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Social Postmodernism in Theological Reflectionson Power and Powerlessness in North America

THE COMMUNITY OF THE WEAK

HANS PETER GEISERSocial postmodernism and systematic theology can be considered the new pair in some of the most creative discussions on the future of theological method on a global scale. Both in the academy and in the public square, as well as in the manifold local and pastoral moments of ministry and community social activ-ism, the social, the postmodern, and the theological intermingle in engaging and border-crossing ways. The Community of the Weak presents a new kind of fundamental theology with a postmodern touch, using jazz as a metaphor, writing ethnographically out of the personal windows of lived experiences, combining fragments of autobiography with theological reconstruction. A comparative perspective on North American and European developments in contemporary systematic theology serves as a hermeneutical horizon to juxtapose two continents in their very different contexts. The author proposes a systematic and fundamental theology that is more jazzy, global, and narrative, deeply embedded in pastoral ministry to tell its postmodern story.

“With extraordinary erudition Hans-Peter Geiser plumbs the wounds of modernity found in the bodies of the weak. His is an extraordinary reimagin-ing of the task of Christian theology. In an imaginative way he puts thinkers who are normally thought antagonistic into conversation in a manner that not only illumines their thought but also helps us read them with new appreciation. This is a work that draws deeply on profound pastoral experience that refuses to give us a happy ending. That refusal turns out to be crucial for helping us to appreciate how theology may be best understood if it draws on music—and in particular jazz—as its inspiration.”

STANLEY HAUERWAS, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke University

“‘Theology,’ says Hans-Peter Geiser, ‘should never lose contact with everyday moments of human pain.’ At a time when many theologians and churches seem to have lost such contact for good on both sides of the Atlantic, this book presents a beacon of hope. New energies are emerging in unexpected places, and the divine is found in material ecologies of alternative power.”

JOERG RIEGER, Wendland-Cook Professor of Constructive Theology, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

“Geiser has written his book as a kind of musical score in which a great variety of contemporary theological voices are made to sing together in sometimes assonant, sometimes harmonious, but never boring ways. His exhaustive knowledge of different theologies produced in North America, as well as in other latitudes, serves him well, as he seeks to develop a flexible contextual theology. The deeply important question that drives his work is both existential and ecclesiological: what could or should ecclesial communities look like today?”

NANCY ELIZABETH BEDFORD, Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

HANS-PETER GEISER (PhD, University of Lausanne and MDiv, Fuller Theologi-cal Seminary) is a Swiss pastor and community theologian working across the Atlantic between North America and Europe for the global project Urban Spirit (www.urban-spirit.net and www.urban-spirit.ning.com), on new models of Gen-XY churches and communities. He also leads the IEP (International Exchange Project) This is his first US publication.