Progressive and Conservative Religious Ideologies

This book explores the surprisingly disruptive role of religion for progressive and conservative ideologies in the tumultuous decade of the 1960s. Conservative movements were far more progressive than the standard religious narrative of the decade alleges and the notoriously progressive ethos of the era was far more conservative than our collective memory has recognized. Lints explores how the themes of protest and retrieval intersect each other in ironic ways in the significant concrete controversies of the 1960s - the Civil Rights Movement, Second Feminist Movement, The Jesus Movements, and the Anti-War Movements - and in the conceptual conflicts of ideas during the era - The Death of God Movement, the end of ideology controversy, and the death of foundationalism. Lints argues that religion and religious ideologies serve both a prophetic function as well as a domesticating one, and that neither "conservative" nor "progressive" movements have cornered the market in either direction. In the process Lints helps us better understand the complex role of religion in cultural formation.

Richard Lints is Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and has also taught at Trinity College (Bristol, UK), Yale Divinity School, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary. He has authored and/or edited: The Fabric of Theology (Eerdmans, 1993), Philosophical Terms for Theologians (Westminster/John Knox 2003) Personal Identity in Theological Perspective (Eerdmans 2004) as well as having published articles in journals such as Religious Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion and Modern Reformation. In addition he is presently working on two book length manuscripts: Identity and Idolatry and What Difference Does Difference Make: Ecclesiology, Democracy and the Clash of Traditions.