Crystal L. Downing introduces students (especially those in the arts) to postmodernism: where it came from, and how Christians can best understand, critique and benefit from its insights.

Demonstrates how to reconcile postmodernism with Christian faith.

First Published in 1992. On questions of faith, Ernest Gellner believes, three ideological options are available to us today. One is the return to a genuine and firm faith in a religious tradition. The other is a form of relativism which abandons the notion of unique truth altogether and resigns itself to treating truth as relative to the society or culture in question. The third, which Gellner calls enlightenment rationalism, upholds the idea that there is a unique truth, but denies that any society can ever possess it definitively. Learned and stimulating, Professor Gellner’s book is an important contribution to our understanding of postmodernism and the relations between Islam and the West. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the ideological condition of contemporary society.

John Riggs argues for a common ground between postmodernism and Christianity, focusing on how this applies to issues such as reproductive rights and the ordination of women, gay men, and lesbians, and suggest that Christianity avoid the extreme positions of either completely accommodating itself to or completely rejecting postmodern culture.

Postmodernism has been both heralded and hated, accepted and denounced. But which is the proper response? Is it an impetus to spiritual revival or an invitation to sinister deception? Carmen C. DiCello points out that Christians must examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21) while remaining alert to potential hazards. Steering clear of extremes, this book offers an approach to postmodernism in which believers can justly resist its darker elements while embracing its more noble ones. Postmodernism is best seen as a 'Dangerous Blessing.'

We live in a culture which has broadly rejected the possibility of absolute belief in one over-riding truth. And yet we are surrounded by people who do believe, who indeed are often intensely religious, but believe in different things. The current fragmentation of culture is a challenge to all major religions. Given that we have to live together, and given that many of our starting points are the same, even if our interpretations are different, how do we cope with the practical, day to day task of living and thriving in the same socio-political environment? This key dilemma is addressed by an international team of writers. There are essays on gender issues, sexuality, ecology, Buddhist belief and practice, social justice, and others.

Pushing past the constraints of postmodernism which cast "reason" and"religion" in opposition, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, seizes the opportunity to question the authority of "the modern" and open the limits of possible experience, including the call to religious experience, as a new millennium approaches. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, engages with Jean-Luc Marion and other religious philosophers to entertain questions about intention, givenness, and possibility which reveal the extent to which deconstruction is structured like religion. New interpretations of Kant, Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida emerge from essays and discussions with distinguished philosophers and theologians from the United States and Europe. The result is that God, the Gift, and Postmodernism elaborates a radical phenomenology that stretches the limits of its possibility and explores areas where philosophy and religion have become increasingly and surprisingly convergent. Contributors include: John D. Caputo, John Dominic Crossan, Jacques Derrida, Robert Dodaro, Richard Kearney, Jean-Luc Marion, Frangoise Meltzer, Michael J. Scanlon, Mark C. Taylor, David Tracy, Merold Westphal and Edith Wyschogrod.