•  151
    Despite their purported demographic and institutional decline, White evangelical voters were instrumental in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and even more so in his 2020 loss. The story of Trump’s electoral successes among Christian voters in the last two elections is in large part the story of religious nationalism—and White Christian nationalism in particular—because Trump personifies the convergence of nationalism-infused forms of messianism and apocalypticism intrinsic to White evangel…Read more
  •  276
    The Cultural Violence of Non-violence
    Journal of Mediation and Applied Conflict Analysis 3 (1): 382-396. 2016.
    This paper explores the difference it makes to incorporate the multi-focal conception of violence that has emerged in peace studies over recent decades into the discourse of non-violent direct action (Galtung 1969, 1990; Uvin 2003; Springs 2015b). I argue that non-violent action can and should incorporate and deploy the distinctions between direct, cultural, and structural forms of violence. On one hand, these analytical distinctions can facilitate forms of self-reflexive critical analysis that …Read more
  •  232
    Can Restorative Justice Transform Structural and Cultural Violence?
    In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Peace, Wiley Blackwell. pp. 438-453. 2022.
    This article provides an exposition of restorative justice ethics, briefly explaining how and why its relational constitution enables it to comprise a theory of justice. I then describe how that relational constitution permits it to overlap, and work in tandem, with a wide range of religious and philosophical traditions. Numerous writings in religion and peacebuilding explore the roles that restorative justice has played in transitional justice contexts (Tutu 2000, Abu-Nimer 2001, de Gruchy 2002…Read more
  •  1988
    Religious Nationalism: A Reference Handbook
    with Atalia Omer
    ABC-Clio. 2013.
    Religious nationalism is a complex topic fraught with sensitive questions. Does religion cause violence? Is nationalism a quasi-religion? Are the constant conflicts around the world really about religion, or is religion merely a form of false consciousness? Is religious nationalism primarily a powerful tool that political elites use to manipulate the masses? Religious Nationalism: A Reference Handbook challenges dominant scholarly works on religious nationalism by identifying the preconceptions…Read more
  •  381
    Hans Frei, one of the most influential American theologians of the twentieth century, is generally considered a founder of postliberal theology. Frei never set forth his thinking systematically, and he has been criticized for being inconsistent, contradictory, and insufficiently rigorous. Jason Springs seeks here to offer a re-evaluation of Frei's work. Arguing that Hans Frei's theology cannot be understood without a meticulous consideration of the complex equilibrium of his theological and phil…Read more
  •  230
    Healthy Conflict in an Era of Intractability: Reply to Four Critical Responses
    Journal of Religious Ethics 48 (2): 316-341. 2020.
    This essay responds to four critical essays by Rosemary Kellison, Ebrahim Moosa, Joseph Winters, and Martin Kavka on the author’s recent book, Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary (Cambridge, 2018). Parts I and II work in tandem to further develop my accounts of strategic empathy and agonistic political friendship. I defend against criticisms that my argument for moral imagination obligates oppressed people to empathize with their oppressors. I argue, furthe…Read more
  •  5
    Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship
    Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 30 (1): 209-211. 2010.
  •  217
    Review of Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (review)
    The Review of Politics 79 (2): 316-319. Spring 2017.
    Book Review of Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion
  •  3300
    US citizens perceive their society to be one of the most diverse and religiously tolerant in the world today. Yet seemingly intractable religious intolerance and moral conflict abound throughout contemporary US public life - from abortion law battles, same-sex marriage, post-9/11 Islamophobia, public school curriculum controversies, to moral and religious dimensions of the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements, and Tea Party populism. Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Socie…Read more
  •  327
    'Violence that Works on the Soul': Structural and Cultural Violence in Religion and Peacebuilding
    In Atalia Omer, R. Scott Little Appleby & David Little (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding, Oxford University Press. pp. 146-179. 2015.
    This article makes the case for the necessity of a multi-focal conception of violence in religion and peacebuilding. I first trace the emergence and development of the analytical concepts of structural and cultural violence in peace studies, demonstrating how these lenses both draw central insights from, but also differ from and improve upon, critical theory and reflexive sociology. I argue that addressing structural and cultural forms of violence are concerns as central as addressing direct (…Read more
  •  549
    Is the institutionalization of religious freedom through human rights jurisprudence simply a means by which the modern nation-state manufactures and regulates “religion”? Is the discourse of religious freedom principally a technology of state governance? These questions challenge the ways that scholars conceptualize the relation between states, nationalism, human rights, and religious freedom. This article forwards an approach to human rights and methodological nationalism that both counters and…Read more
  •  21
    This article explores the possibility of moving beyond the apparent incapacity of Karl Barth's theological anthropology to accommodate gender equality. Barth's theological anthropology is read by critics and appreciative readers alike as confining the basic form of humanity to a binary opposition from which he then derives a gender‐specific, hierarchical account of man and woman, and finally, of husband and wife as a paradigmatic ethical relationship. I first forward a close reading of Barth's a…Read more
  •  1249
    This essay clarifies and defends the methodological multidimensionality and improvisational character of Clifford Geertz’s account of interpretation and explanation. In contrast to accounts of power analysis offered by Michel Foucault and Talal Asad, I argue that Geertz’s work can simultaneously attend to meaning, power, identity, and experience in understanding and assessing religious practices and cultural formations.
  •  22
    The Priority of Democracy to Social Theory
    Contemporary Pragmatism 4 (1): 47-71. 2007.
    This article examines the role of social theory in Cornel West's account of radical democracy. I explicate and extend the critical implications of Richard Rorty's views for the revolutionary impulses in West's project, and then I examine West's use of Sheldon Wolin's notion of "fugitive democracy" as a potential instance of the "theoretical resentment" against which Rorty cautions. Drawing from John Howard Yoder and Karl Barth, I conclude by demonstrating how West's account of the Black Church c…Read more
  •  4
    Paul Ricoeur: Honoring and Continuing the Work
    with Lorenzo Altieri, Pamela Anderson, Patrick Bourgeois, Fred Dallmayr, Gregory Hoskins, Domenico Jervolino, Morny Joy, David M. Kaplan, Richard Kearney, Peter Kemp, Henry Venema, John Wall, and John Whitmire
    Lexington Books. 2011.
    This collection of essays is dedicated to the prolific career of Paul Ricoeur. Honoring his work, this anthology addresses questions and concerns that defined Ricoeur’s.
  •  21
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (review)
    Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 24 (74): 43-44. 1996.
  •  392
    'Next Time Try Looking it up in your Gut!!': Tolerance, Civility, and Healthy Conflict in a Tea Party Era
    Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 94 (3-4): 325-358. 2011.
    In this paper I critically explore the possibility that the hope for engaging in democratic discourse and coalition-building across deep— potentially irreconcilable— moral, religious divisions in current U.S. public life depends less upon further calls for “more tolerance,” and instead in thinking creatively and transformatively about how to democratize and constructively utilize conflict and intolerance. Is it possible to distinguish between constructive and destructive forms of intolerance? …Read more
  •  911
    Amid the debates over the meaning and usefulness of the word “culture” during the 1980s and 90s, practice theory emerged as a framework for analysis and criticism in cultural anthropology. While theorists have gradually begun to explore practice-oriented frameworks as promising vistas in cultural anthropology and the study of religion, these remain relatively recent developments that stand to be historically explicated and conceptually refined. This article assesses several ways that practice …Read more
  •  595
    This paper explores the “cultural-linguistic” dimensions of Hans Frei’s theology. I make the case that several of the pragmatic and sociological concerns usually identified as distinctive marks of Frei’s later theology of the 1980s are, in fact, central to his work as far back as the early 1960s. Moreover, I demonstrate that such “cultural-linguistic” insights present important continuous threads in the development of his theology from early to late. Attending to this dimension illuminates th…Read more
  •  523
    I argue that trends of diagnosing anti-Muslim attitudes and activism as “Islamophobia” in European and the U.S. contexts may actually aid and abet more subtle varieties of the very stigmatization and exclusion that the “phobia” moniker aims to isolate and oppose. My comparative purpose is to draw into relief—to make explicit and subject to critical analysis— features of normative public discourse in these two sociopolitical contexts broadly perceived to be peaceful, prosperous, liberal-democrati…Read more
  •  1
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (review)
    Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 24 (74): 43-44. 1996.
  •  638
    This essay explores the possibility that religiously motivated intolerance and conflict can be reframed and positively utilized for constructive social-political purposes. After reviewing efforts by political philosophers over the past two decades to accommodate religious voices in political discourse, I scrutinize Charles Taylor’s attempt to improve upon the limits of “accommodationist” approaches to religious intolerance and conflict. I argue that both accommodationist and Taylor’s recogniti…Read more
  •  3415
    This article makes a case for the capacity of "social practice" accounts of agency and freedom to criticize, resist, and transform systemic forms of power and domination from within the context of religious and political practices and institutions. I first examine criticisms that Michel Foucault's analysis of systemic power results in normative aimlessness, and then I contrast that account with the description of agency and innovative practice that pragmatist philosopher Robert Brandom identifie…Read more
  •  1224
    A Wittgenstein for Postliberal Theologians
    Modern Theology 32 (4): 622-658. 2016.
    Remarkably, the theological discourse surrounding Hans Frei and postliberal theology has continued for nearly thirty years since Frei's death. This is due not only to the complex and provocative character of Frei's work, nor only to his influence upon an array of thinkers who went on to shape the theological field in their own right. It is just as indebted to the critical responses that his thinking continues to inspire. One recurrent point of criticism takes aim at Frei's use of Ludwig Wittgens…Read more