A Look Ahead

Selections from Joerg Rieger, “Developing a Common Interest Theology from the Underside,” in   Liberating the Future: God, Mammon and Theology  , ed. Joerg Rieger (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), pp. 137-141.

Copyright © 1998 Augsburg Fortress.  www.augsburgfortress.org.  All rights reserved. 

Liberation theology understands itself as common interest theology. For this reason it is not just the business of nontraditional sections of the academy or of those who are forced to live at the underside of history. While those are the places that gave rise to liberation theology, today no theology can afford not to give an account of what God is doing among those who suffer the most. The theologies of God’s liberating work with those who suffer and those who (often unconsciously) inflict suffering, pose a major challenge to theology in general. The fact that most people belong to both camps in some way or another makes this challenge all the more real. In conclusion let me offer some impulses for theology as it continues into the twenty-first century.

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Posted on Jan 04, 2010 - 12:38 PM

Alternatives and the Return of the Repressed

Fredric Jameson sums up the spirit of the present when he points out that “it seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism.” He goes on to suggest that “the word postmodern ought to be reserved for thoughts of this kind.”²⁹ Many of us know the sinking feeling that the postmodern situation does not really allow for alternatives any more. Since the days of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, we have been told over and over again that there is no alternative to capitalism. This position seemed only to be confirmed in the late 1980s when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed mainly under its own weight. What is left, except the straightjacket of one economic system and the cultural hegemony that goes with it?

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Posted on Jan 04, 2010 - 12:29 PM

Where We Are

Selections from Joerg Rieger, “Christian Theology and Empires,” Chapter 1 of Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians, ed. Don H. Compier, Kwok Pui-lan, and Joerg Rieger (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), pp. 1-4, 7-8, 12-13.

Copyright © 2007 Fortress Press, an imprint of Augsburg Fortress,  http://www.augsburgfortress.org .  All rights reserved.

Christianity can hardly be understood apart from empire. The Roman Empire was the context of the earliest beginnings of Christianity, and most of the subsequent major developments of Christian theology and the church are located somewhere within the force fields of empire as well. Unfortunately, theologians have rarely reflected on the connections and tensions between Christian traditions and empire. These connections were either taken for granted or simply overlooked. What was lost in the process was not only a clearer understanding of how the forces of empire affect us all, consciously or unconsciously, but also a sense of how Christianity can never quite be absorbed by empire altogether and which of its resources push beyond empire. One of the key purposes of the study of Christian theology in the context of empire has to do with a search for that which cannot be co-opted by empire, and which thus inspires alternatives to empire, based on what I have called a “theological surplus.“l But these alternatives can only be seen in light of a clearer awareness of the impact of empire on theology, an awareness that points beyond the current situation where empire is either taken for granted or blended out.

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Posted on Jan 04, 2010 - 12:21 PM