Pandemonium, Pandemethics, Pantopia: What’s in a Word?

Abstract

At the margins of the Covid-19 pandemic, religious groups aroused a pandemonium fueled by racism and discrimination against the poor and vulnerable with references to apocalyptic thought patterns. Imagining pantopia versus the “new normal” brings realized eschatology to the dialogue table. God’s option for the poor and the whole of creation is a critique of the neoliberal Anthropocene. It is not only we who try to interpret the virus, the virus is also interpreting us. The hermeneutical circle was suddenly interrupted by a contraflow. The injustices of global neoliberal capitalism and the intersectionality of different forms of discrimination revealed by the virus may not be covered up again but must be tackled by an intercultural pandemethics.