Rieger's ambitious and faith-filled project chips away at the colonial legacy of Christology to find the authentic Christ - or rather the many authentic depictions of Christ in history and theology that survive our self-serving domestications. Against the seeming inevitability of globalized unfairness, Rieger holds up a stumbling block that confounds even empire.
Abstract Christian theologians who study capitalism with a critical lens have argued that capitalist economics is not just a matter of finance or politics but tends to shape people all the way to the core, including religious beliefs and practices. Different theological approaches not only differ in how they conceive of the relation of religion and capitalism, they also differ in their evaluations of capitalism itself. While some Christian theologians endorse capitalism, others offer critical reflections and propose alternative economic systems, rooted in Christian traditions and practices as well as in broad historical and cultural shifts. Challenges include questions about the neoliberal turn in economics, the role of corporations, economic deregulation, competition and community, the reality of scarcity, the development of financial capitalism, as well as the relation of religion and labor, and the location of agency.
Abstract While religion and socialism are often seen at odds, there are many examples of religion and socialism engaging and supporting each other. This chapter explores the life and work of B.R. Ambedkar (Buddhism), Rev. George Washington Woodbey (Christianity), and Ali Shariati (Islam). Ambedkar was one of the architects of the Indian constitution and Woodbey, an often under appreciated figure in the Black Social Gospel, worked in close solidarity with economically exploited people, and therefore are quite clear about the realities of the class struggle. For Shariati, as a leader of the Iranian Revolution, class was a central topic as well, but his emphasis was less on the economics than on the politics of it. These figures demonstrate how political and religious democracy might be grounded in economic democracy. When religion and socialism are brought together both sides can benefit, often in ways that deepen the understanding of each.
Efforts to address the logic of extraction, which arguably is at the core of our current environmental catastrophe, are examples for a non-reductive material turn in the study of religion and theology. These efforts are linked with the logics of property, possession, human/nature, and human/land relations. This emphasis on materiality and relationship creates welcome openings for another set of relationships that is still under-reflected in the material turn in religion and theology, namely the various connections between extraction and exploitation, specifically of labor, both productive and reproductive, human and other-than-human. In this article, the logic of extraction will be interpreted and reevaluated in its relation to exploitative relationships of labor, which in turn will be deepened in conversation with extraction. Relationships of extraction, production, and reproduction will further be investigated in terms of the notion of a religious surplus, which examines the multiple contributions of religion and theology as generated in broader surplus-producing relationships.
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