Brookes University in conjunction with The University of Northampton. Here's a brief abstract of the conference theme:

The age of globalization confronts the observer with more ironies than certainties. It was once assumed that the growth of modern institutions – democracy, capitalism, science – would be attended by a series of mutually reinforcing social processes, most notably secularisation, rationalisation and disenchantment. Not only has the global spread of these institutions proved patchy and uneven, religious movements and belief systems have doggedly refused to assume the private status once thought to be their natural destiny. In both the West and the wider world, religion continues to make competing claims on the public sphere and public morals. Developments like this have been accompanied by conceptual critique and innovation. Increasingly, traditional accounts of modernity are seen as Euro-centric and prescriptive, while there has been renewed interest in the question of political and civil religions and the more general relationship of the political and the theological.

Ward's paper was entitled "How Hegel Re-sacralised the Project of Modernity," and an Mp3 of his address can be downloaded by clicking here. For further information about Ward's research interests and publications please click here, or email him at graham.ward@manchester.ac.uk.

Politics of Discipleship

New Publication!

The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens, is Professor Graham Ward's latest publication in a series by Baker Academic Press. In this fourth volume in the Church and Postmodern Culture series, internationally acclaimed theologian Graham Ward examines the political side of postmodernism in order to discern the contemporary context of the church and describe the characteristics of a faithful, political discipleship. His study falls neatly into two sections. The first, which is the more theoretical section, considers "the signs of the times." Ward names this section "The World," noting that the church must always frame its vision and mission within its worldly context. In the second section, "The Church," he turns to constructive application, providing an account of the Christian practices of hope that engage the world from within yet always act as messengers of God's kingdom. 

"Extraordinary! Graham Ward's The Politics of Discipleship is an extraordinary book. Ward does nothing less than help us see how 'world' and 'church' implicate each other by providing an insightful and learned account of the transformation of democracy, the perversities of globalization, and the ambiguities of secularization. Perhaps even more significant is his theological proposal for the difference the church can make in the world so described. This is an extraordinary book."-Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke University

"For some time now, Ward has blended orthodox theology, biblical study, and cultural theory with an independent originality. Now he has added politics to this mix. An extremely significant volume."-John Milbank, University of Nottingham

Spring 2009 Doctoral Seminar

This coming Wednesday, 27 May, we will be hosting our last doctoral seminar for this academic year. Please click here for a PDF with further details of time, location, the abstracts and short bios of the students involved. This time, we will address the question, "What constitutes otherness?" from the various philosophical, theological and socio-political perspectives being researched by doctoral students associated with the Centre for Religion and Political Culture. Paper topics include Dostoyevski's Demons, a critique of Milbank's recent discussion of Hegel in the Monstrocity of Christ, Bishop Ting's understanding of distinctive "Chinese Christianity," an analysis of Carl Schmitt and Mau Tse-tung's understanding of the friend enemy distinction, the concept of otherness in relation to effective action research, and myth-making as the boundary-defining mechanism in the formation of national identity and the politics of memory. Lastly, if you're interested in participating in future seminars, we will kick off the next academic year and welcome new students to the Centre in October 2009.

Winter 2009 Doctoral Seminar

Wordle representation of the seminar abstractsThis coming February, we're hosting our first doctoral seminar for students at the CRPC and some of its affiliated centres here at the University of Manchester. This will be a relatively informal chance for everyone to share current research interests and make new connections both relationally and intellectually. For further details on the kinds of research taking place at the CRPC, we've posted two PDFs which list the abstracts as well as short biographies of those attending. Short bios are also available in our study here pages in the menu bar above.

German Translation of True Religion

Kohlhammer press has recently published a German translation of Graham Ward's 2003 book, True Religion. Auf der Suche nach der wahren Religion: ReligionsKulturen 4, was translated by by Annerose Karkowski and was made available in December, 2008. Here's a brief abstract:

Vom religiösen Fundamentalismus bis zum Konsum religiöser Spezialeffekte im Holy Land-Abenteuerpark in Florida: Religion steht einmal mehr auf der Liste der wichtigsten Themen der Gegenwart. Doch wie verhält sich die gegenwärtige Wiederkehr des Religiösen zur Wahrheit der Religion? Ward skizziert die Genealogie der Suche nach der "wahren" Religion in der westlichen Welt. Er macht auf die Wandlungen dieser Suche im Wechselspiel mit den Entwicklungen des modernen Säkularismus, Liberalismus und Kapitalismus aufmerksam. Für die Gegenwart kommt er zu dem überraschenden Fazit: Zurück zur Theologie!

Graham Ward ist durch seine Beiträge zu Diskursen postmoderner Theologie international bekannt geworden und gilt als einer der kreativsten Theologen der Gegenwart.

The New Visibility of Religion

New Publication!

The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics is the latest in the Continuum Studies in Religion and Political Culture series edited by Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl and will be published in early October.

Synopsis

This is a unique collection of essays that brings together contributions from theology, aesthetics, social and political science, philosophy and cultural theory to examine the surge in the public visibility of religion.Since the late 1980s, sociologists have been drawing our attention to an international surge in the public visibility of religion. This has increasingly challenged two central aspects of modern western European culture: first, the assumption that as we became more modern we would become more secularised and religion would disappear; and secondly, that religion and politics should occupy radically differentiated spheres in which private conviction did not exert itself within the public realm. The new visibility of religion is not simply a matter of what Keppel famously called 'The Revenge of God', that is, the resurgence of Christian, Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism. Religion is permeating western culture in many different forms from contemporary continental philosophy, the arts and the media, to the rhetoric of international politicians.This collection of essays brings together a unique collection of voices from theology, aesthetics, social and political science, philosophy and cultural theory in an exploration of four major aspects of this new visibility of religion: the revision of the secularisation thesis, the relationship between religion and violence, the new re-enchantment of reality and the return of metaphysics.

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