Apocalypse Now? Reflections on Faith in a Time of Terror

Apocalypse Now? Reflections on Faith in a Time of Terror. By Duncan Forrester. (Ashgate, 152 pp., $29.95 paperback.) God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys. By Catherine Keller. (Fortress, 196 pp., $22.00 paperback.) The search for a workable global politics after 9/11 continues. These two books argue that the war on terrorism has taken on the apocalyptic image of a battle between good and evil, with disastrous results for faith and ethics. Forrester, whose global perspective has given us important studies of justice and human dignity, now turns his attention to the political and religious battle lines that have formed since 2001. In Apocalypse Now? he criticizes political claims that turn the war on terror into a religions crusade while ignoring the judgment on imperial power that is central to the Christian apocalypse. Keller focuses more closely on American politics and culture in God and Power. She explores apocalyptic ideas that have become part of our consciousness and affect political choices in ways that those who deploy the language of good and evil do not fully understand. Forrester and Keller both have a postmodern critical perspective on our political thinking, so it is surprising that both of them also find new value in the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, whose political realism included a counterapocalyptic warning about the temptations of idolatry in international politics.

Selected by Robin Lovin, who teaches at Southern Methodist University.

COPYRIGHT 2007 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning