Ebook: American Religious Empiricism

This is a clear and sharply written defense of the thesis that American empirical theology, especially that associated with the Chicago School, is a postmodern movement in the sense advocated by the deconstructionists. Whereas it usually is thought that Protestant neo-orthodoxy brought life back into theology, Dean argues that it was merely a late gasp of the dying transcendental-signified culture.

It shows what unifies the thought, stretching from the idealistic empiricism of Jonathan Edwards, to the pragmatic empiricism of James and Dewey, to the cosmological empiricism of Whitehead, to the socio-historical empiricism of the Chicago School theologians, to the current work of the growing body of process theologians. The book argues that theology needs a new form, one that will make American religious empiricism into a faithful historicism, a continual reinterpretation of the religious past.