Public Theology and the Postsecular Turn

Abstract

This article considers the emergence, development and future of public theology in relation to its broader intellectual and social contexts, focusing primarily on the United States. Although some of the conditions that gave rise to the genre of public theology endure, developments and trends associated with a postsecular turn have created a strikingly different context, with new challenges and opportunities. In the article, it is argued that a primary task of public theology today consists in the critical engagement and reconfiguration of the reigning bipolar religion-secular model that fosters competing and mutually deficient religious and secular formations, and obscures forms of religiosity operating outside its conventional boundaries.