Pragmatic Theology: Negotiating the Intersections of an American Philosophy of Religion and Public Theology (Suny Series, Religion and American Public Life)

Argues that while contemporary American philosophies and philosophers of religion are proclaiming the end of theology, a neopragmatism has arrived to fill the void in meaning and moral fulfillment to which theology once supplied answers.

Pragmatic Theology argues for a vision of religious life that is derived from the tradition of American pragmatism (James, Dewey, Royce); empirical theology (Chicago School, D.C. Macintosh, H. Richard Niebuhr); and American philosophy of religion (Stone, Frankenberry, Corrington). The author argues that there is a divine reality in human experience that when encountered gives meaning and value to a person’s need for cultural fulfillment and to his or her religious need for self-transcendence. The book commends the openness of nature, the world, and human experience to creative transformation and growth. It supports the increase of human capacities to create morally livable and fulfilling communities, the enhancement of the free play of interpretation, and a social order where democratic utopian expectations are envisioned and actualized.