In a thoroughly updated second edition of his popular and engaging book, John D. Caputo revisits Augustine’s ancient question "what do I love when I love my God?" and presses it into service in the post-modern world. Accessible but without compromising the big ideas, he raises the question of what religion means today in the face of widespread religious violence after 9/11, of spreading secularization, the dazzling discoveries of contemporary cosmology, and the eerie advent of the "post-human" world. All along sculpting the idea of a post-modern, post-secular "religion without religion," which turns on the "mystical element" of our lives, he wonders what the future of traditional religion will be, or whether it even has one.
On Religion will fascinate anyone interested in the challenges religion faces in the contemporary world. It offers an ideal starting point from which undergraduate and postgraduate students, teachers, and lecturers can explore religion and philosophy today.
Preface to the Second Edition
The Love of God One
Religion is for Lovers
The Impossible
The Secret
What do I Love When I Love My God?
How the Secular World Became Post-Secular Two
The Sacral Age
Secularization
Our Prophets: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
Desecularization: The Death of the Death of God
Putting Religion in Its Place Three
What is What?
Why the Why?
The Mystical Element in Life
The Place of Religion
Can There Be a Religion with Religion? Four
Never Say "Only" a Symbol
A God Before Whom We Can Sing and Dance
Why is Religion So Violent? Five
Impossible People
Religious Violence
Ban the Bible
Ban the Unconditional
Why Was Jesus Killed?
The Hermeneutics of Love
Cosmic Grace: World Without Why, Amen Six
God is Dead—Or Maybe Not So Fast
Cosmo-Theology
Panentheism or the Divine Milieu
Not Your Great-Grandfather’s Newtonianism
The Post-Humans: Immaculate Electronic Conceptions,
Virginally Virtual Births, Copy and Paste Resurrections
Becoming Divine: The Electronic Tree of Life
Cosmic Grace: World Without Why, Amen
On Religion – Without Religion Seven
Religious Truth/True Religion
The Tragic Sense of Life
The Faith of a Post-Modern
Axioms of a Religion Without Religion
Adieu
Index
Biography
John D. Caputo is Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University, USA and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University, USA.
"Caputo's ability to distill Continental thought - making it both more potent and more easily imbibed - was already on full display in On Religion. This revised edition maintains all the depth and approachability of the first while increasing the breadth of concepts, influences, and applications covered. For anyone teaching or just interested in the (re)turn to religion, it is time to move On Religion from 'recommended' to 'required'."
- David Cerequas, Hunter College (CUNY), USA
"Many are the people who write uninterestingly and unintelligently about religion. Precious few do the opposite, and no one writes more brilliantly and delightfully on religion than John Caputo. From the first sentence of On Religion to the last, Caputo guides you into what is arguably life's most alluring (and insistent) exploration. On Religion is both incisive and playful, accessible and profound, snarky (in a philosophical way) and reverent. This new second edition preserves all that made the original edition so outstanding and adds new material that makes this book even more worth reading - whether you're an agnostic college student or an aging minister like me."
- Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration
"This second edition of John Caputo's classic text on religion is a most welcome event. It is a book full of bold wit, singular compassion and surprising grace. Vintage Caputo, inviting us to an impossible God beyond God before whom one can dance and sing."
- Richard Kearney, Boston College, USA
"On Religion, 2nd Edition entertains as it provokes, and it should not be missed by anyone concerned with religion in a postmodern condition."
- Eric Weislogel, Saint Joseph's University, USA, Reading Religion
