The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah

by Haynes, Stephen R.

• ISBN13: 9780313303654
• ISBN10: 0313303657
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-30
• Publisher: Greenwood Pub Group

Summary

The "Death of God" theologians represented one of the most influential religious movements of the 1960s, a decade in which the discipline of theology underwent revolutionary change. Although they were from different traditions, utilized varied methods of analysis, and focused on culture in distinctive ways, the four religious thinkers who sparked radical theology--Thomas Altizer, William Hamilton, Richard Rubenstein, and Paul Van Buren--all considered the Holocaust as one of the main challenges to the Christian faith. Thirty years later, a symposium organized by the American Academy of Religion revisited the "Death of God" movement by asking these four radical theologians to reflect on how awareness of the Holocaust affected their thinking, not only in the 1960s but also in the 1990s. This edited volume brings together their essays, along with responses by other noted scholars who offer critical commentary on the movement's impact, legacy, and relationship to the Holocaust.

Author Biography

STEPHEN R. HAYNES is Albert B. Curry Chair of Religious Studies at Rhodes College, where he has taught since 1989.JOHN K. ROTH is the Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where he has taught since 1966.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: The Holocaust and the Death of God---Encounter or Reencounter?	xiii
Stephen R. Haynes
John K. Roth
Part One: The Death of God Movement Is Born
Toward a Hidden God Time, April 8, 1966	3	(14)
Part Two: The Death of God and the Holocaust---Reconsidering the Encounter
Practitioners
The Holocaust and the Theology of the Death of God	17	(8)
Thomas J. J. Altizer
Genocide and the Death of God	25	(10)
William Hamilton
From the Secular to the Scriptural Gospel	35	(8)
Paul M. van Buren
Radical Theology and the Holocaust	43	(14)
Richard L. Rubenstein
Respondents
After the Holocaust: The Death of God and the Profaning of Texts	57	(6)
Edith Wyschogrod
The Holocaust and the Death of God: A Response to Altizer, Hamilton, and Rubenstein	63	(6)
Thomas A. Idinopulos
The Holocaust, Genocide, and Radical Theology: An Assessment of the Death of God Movement	69	(10)
John K. Roth
Part Three: The Death of God and the Holocaust---Analyzing the Encounter
The Death of God Movement and Twentieth-Century Protestant Theology	79	(12)
John J. Carey
The Death of God: An African-American Perspective	91	(8)
Hubert G. Locke
The Death of History and the Life of Akeda: Voices from the War	99	(12)
Gershon Greenberg
Christians and Pharisees: Jewish Responses to Radical Theology	111	(20)
Timothy A. Bennett
Rochelle L. Millen
Epilogue	131	(4)
John K. Roth
Stephen R. Haynes
Bibliography	135	(8)
Index	143	(6)
About the Editors and Contributors	149