Ted A. Smith

Robert Patrick Jones

This volume brings together a diverse group of scholars to consider one of the most pressing issues of our time: increasing inequalities of income and wealth that grate against justice and erode the bonds that hold society together. Spirit and Capital in an Age of Inequality explores the inner experience of life in a society marked by inequality, tracing the contours of stress, hopelessness, and a restless lack of contentment by pointing to visions of a common good that might offer some new ways forward.This volume will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars of religion and economics, as well as policy-makers seeking a more thorough understanding of the role of religion and theology in public life.

Spirit and Capital in an Age of Inequality

Conventional wisdom holds that attempts to combine religion and politics will produce unlimited violence. Concepts such as jihad, crusade, and sacrifice need to be rooted out, the story goes, for the sake of more bounded and secular understandings of violence. Ted Smith upends this dominant view, drawing on Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, and others to trace the ways that seemingly secular politics produce their own forms of violence without limit. He brings this argument to life—and digs deep into the American political imagination—through a string of surprising reflections on John Brown, the nineteenth-century abolitionist who took up arms against the state in the name of a higher law. Smith argues that the key to limiting violence is not its separation from religion, but its connection to richer and more critical modes of religious reflection. Weird John Brown develops a negative political theology that challenges both the ways we remember American history and the ways we think about the nature, meaning, and exercise of violence.

Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics

Weird John Brown

Robert P. Jones

Spirit and Capital in an Age of Inequality brings together a diverse group of scholars, activists and public intellectuals to consider one of the most pressing issues of our time: increasing inequalities of income and wealth that grate against justice and erode the bonds that hold society together. The contributors think through different religious traditions to understand and address inequality. They make practical proposals in relation to concrete situations like mass incarceration and sweatshops. They also explore the inner experience of life in a society marked by inequality, tracing the contours of stress, hopelessness and a restless lack of contentment. This book honors the work of Jon P. Gunnemann, who has been a leading scholar at the intersections of religion and economics. Spirit and Capital in an Age of Inequality will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars of religion and economics. It will be useful to policy-makers and activists seeking a more thorough understanding of the role of religion and theology in public life.

Ted A. Smith

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