RSS 1.0Theology and Religious Studies
The Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Chester is a community of scholars addressing cutting edge questions concerning theology and the nature and place of religions in the world from a wide range of perspectives. We are dedicated to excellence, both in our student-centred teaching and learning and in our research.
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Recent Submissions
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Book Review: George Hunsinger - The Legacy of Hans W. FreiHans W. Frei (1922-1988) was a widely influential historical and constructive theologian who was Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University. In this volume, George Hunsinger has gathered a range of pieces that make the case for different aspects of Frei’s theological achievements and clarify and interrogate his arguments. These are highly valuable expositions, assessments and it is helpful to highlight them in this volume. One wonders, however, what Frei’s legacy looks like to scholars from backgrounds further removed from his own kind of institutional and social setting.
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Book Review: Daniel Shin, Theology and the Public: Reflections on Hans W. Frei on Hermeneutics, Christology, and Theological MethodReview of Daniel Shin's study of the theme of publicness in Hans Frei's theology.
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‘Meeting God in an ordinary place’. What can we learn from Coffee Shop Sunday about meeting God using the internet to encourage and develop fellowship?All are welcome at the ‘common table’ to enjoy the ‘table talk’. How does Coffee Shop Sunday (CSS) (Coventry and Nuneaton Methodist Circuit Project) reflect that alongside pointing people to Jesus? CSS began a worship service in a Coventry Costa Coffee Shop in December 2019, this was severely disrupted with covid-19 restrictions and their concept of ‘meeting God in an ordinary place’ moved online. The internet through Facebook and Zoom became the ordinary place they met God. Since March 2020, the online work has grown from initially meeting four days a week to daily activities with participants from five continents. Two of the principles of CSS are encouragement and fellowship. The paper will explore (1) How the internet became the ‘ordinary’ place to meet God for people from different denominations and cultures. (2) How fellowship is experienced, using Russell’s ‘round table ecclesiology’ model where those present participate in a way which reflects their own journey of ‘faith and struggle’. (3) How does CSS point other people to Jesus through its activities. Barth emphasises that churches or a Christian’s activities should not focus on themselves but ‘point to Jesus’. By reviewing CSS activities, I will demonstrate that they point others to Jesus.
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Addiction Recovery at the Intersections of Religion, Gender and SexualityThis chapter charts the intersections between addiction recovery, which is increasingly expressed as an identity, , and relgiion, gender and sexuality, categories that are rarely examined together. It demonstrates, first. that recovery spiritulaities are normative in relation to gender and sexuality, and such narratives and language can disempower, obscure and oppress already stigmatized and marginalised actors. It argues that the labour of recovery lies heavy on gendered and sexual miniorities, but also that for many participants, recovery communities and spiritualities are sites of empowerment and autonomy.
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The Sea of Faith 40 Years OnOn the fortieth anniversary of its first broadcast in 1984, this article will consider the main themes of the BBC TV series The Sea of Faith , written and presented by the Cambridge philosopher and theologian Don Cupitt. It will attempt to evaluate its significance, then and now. We argue that Cupitt’s ‘radical’ reputation for his advancement of a broadly ‘non-realist’ understanding of God may have overshadowed other equally significant features, not least his central argument that unless Christianity responded constructively to modern thought it would be doomed to irrelevance. The article will close with some reflections on what Cupitt’s manifesto for religion might mean for those who continue to identify with his critiques of traditional theology today.
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Book Review: The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic age Noreen HerzfeldA book review outlining Herzfeld's book which addressing issues of ‘What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)’ and ‘What do we want AI to do’ are the two questions Herzfeld addresses in this book using the lens of Barth's four conditions for an authentic human relationship.
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On The Path of Pir Sultan? Engagement with Authority in the Modern Alevi MovementIn this paper, I explore some approaches in the contemporary Alevi Movement to semi-official discourses on religion, citizenship and belonging in Turkey. I study the revival activities of an Alevi group from Erzincan called the Derviş Cemal Ocak, which I find to be characterized by an emphasis on its Turkish ethno-cultural roots and Islamic religious identity. The group is following the national Cem Vakfı’s definition of Alevilik according to these terms, and reflects an openness to negotiation with both official institutions of state authority as well as semi-official public discourses that other Alevi groups do not. I analyze this conciliatory approach within the Alevi Movement in light of hegemonic majority discourses on national and religious identity. Specifically, I explore post-migration geographies, ethnicity and the Kurdish issue, as well as internal factors within the Alevi community regarding religious legitimization and the sanctity of its leaders (dede).
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Unspeakable Fat, Unspeakable Beauty: Fatness, Apophasis and the Overflowing of ExcessThis chapter draws on Augustine’s theology of perfect heavenly bodies including his theological rendering of beauty and fat to consider what apophasis might mean for feminist theological thinking about fatness and women’s fat. Routinely criticized for promoting a flight from the body and its excessive passions and a vision of resurrection bodies as free from the imperfections of the material flesh, Augustine provides an interesting although perhaps unlikely dialogue partner for thinking about this. My claim is that there is much to glean from him, despite the difficulties he presents. There is also much to garner from feminist fat activism and from critical feminist reflections on the fluidity of fat embodiment. Both inform my feminist theological appraisal of fat bodies as unspeakable bodies
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God's Patience and Our Work: Hans Frei, Generous Orthodoxy and the Ethics of HopeThis book offers a new interpretation of Hans Frei's theology and ethics, their development, coherence in context and their relevance to contemporary Christian political theology and ethics. On this reading, Frei offered a subtle, flexible account of the essence of Christianity, a Christology which grounds Christ's living presence and enduring solidarity with the poor and marginalised and to history and the church in his particular identity. I show that he sought to recover the conditions for an ethics of responsibility and to articulate the terms of the publicness of Christian theology and ethics. His vision of Christian discipleship, shaped by Christ's identity, emphasises generous, reconciliatory love and practices of penultimate reconciliation amidst the structural divisions engendered by social sin. Above all, he outlined a theology of God's patience and providence to frame a hopefully realistic, contextually pragmatic, progressive engagement of Christian communities with politics and society.
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Postliberal TheologyAn overview of Postliberal Theology, its characteristic concerns and themes, the contributions of key figures, debates about their ideas, its influence, achievement and agenda.
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Body/ImageAccording to feminist liberation theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid, if there is one thing that feminist theologies can claim in common it is that ‘the body always takes charge: our armpits come first’, more specifically our ‘bushy’ armpits. No doubt the choice of armpits here is deliberate by Althaus-Reid given the way this part of women’s bodies has been disparagingly associated with feminism and with the western feminist project of resisting restrictive beauty standards. To begin feminist theologies with women’s ‘bushy armpits’ is to begin with a confidence in women’s flesh and with a preparedness to confront and transgress social and religious norms that contain women’s bodies and mark them as disgusting. This chapter explores the ways in which Christian feminist theologies have approached the body, paying particular attention to feminist theological discussion around body image, especially concerning beauty, fatness and thinness. It first considers how feminist theologies have exposed, challenged and reclaimed aspects of Christian body theology before considering how feminist theologians have explored body image and women’s struggles for bodily integrity.
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The Bible and the Violence of Fat ShamingThe Bible presents an ambiguous view of fat and fatness. Following normative gendered constructions of corpulence in the ancient world, fat symbolises excess, moral weakness, lack of self-restraint and lavish living, but it also represents divine abundance and is symbolic of life and wellbeing. Indeed, fat criticism in the Bible is reliant upon positive associations of fatness and this encourages us to read both constructions of fatness alongside one another. While negative constructions of fatness in biblical texts lend support to the gendered violence of fat shaming evidencing the ongoing influence of ancient attitudes on contemporary anti-fat attitudes, embracing the ambiguity of biblical texts troubles the contemporary political tendency to polarise fat as either ‘bad’ or ‘good’ and allows for the productive dimensions of fat shame.
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Candrakīrti on the use and misuse of the Chariot argumentThe publication in 2015 (ed. Li) of Chapter 6 of the rediscovered Sanskrit text of Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra (MA) allows us to witness more directly Candrakīrti’s careful and deliberate critique of the ‘chariot argument’ for the merely conventional existence of the self in Indian Abhidharmic thought. I argue that in MA 6.140–141, Candrakīrti alludes to the use of the chariot argument in the Milindapañha as negating only the view of a permanent self (compared to an elephant), rather than negating ego-identification (compared to a snake in its hole). In contrast to this misuse of the chariot argument, in MA 6.150–165 Candrakīrti uses the chariot argument as an allegory to enable the meditator to refute the basis of ego-identification in seven ways. Candrakīrti’s use of the chariot argument does not establish any theory about the self or not-self, but acts as a guide to meditation as part of philosophy as a spiritual practice with the goal of liberation.
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Embodying a Different Word about Fat: The Need for Critical Feminist Theologies of Fat LiberationIn contemporary Western society, fatness speaks for itself, affirming the fat person as an aesthetic and moral failure even before they say a word. Fat bodies, and fat female bodies in particular, are produced and reproduced as sites of excess and obscenity. Christian theology has protected itself from the contaminating touch of fat by ignoring fatness in theological discourse. Especially concerning is the relative absence of ‘fat talk’ from liberation and feminist theologies. It is time for a different word to be offered on fat that does not speak for itself and that emerges from the lived experiences of diverse women as they interpret their own faith and fatness. This essay explores the need for critical feminist theologies on fat liberation and identifies some features they might display. Here, I discuss Feminist Participatory Action Research and ethnography as methodologies that might help feminist theologians researching fat to prioritise the overlooked bodies and stories of fat women, and to continue liberation theology’s longstanding commitment to constructing historical projects oriented towards social change. Fat liberation, as a historical and theological project, calls for a ‘conversion’ to fatness and for a critical questioning of assumed ‘truths’ about fat. It positions the struggle against fat hatred as a pursuit of life and as faithful participation in the liberating activity of the God of Life.
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Don Cupitt: prophet, public intellectual and pioneer Public intellectualThe 1984 BBC TV series The Sea of Faith offered Don Cupitt an exceptional degree of public recognition and notoriety. His advancement of a non-realist and social constructivist theology had a strong polarizing effect on his audience, engendering disapproval and approbation in equal measure. Opinion was strongly divided between those who resisted any kind of critical approach to Christian teaching and those who felt liberated by Cupitt’s call for a more modern and questioning theology. Through archives of audience reactions to his broadcasts and writings, this article considers whether Cupitt’s influence through The Sea of Faith and other writing and broadcasting was sufficient to rank him as a ‘public intellectual’. It will argue that the controversy Cupitt attracted and his categorization as ‘atheist priest’ and ‘radical theologian’ may ultimately have limited his efforts to promote broad-based, serious theological debate in Church and society.
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Jaspers and Sartre: transcendence and the difference of the divineThis paper takes the movement of transcendence in Sartre and examines it in relation to another understanding of transcendence in relation to God circulating in Paris in Sartre’s formative years: that of Karl Jaspers. Through exploring the transmission and reception of Jaspers' thought in French philosophy, different understandings can be advanced as to why he engages with the figure of God as that which we transcend towards, however impossibly, and why he counts Jaspers as a Catholic existentialist.
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Why Were They Not Radicalized? Young Members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Aftermath of Egypt's 2013 Military CoupWhile many young members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood became politically disengaged in the wake of the 2013 military coup, others resorted to violence. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in 2016/17, this article investigates the forces of radicalization among younger Brotherhood members after the coup. Rather than there being a positive correlation between repression and radicalization, I argue that the majority of rank-and-file movement members remained inclined against radicalism due to the effects of state repression, organizational schism, and transformative personal experiences.
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Don Cupitt: prophet, public intellectual and pioneer Prophet without honour: the marginalization of Don CupittThis article is the first of three that will evaluate the work and legacy of the Cambridge non-realist theologian and philosopher of religion, Don Cupitt. We begin by suggesting that Cupitt might be depicted as a ‘prophet without honour’ in both his ecclesiastical home of the Church of England and at the University of Cambridge, where he spent most of his professional life. This is based on the observation that, after a promising early career, Cupitt never received the ecclesiastical preferment or academic promotion that many argued he deserved. This arguably represents a missed opportunity for both Church and academy, because Cupitt is more accurately understood not as an enemy of religion but as essentially an ecclesiastical insider whose chief motivation was to uphold the contemporary relevance and credibility of Christianity.
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Gallows and Golgotha: Morbid Conventions in the Inherited Place-names of Seventeenth-century Quaker Burial GroundsIn the mid to late seventeenth century Quaker burial grounds were established throughout Britain on land donated by Friends or purchased specifically for the purpose. Among purchased sites, a small but consistent minority bear nominal association with gallows and gibbets through place-names inherited from prior land use. This suggests that a pattern of land acquisition relating to prior morbid use may be drawn. In the present work it is proposed that such undesirable land would not only have been cheap and convenient to acquire but that its connotation of liminality held further symbolic significance and purpose within early Quaker establishments. Two key case studies are provided and their conceptual significance investigated. Frameworks of enquiry are then theorised, culminating in suggestions for further research.
