Christianity, Literature, Politics

The contemporary political and cultural scene in the United States is fraught with religion. Religion is fraught with politics, whether thinking about the ascendancy of the forms of Christian Nationalism in the discourses and halls of power, the continued political relevance and concern of the Black Church, the rhetorical and theological interventions of leaders like Bishop Marianne Budde (ECUSA), Pope Francis, or Billy and Franklin Graham, or the difficult political and cultural engagements across national divides in the clashing of cultures influenced by versions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. A typical response to these often-polarized discourses is to long for a golden age when religion was not political, or to insist that politics sullies the church when it becomes engaged. This same rhetoric attaches to literature and other monuments of art; the belief that great art is somehow beyond and even a release from the world of historical conflict remains popular even if it has been much critiqued. Whether thinking about Dante's Divine Comedy as an outworking of conflict between the empire and the church, Milton's Paradise Lost as a response to the English Civil War, or many other texts too numerous to mention, literature that we sometimes judge as transcendent and timeless regularly is written out of a thorough engagement both with the history and politics of its time and with the transcendent promises of theological reflection and spiritual experience. This panel encourages submissions of papers that take up the relationship between literature, Christianity, and politics to examine how conceptions of transcendence are articulated through, influenced by, or incarnated in the urgencies of political engagement, as well as how political discourse and practice can be transfigured, for good or for ill, by literary practices that engage the discourse of Christianity. Papers from any period, literature, or language of origin are desired. Proposals that promise to be broadly accessible to audiences from various disciplinary backgrounds are particularly welcome.

Submit papers or 250-word abstracts to Peter Powers, ppowers@messiah.edu, no later than March 24th.