We Are the Miracle: Schleiermacher and Soft Empire

This is the fifth live Q&A for ⁠The Christ Empire Couldn't Keep⁠ in which Joerg and I got to Friedrich Schleiermacher: the father of liberal theology, the DNA of American mainline Christianity, and yes, a card in my theologian baseball card collection. (Joerg wants to trade for it. Negotiations are ongoing.) Joerg started by saying this session isn't meant to make anyone in the liberal tradition feel bad. It's an invitation to dig deeper. There's plenty worth celebrating here, like the leveling of old hierarchies, thinking for yourself, and Christ working by attraction instead of coercion. But Schleiermacher also wrote that "we are the miracle," fantasized about colonies Prussia didn't have, and called Judaism "charming." That's where the soft empire hides, and it's the version American liberals find hardest to see in the mirror. The surplus is still there, and the work is ours.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Dr. Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology and the Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt University and founding director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. For three decades, he has worked to bring together theology and the struggles for justice and liberation that mark our age. His work addresses relations of theology and public life, reflecting on the misuse of power in religion, politics, and economics. His interest is in movements that bring about change and in the positive contributions of religion and theology. His constructive work in theology draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary traditions, with a concern for manifestations of the divine in the pressures of everyday life. Several of his 24 authored and edited books address the topics of this course, including No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future; Unified We Are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities (with Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger); and Faith, Class, and Labor: Intersectional Approaches in a Global Context (with Jin Young Choi). www.joergrieger.com

Previous Episodes w/ Joerg

Empire Hard, Empire Soft: Joerg Rieger on Las Casas and the Conquest That Learned to Be Nice

Anselm’s God Can’t Just Forgive: Joerg Rieger on Why That’s Good News, Not Cruelty

Who Owns the Creed? Joerg Rieger on the Conservative Gimmick and the Surplus They Missed

Empire Goes All the Way Down: Joerg Rieger on What “Christian Nationalism” Mis