Christian Danz

Marc Dumas

Werner Schüßler

Bryan Wagoner

This collection moves from COVID to Kairos, engaged with the legacy of Paul Tillich. Liminal spaces reflect ambiguous transitional moments in human consciousness and culture. In early 2020, cultures and states turned inward for protection, exacerbating intertwined health, political, racial justice, and economic crises. Tillich would have understood these overlapping challenges to be heralding a kairotic moment, reflecting simultaneous crises and opportunities. The collected essays reflect on the intersections of COVID and Kairos. Authors engage numerous ethical challenges precipitated by the current Kairos moment, thinking through and with Tillich. Other essays offer reflections on our cultural moment, engaging topics from public health to video games to hate speech. Reflecting on the cultural moment, this collection offers unique insight into the Tillichian legacy for the present and future.

Yearbook 2021/2022

Liminal Spaces and Ethical Challenges

Too often we see reality in black and white, overlooking nuances that require the discernment of tensions between the brokenness of our world and our desires for reconciliation. Yet the gap between wounding words and actions and the hope for acts of reconciliation can lead to even more violence and despair. The authors of this volume explore these tensions and the valences of ‘brokenness’ and ‘reconciliation’ in Paul Tillich’s thought. Together, they contribute to a richer understanding of the thought of the German American theologian and philosopher, his commitments, and the constructive interpretations his work can induce for us today. Think of the ruptures and efforts of dialogue among divided Christian churches, or the commitment of the social worker; reflect on how love as agape, or the courage to be, can be at the heart of this constructive work; or consider the reconciliation processes of peoples torn apart by violence, to mention a few contributions from this volume. Collectively, these contributions raise the hope of a Tillichian creative justice, a hope that can stimulate a broad audience to go beyond the superficiality and instantaneity of social media to something deeper, more enduring, and transformative.

Yearbook 2019/2020

Brokenness and Reconciliation

Prophetic Interruptions initially draws numerous, yet previously unknown, connections between Paul Tillich, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer during their shared years in Frankfurt and New York, focusing particularly on the years 1929-1944. While Critical Theory was being formulated, Tillich, the teacher and colleague of Adorno and Horkheimer, respectively, was working on his own religious social(ist) theory. Moving beyond this historical background, Wagoner shows how these personal connections evolved and were mutually engaging. Instead of pursuing discernible mutual influence among Tillich, Adorno, and Horkheimer, the book instead demonstrates that their ideas were forged in the crucible of friendship and common purpose, toward the common end of emancipation. The collective 'prophetic interruptions' among the three thinkers have a common goal of naming and remediating injustices, and interrupting social forms that inhibit individual and collective agency. To that end, parallels are traced along four lines: critical rationality, theories of human nature (particularly vis-�-vis Nazism), metaphysics, and religion. These striking commonalities (coupled with potentially insurmountable differences, such as ontology) reveal historical connections between progressive religious thought and allegedly secular critical theory. The book suggests room for further conversation between progressive religion and critical theory rooted in Tillich's early 'religious socialism,' read here as a type of critical social theory, anticipating that of Adorno and Horkheimer. The appendix includes the first translation of an important letter from Adorno to Tillich, written in 1944.

Bryan Wagoner

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