Catherine Keller

I taught Catherine Keller's God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys in my seminar (entitled 'Revelation(s) in Theory') the other day, and was surprised at my students' responses. They found it rhetorically confusing and logically weak. While I sympathize to some extent (Keller's metaphors are sometimes unnecessarily bizarre), the project as a whole is consonant with other work we've read -- by Marcella Althaus-Reid and Stephen Moore, Derrida and Benjamin. Have any of you taught Keller before? My sense is that, because we were reading the whole book, the students felt they had more purchase on Keller's project than they did on the other, shorter, pieces we've studied (including one by our friend and ally David Hall), and so they could respond to its argument more fully. It seemed to me, though, that this only means they were able to express a desire they've been hinting at all term: namely, they want claims about religious or biblical or indeed generally hermeneutical issues to be universally coherent, both in their logic and in their evidentiary bases. These students are bright and savvy, and enjoy engaging with difficult material, so I don't mean at all to disparage their concerns. It's just that I found this attitude a bit perplexing. I wonder whether or not I'm just blinded to serious problems in Keller's book because I'm so sympathetic to her argument. If any of you have read or taught God and Power, I'd be curious to know what you think.

In the news

I might be wrong about this, but I think the Lesleigh Cushing quoted in a recent NYT story on faith and religion on college campuses may be the same Lesleigh some of us know from various conferences. And even if I'm confused, the article is worth a glance anyway.