WHAT WOULD JESUS DECONSTRUCT?

This is the wonderful and evocative title of the second volume in a series of books called The Church and Postmodern Culture (Baker Academic Press), edited by James K.A. Smith of Calvin College, an interesting philosopher writing from a Reformed Christian perspective. John D. Caputo's What Would Jesus Deconstruct (foreword by Brian McLaren), is due for release in the US on 1 November 2007. The first volume in the series, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, by Smith himself, was released in 2006. Conversation related to the series is available in blog form at Church and po-mo.

Planned forthcoming volumes include: Daniel M. Bell Jr. on desire and economy, featuring Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault; Carl Raschke on the impact of globalization on Christian practice and mission; and Merold Westphal on transcendence, community, interpretation in conversation with Kierkegaard and Levinas; Graham Ward on contextual theology and political discipleship; and Bruce Ellis Benson on improvisation as a paradigm for thinking about worship and the arts. Looks very promising, though some more women's voices are badly needed in the midst of this male pontificating.

As regular readers of FaithInSociety will know, I'm a definite appreciator of Caputo and Westphal's work. Also Graham Ward, who has been described by some as "the acceptable face of Radical Orthodoxy" - by which I think is meant "less prone to build huge trenches between his own stance and those of others" than some of the other Cambridge schooled RO thinkers.

Caputo, along with Richard Kearney, (whose The God Who May Be is fabulous) are the featured interlocutors at the 2007 Emergent Theological Philosophical Conversation, for which there's still time to register.