Full Description
How does viewing the American project through a theological lens complicate and enrich our understanding of America? Theologies of American Exceptionalism is a collection of fifteen interlocking essays reflecting on exceptionalist claims in and about the United States. Loosely and generatively curious, these essays bring together a range of historical and contemporary voices, some familiar and some less so, to stimulate new thought about America. Thinking theologically allows authors to revisit familiar themes and events with a new perspective; old and new wounds, enduring narratives, and the sacrificial violence at the heart of America are examined while avoiding both the triumphalism of the exceptional and the temptations of the jeremiad. Thinking theologically also involves thinking, as Joseph Winters recommends, with the "unmourned." It allows for an understanding of America as fundamentally religious in a very specific way. Together these essays challenge the reader to think America anew.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on the Print Edition
Preface
Love
1. Familiar Commerce and Covenantal Love, by Constance Furey
2. A Yet Unapproachable America, by Matthew Scherer
3. The Promise of Immanent Critique, by Joseph Winters
Fiction
4. "A History of America": Comments on Johnson v M'Intosh, by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
5. The Great American Novel, by M. Cooper Harriss
6. Memories of the Future, by W. Clark Gilpin
Revolution
7. Revolution as Revelation, by Spencer Dew
8. Exceptional Americanism, by Noah Salomon
9. Unexceptionable Islam, by Faisal Devji
Commerce
10. The America-Game, by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
11. American Techno-Optimism, by Lisa H. Sideris
12. Sovereign Exceptionality, by Elisabeth Anker
Chosen
13. The Judeo-Christian Tradition, by Shaul Magid
14. Sacrifice, by Stephanie Frank
15. Two Theologies of Chosenness, by Benjamin L. Berger
Appendix
Contributors
