Rosemary Radford Ruether: A Prophet of the Planetary By Whitney A. Bauman At a recent meeting of the American Academy of Religion, there was much sharing of memories about prominent scholars in religious studies who passed away in 2021 and 2022, including my mentor, Rosemary Radford Ruether. Ruether was an Read more
Thinking Past the Anthropocene By Whitney A. Bauman As Sylvia Wynter, Aph Ko, and many other decolonial theorists argue (not to mention post-humanists, indigenous scholars, queer theorists, and other critical theorists of race, gender, sex, and ableness), the “human” of “the humanities” in modern western educational institutions was based upon Read more
Decolonizing for the Planetary Community: Many Worlds, One Planet By Whitney A. Bauman Sylvia Wynter has argued, I think successfully, that the idea of the human and subsequently what the “Humanities” are, grew out of a colonial context. The human was made in the image of the European, western, white Read more
Celebrating Four Years of Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge By Whitney A. Bauman and Kocku von Stuckrad If we want to address the major challenges of the 21st century—first and foremost climate disasters, human and other-than-human interdependencies on a global scale, as well as issues of social justice—concerted action is needed to Read more
Entanglement and Relationality By Whitney A. Bauman At a recent one-day symposium in Berlin on “The Body, Religion and Planetary Imagination in a Time of Environmental Crisis,” I was asked what I meant when I used the word “entanglement” and whether it was different from “relationality.” I’ve been thinking about Read more
Hospitality in an Era of Pandemics, War, and Climate Change By Whitney A. Bauman The western Christian Easter season has become increasingly hard for me over the years. This April marks the first anniversary of the death of one of my best friends and the birthday of my late father, Read more
Planetary Goodness, Beauty, and Truth By Whitney A. Bauman In many ways the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were marked by a slow slide in western modern thought from transcendent ideals to immanent, relational realities. The universal truths, transcendent ideals of beauty, and moral ideals of ultimate good and evil began Read more
The False Gods of Individual Freedom and Nature By Whitney A. Bauman From anti-immigration in Europe to anti-vaxxers in the US and elsewhere, the strange phenomenon of so-called “horseshoe theory politics” continues to rear its head. Though many have a problem with this theory of politics, the question still remains: Read more
What Are the Time-Scapes of Our Thinking? By Whitney A. Bauman Timescape: 1) A perspective over a period (particularly a long period) of time. 2) A multidimensional view of time, especially one in which time travel occurs. (From Wiktionary) As the human worlds begin to (prematurely?) come out of “Covid Read more
Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances A Discussion of Catherine Keller’s New Book Please join Counterpoint for an online discussion of Catherine Keller’s new book, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances (Orbis Books 2021) Date: 11 May 2021 Time: 11:00-12:30 EST / 17:00-18:30 CET Drawing on Read more