The Other Journal

Tomatoes, Coffee, and Birth Defects: Unfair Trade and the Church’s Response to It

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:38:45 -0700

Tomatoes, Coffee, and Birth Defects: Unfair Trade and the Church’s Response to It:

In a globalized economy defined by unequal, exploitative trade, the church faces the challenge of finding a truly Christian response to the destructive economy to which we are connected—a way out of unfair trade, beyond exploitation and beyond charity.

Lord, Make Me Unchaste, but Not Yet: A Review of Brett Foster’s The Garbage Eater

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 16:01:00 -0700

Lord, Make Me Unchaste, but Not Yet: A Review of Brett Foster’s The Garbage Eater:

Brett Foster, The Garbage Eater (Evanston, IL: TriQuarterly Books, 2011). It is said that we are what we eat, that our appetites and outputs are in

William Banks’s Wager

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 08:00:46 -0700

William Banks’s Wager:

In “William Banks’s Wager,” Brett Foster reconstructs a letter from William Banks, a British clerk who venerated the famous Mount Grace Priory, in which Banks beseeches the monks’ prayers and confesses, with slight pleasure, a certain theft.

Luke 13:30: Tired Application

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 16:00:52 -0700

Luke 13:30: Tired Application:

In a weary admonition, the narrator of “Luke 13:30: Tired Application” instructs us to be watchful at the end of days, to look with grim hope at the “One coming who’s casting out devils, making the blind see.”

Of Bones and Bearings: A Review of Delicate Machinery Suspended

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 08:00:52 -0700

Of Bones and Bearings: A Review of Delicate Machinery Suspended:

Mary Van Denend reviews Anne Doe Overstreet’s first book of poems, Delicate Machinery Suspended.

Karl Marx and the Trouble With Rights

Fri, 31 May 2013 16:00:53 -0700

Karl Marx and the Trouble With Rights:

How can Christian engagement in conversations around human rights claims be sharpened by considering Karl Marx’s scepticism of such rhetoric?

Bejesus

Fri, 31 May 2013 08:00:42 -0700

Bejesus:

Meredith Kunsa’s prose poem retells the memory of a Pentecostal service where her grandmother, “jabbering in a voice” she cannot understand, gives a command that both haunts Kunsa and compels her to conclude that there is no Jesus in her, that “I’m not who I think I am.”

From London to Durham: A Theological Peregrination

Thu, 30 May 2013 16:00:52 -0700

From London to Durham: A Theological Peregrination:

Taking London, England, and Durham, North Carolina, as geographical and narrative bookends, Luke Bretherton looks at the history of movement between these two locations as a step toward making sense of his own recent move from London to Durham. By situating his own work on community organizing within this flow of movements, or peregrinations, between the two cities, Bretherton provides a historical and theological argument for a constructive relationship between Christianity and democratic politics.

The Blame Lies with the Christians: Helmut Gollwitzer’s Engagement with Marxist Criticism of Religion

Thu, 30 May 2013 12:06:38 -0700

The Blame Lies with the Christians: Helmut Gollwitzer’s Engagement with Marxist Criticism of Religion:

Helmut Gollwitzer’s engagement with Marxist criticism of religion stimulated his thinking as he worked through how theology and its gospel proclamation should relate to philosophy, science, and politics in a manner that remains relevant in the contemporary North American context.

The most important question to answer in the English-speaking theological world when writing about Helmut Gollwitzer is, unfortunately, who is (or was) Helmut Gollwitzer? Even more unfortunately, however, this relative obscurity also seems to be the state of Gollwitzer’s legacy in Germany. Reflecting on the unavailability of Gollwitzer’s writings in German bookstores merely…[read more]

For Money

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:48:13 -0700

For Money:

A sonnet about work.

The Actuality of Liberation’s Problem

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:47:21 -0700

The Actuality of Liberation’s Problem:

Christianity and Marxism are bound together by the thought of liberation, but it is time to think liberation as a problem in itself, as a matter of prophecy rather than of conversion.

Burning Peak Oil

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:44:39 -0700

Burning Peak Oil:

Reflections on why we ride.

“…Søren Kierkegaard famously argued that there are two contradictory paths in life, two ways of being in the world that are equally compelling and yet fundamentally incompatible. The ethical is one such path; the aesthetic is the other. We can live our lives according to the dictates of the good or the beautiful but not both. Kierkegaard was only partly right. I think that goodness and beauty, like responsibility and excess, safety and danger, moderation and indulgence, are both fundamental to human consciousness. Too often, we are told (mostly by self-help speakers and other questionable types) that the answer to these dualisms is an appropriate “balance,” the right mixture. But balance misses the point, throwing out the possibility of excess and indulgence altogether. Striving for such balance results in something less, in something that’s somehow crabbed and uninspiring. Perhaps, in the days of peak oil and the waning shadow of Occupy Wall Street, it is our glaring inconsistencies, our moral imbalances, that reveal the most. Our dangerous passions, for better and worse, inevitably drive us to make a world.”

Scenes from the Mall

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:09:19 -0700

Scenes from the Mall:

D. L. Mayfield explores her personal experiences of American inequality and considers what social justice might really looks like.

A Letter From The Editors: 10th Anniversary

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:04:58 -0700

In 2003 a small cohort of graduate students came together in Seattle, Washington, to create a space on the Internet for sharp and insightful Christian commentary, a space characterized by rigorous yet accessible essays by leading thinkers, activists, and artists on a diverse array of social, political, and cultural movements. It was a modest beginning, but ten years ago this week The Other Journal debuted our very first issue, The Theodicy Issue, with a handful of articles including an interview with the musician Rosie Thomas and anexamination of suffering through the writings of John K. Roth.

At the time, the Internet was still an emerging phenomenon that had yet to see the development of Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Meanwhile, our cultural and political climate was fraught with a combination of uncertainty and heated rhetoric; we were a people reeling from the attacks of 9/11 while also attempting to grapple with the meaning of a just response for such a heinous crime. And we did so amidst an emerging awareness of the vulnerability of the American empire.

To say we launched the Journal amidst the backdrop of a cultural crisis is no small understatement. Our goal at the time was to provide readers with sharp, thoughtful theological analysis and reflections, beginning with the belief that theology has an important voice to offer to our cultural milieu. And a decade later – through two wars, the first African-American presidency, a debilitating economic crash, and countless other cultural movements – we continue to strive for a unique kind of critical engagement that helps us become more astute readers of our culture and our theologies. Through issues as diverse as Atheism, Education, Africa, Economics, Postmodernism, and Food; by hosting the Film Faith and Justice Festival and numerous lectures; and by publishing several books, we’ve attempted to provide you with opportunities to reflect on the ways cultural trends inform our theologies, and the ways our theologies can more purposefully engage the cultural waters in which we swim.

In honor of our tenth anniversary, we’ll begin featuring some of our favorite pieces from the last decade throughout the spring and early summer. Look for these to run on our front page banner each Friday. Then later this summer, we’ll also release a special anniversary print edition that will be a “greatest hits” of sorts from our archives. Stay tuned for more information on that later this spring.

We enter this our second decade stronger than ever, and we do so because of your continued readership and support. So whether you’ve been reading us for one year or all ten, whether you’re a print subscriber, donor, or someone who visits us whenever we release new content, we sincerely thank you for spending some of your time with us. We hope that what we’ve provided has played a small role in helping you consider the importance of theology in our cultural discourse.

With deep, abiding gratitude,

Dan, Tom, Andrew, and The Other Journal editors

Inhabit Conference

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:09:00 -0700

Inhabit Conference:

The Other Journal will be at the Inhabit Conference held at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and we’d love to see you there!

The Economy of Salvation by Daniel M. Bell Jr.

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 07:35:00 -0700

The Economy of Salvation by Daniel M. Bell Jr.:

The economy of salvation enacted by Christ on the cross displays the divine economy of plenitude, ceaseless generosity, and superabundance […]

Autumn 2013: The Body Issue

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:14:14 -0700

Autumn 2013: The Body Issue :

Submissions Due August 1, 2013

Since the time of the early Greeks, Western thought has tended to downplay the importance of the body. By emphasizing the existence of an eternal realm of ideal forms above and beyond the material world, we have indirectly transformed the body into little more than a vessel for our true immortal souls. We may say we love our bodies, but too often our philosophical and theological commitments lead us to believe that they are things we need to reject, denigrate, and overcome. We may decry Gnosticism, but by our actions we embrace a dualism that demeans bodies, leaving little to no place for them in the worship of God and the Christian life.

Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that our culture also embraces a distorted view of the body. Although our culture doesn’t dismiss the body outright (as our theology has so often done), it clings to a perfect form of the body—one it finds youthful, fit, and glowing with flawless skin; one with the right amount of cleavage. Where our theologies may dismiss the body because it can never achieve the perfection of heaven, our culture shoves the body in our face, inviting us to worship a simulated and unreal form.

And yet the Scriptures invite us into a different relationship with our bodies, a relationship that sees our bodies as intrinsic to a holistic faith. In other words, to be faithful is to view the body as good and as essential to our worship and creaturely existence. For this, our twenty-third issue, we invite theological essays, reviews, artwork, and creative writing pieces that explore the notion of body, pieces that seek to restore an integrated and holistic theology and which understand the body as fully integrated into our spiritual commitments. Some questions one might consider are: How does our body shape our interpretation of Scripture and the world around us? Where has a restrictiveness of the body contributed to a poor rendering of theology? How are we to understand gender in light of Christian theology? And what is the connection between the discipline of the body and Christianity, and how has this connection been twisted or where might it be redeemed?

Overcoming Metaphysics: Overcoming Racial Oppression

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:09:42 -0700

Overcoming Metaphysics: Overcoming Racial Oppression:

Contemporary political analysis champions the ideal of a post-racial America, and in some circles, this ideal is viewed as a triumph, as if we already function apart from any sort of racial privilege or division. However, the mythical nature of such an ideal is revealed by the harsh reality of the contemporary American situation, a situation in which geographical barriers still divide entire populations of whites and non-whites in the South. Systems of privilege and oppression, deeply embedded into the psyche and mechanics of all aspects of American culture, continue to drive a wedge between racial groups, privileging some and excluding others.¹ W. E. B. Du Bois, in 1903, wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is that of the color line,”²but it seems that Du Bois’s words could accurately characterize our twenty-first-century situation as well: we have yet to cross the color line […]

Always Historicize! On Fredric Jameson, the Tea Party, and Theological Pragmatics

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:00:58 -0700

Always Historicize! On Fredric Jameson, the Tea Party, and Theological Pragmatics:

Theodor Adorno, Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Slavoj Žižek: What do these thinkers have in common? First, they are all Marxists.1 Second, they have all received significant attention in the theological community; each of these theorists, for example, has been the subject of a full-length volume in Continuum’s exciting Philosophy […]

I Love You: An Interview with Dominique Ovalle

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:54:15 -0700

I Love You: An Interview with Dominique Ovalle: