Signs and Wonders: Theology After Modernity

Description

We are told modernity's end will destabilize familiar ways of knowing, doing, and being, but are these changes we should dread—or celebrate? Four significant events catalyze this question: the consecration of openly gay Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson, the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the politicization of the death of Terri Schiavo, and the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Ellen T. Armour explores the anxieties, passions, and power dynamics bound up in the photographic representation and public reception of these events. Together, these phenomena expose modernity's benevolent and malevolent disruptions and reveal the systemic fractures that herald its end, for better and for worse. Lays the groundwork for a theology and philosophy of life better suited to our (post)modern moment: one that owns up to the vulnerabilities that modernity sought to disavow and better enables us to navigate the ethical issues we now confront.