Download or read book Theology Comedy Politics written by Marcus Pound and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What relevance has comedy for the global crises of late-modernity and the theological critique thereof? Coming out of the experience of war, a generation of modern theologians such as Donald MacKinnon, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and, more recently, Rowan Williams, in their accommodation to literature, choose tragedy as the paradigm for theological understanding and ethics. By contrast, this book develops recent philosophical, anthropological, and psychoanalytical studies of humor to develop a theology of comedy. By deconstructing secular accounts of comedy it advances the argument that comedy is not only participatory of the divine, but that it should inform our thinking about liturgical, sacramental, and ecclesial life if we are to respond to the postmodern age in which having fun is an ideological imperative of market forces.

Download or read book Christianity and the Triumph of Humor written by Bernard Schweizer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-17 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the development of religious comedy and leverages that history to justify today’s uses of religious humor in all of its manifestations, including irreverent jokes. It argues that regulating humor is futile and counterproductive, illustrating this point with a host of comedic examples. Humor is a powerful rhetorical tool for those who advocate and for those who satirize religious ideals. The book presents a compelling argument about the centrality of humor to the story of Western Christianity’s cultural and artistic development since the Middle Ages, taking a multi-disciplinary approach that combines literary criticism, religious studies, philosophy, theology, and social science. After laying out the conceptual framework in Part 1, Part 2 analyzes key works of religious comedy across the ages from Dante to the present, and it samples the breadth of contemporary religious humor from Brad Stine to Robin Williams, and from Monty Python to South Park. Using critical, historical, and conceptual lenses, the book exposes and overturns past attempts by church authorities, scholars, and commentators to limit and control laughter based on religious, ideological, or moral criteria. This is a unique look into the role of humor and comedy around religion. It will, therefore, appeal to readers interested in multiple fields of inquiry, including religious studies, humor studies, the history of ideas, and comparative literature.

Download or read book Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion written by Esther Eidinow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-03 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.

Download or read book Jewish Comedy A Serious History written by Jeremy Dauber and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award “Dauber deftly surveys the whole recorded history of Jewish humour.” —Economist In a major work of scholarship that explores the funny side of some very serious business (and vice versa), Jeremy Dauber examines the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing Jewish comedy into “seven strands”—including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar—he traces the ways Jewish comedy has mirrored, and sometimes even shaped, the course of Jewish history. Dauber also explores the classic works of such masters of Jewish comedy as Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Philip Roth, Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart, and Larry David, among many others.

Download or read book Campaign Comedy written by Gerald Gardner and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issues of our presidential elections and the virtues and flaws of our candidates come into sharp focus when illuminated by the wit of political observers. America's humorists brighten the electoral scene, reminding us that we needn't always look at presidential campaigns with a solemn air. Thanks to the satiric insights of America's wits, we are able to keep a sense of perspective about the candidates, particularly when their follies and foibles are most intolerable. It is the presidential campaign humor created by America's comedians, humorists, journalists, editorial cartoonists, and the candidates themselves that writer Gerald Gardner celebrates in Campaign Comedy. He reviews the humor, from the caustic to the comedic, that most recently targeted Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Ross Perot in the explosive 1992 election. He also focuses, in a campaign-by-campaign format, on the humor generated by the presidential campaigns ranging back to the epochal struggle between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. Candidates including Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Lyndon Johnson, and the men they defeated are also the subject of the hilarious or vicious wit that is chronicled here. Campaign Comedy is brimming with relevant and pithy humor from Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Art Buchwald, Mark Russell, Bob Hope, Mort Sahl, Garry Trudeau, and the closet wits who supplied the presidential candidates with the "spontaneous humor" that they employed during their campaigns. Gardner also highlights the campaign humor of television's most famous political shows, "That Was the Week That Was," "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," and "Saturday Night Live." Gerald Gardner provides a delightful reminder that humor is a basic form of communication through which the media, the humorists, and the candidates convey their skepticism, anger, and differences. He makes it clear why humor is the most essential element in a democracy and why it is the one ingredient that no totalitarian society seems to possess.

Download or read book Comedy Tragedy and Religion written by John Morreall and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1999-05-27 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CHOICE2000 Outstanding Academic Title Comedy, tragedy, and religion have been intertwined since ancient Greece, where comedy and tragedy arose as religious rituals. This groundbreaking book analyzes the worldviews of tragedy and comedy, and compares each with the world's major religions. Morreall contrasts the tragic and comic along twenty psychological and social dimensions and uses these to analyze both Eastern and Western traditions. Although no religion embodies a purely tragic or comic vision of life, some are mostly tragic and others mostly comic. In Eastern religions, Morreall finds no robust tragic vision but does find significant comic features, especially in Taoism and Zen Buddhism. In the Western monotheistic tradition, there are some comic features in the early Bible, but by the late Hebrew Bible, the tragic vision dominates. Two millennia have done little to reverse that tragic vision in Judaism. Christianity, on the other hand, has shown both tragic and comic features—Morreall writes of the Calvinist vision and the Franciscan vision—but in the contemporary era comic features have come to dominate. The author also explores Islam, and finds it has neither a comic nor a tragic vision. And, among new religions, those which emphasize the personal self come close to having an exclusively comic vision of life.

Download or read book Comedy Sex God written by Pete Holmes and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part autobiography, part philosophical inquiry, and part spiritual quest, Comedy Sex God is a hilarious, profound, and enlightening romp around the fertile mind of stand-up stand-out, podcast king, and HBO superstar Pete Holmes. Pete Holmes is a sold-out-every-night stand-up comedian with two HBO specials and the host of the hugely successful podcast You Made It Weird, and he was the creator-star of the hit HBO show Crashing. But it wasn’t always roses for Pete. Growing up, Pete was raised an evangelical Christian, but his religion taught him that being “bad”—smoking, drinking, having doubts or premarital sex—would get him sent to an eternity in hell. So, terrified of the God he loved, Pete devoted his life to being “good,” even marrying his first girlfriend at the age of twenty-two only to discover a few years later he was being cheated on. Thanks for nothing, God. Pete’s failed attempt at a picture-perfect life forced him to reexamine his beliefs, but neither atheism, nor Christianity, nor copious bottles of Yellow Tail led him to enlightenment. Pete longed for a model of faith that served him and his newfound uncertainties about the universe, so he embarked on a soul-seeking journey that continues to this day. Through encounters with mind-altering substances, honing his craft in front of thousands of his comedy fans, and spending time with savants like Ram Dass, Pete forged a new life—both spiritually and personally. Beautifully written and often completely hilarious—imagine Dass’s Be Here Now if penned by one of the funniest people alive—Comedy Sex God reveals a man at the top of his game and a seeker in search of the deeper meanings of life, love, and comedy.

Download or read book Theology in the Capitalocene written by Joerg Rieger and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joerg Rieger takes a new look at the things that cause the growing destruction and death of people and the planet. And yet, understanding is only a start. Solidarity and the willingness to work at the intersections--the triad of gender, race, class, and more--must mark the work of theology.

Download or read book What s So Funny About God written by Steve Wilkens and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jokes often touch on the biggest topics of our existence, but many Christians haven't taken humor seriously. This insightful yet delightful crash course from philosopher Steve Wilkens argues that viewing Scripture and theology through the lens of humor helps us understand the gospel and avoid the pitfalls of both naturalism and gnosticism, while facilitating a humble, honest, and appealing approach to faith.

Download or read book Political Orthodoxies written by Cyril Hovorun and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dispatches on nationalism and religion As an insider to church politics and a scholar of contemporary Orthodoxy, Cyril Hovorun outlines forms of political orthodoxy in Orthodox churches, past and present. Hovorun draws a big picture of religion being politicized and even weaponized. While Political Orthodoxies assesses phenomena such as nationalism and anti-Semitism, both widely associated with Eastern Christianity, Hovorun focuses on the theological underpinnings of the culture wars waged in eastern and southern Europe. The issues in these wars include monarchy and democracy, Orientalism and Occidentalism, canonical territory, and autocephaly. Wrought with peril, Orthodox culture wars have proven to turn toward bloody conflict, such as in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Accordingly, this book explains the aggressive behavior of Russia toward its neighbors and the West from a religious standpoint. The spiritual revival of Orthodoxy after the collapse of Communism made the Orthodox church in Russia, among other things, an influential political protagonist, which in some cases goes ahead of the Kremlin. Following his identification and analysis, Hovorun suggests ways to bring political Orthodoxy back to the apostolic and patristic track.

Download or read book What s So Funny About God written by Steve Wilkens and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you don't believe God has a sense of humor, just look in the mirror. Humor is a truly human phenomenon—crossing history, culture, and every stage of life. Jokes often touch on the biggest topics of our existence. And although it may seem simple on the surface, humor depends on the use of our highest faculties: language, intelligence, sympathy, sociability. To the philosopher Steve Wilkens, these facts about humor are evidence that God just has to be in there somewhere. Yet many Christians, scholars and laypeople alike, haven't taken humor seriously. In What’s So Funny About God? Wilkens launches an exploration of the connections between humor and many of the central topics of Christian theology. He argues that viewing Scripture and theology through the lens of humor brings fresh insight to our understanding of the gospel, helps us avoid the pitfalls of both naturalism and gnosticism, and facilitates a humble, honest, and appealing approach to faith. Wilkens turns this lens on the paradoxes of human nature, the Christian calendar, church life, and new readings of well-known biblical texts, including the book of Esther, the nativity narratives, and Jesus' own teachings. Taking into account the problems of suffering and the need for timely lament, he portrays the Christian story as one that ultimately ends in cosmic comedy. Full of wit and thoughtful jokes throughout, it's enough fun that you may not realize you're reading theology.

Download or read book Deep Comedy written by Peter J. Leithart and published by Canon Press & Book Service. This book was released on 2006 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this short but stimulating work, Peter Leithart draws upon insights from history, theology, philosophy, and literature to connect two of the most glorious and unique truths of Christianity its hopeful eschatology and its doctrine of a dynamic, personal Trinity. First, Leithart shows that the biblical view of history is essentially comic and hopeful, in contrast to the classical Greco-Roman view, which is essentially and irredeemably tragic. Then he develops the same point by examining Greek philosophy and its descendants (including postmodernism) in contrast to orthodox Trinitarian theology. Finally, he shows how the tragic and comic worldviews have been reflected in literature, with discussions of Greek epics and two Shakespearean plays. The result is a tour through three thousand years of intellectual history that celebrates the living power of orthodoxy."

Download or read book The Politics of God written by Kathryn Tanner and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty years ago, Kathryn Tanner put forward a daring proposal. Traditional Christian theologies, she insisted, can be a source of political transformation rather than a sponsor of the status quo. Through a rigorous analysis of Christian beliefs in their historical, theological, and social diversity, Tanner connects belief to attitudes and action and shows how doctrines can relate to each other, to social systems, and to ethical behavior. Drawing on the theologies of divine transcendence and creation that animate and organize so much of her work, The Politics of God frees traditional theology from its captivity to unjust rulers and systems and unleashes its radical potential for liberation, empowerment, and the pursuit of a just society. This anniversary edition includes a major new preface, in which Tanner addresses the changes in the social and political situation that have accumulated in the decades since the book's publication and resituates her argument for a new generation of theologians and activists.

Download or read book Making Sense of God written by Timothy Keller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

Download or read book Old and New Theology written by John Bickford Heard and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Metaphysics of Dante s Comedy written by Christian Moevs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moevs offers a treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates 'The Divine Comedy', and the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. He arrives at the conclusion that Dante believed that all of what we perceive as reality is in fact a creation or projection of conscious being.

Download or read book A Comedian s Guide to Theology written by Thor Ramsey and published by Revell. This book was released on 2008-03-03 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thor Ramsey (known as the Jon Stewart of the theological world) defends the essentials of the Christian faith in this volume of comedy for the thinking person. Armed with only a laptop and a rapier wit, he defends the inspiration of the Bible ("all Scripture is inspired by God"--in other words, when you tell someone off, quote the Bible), the doctrine of total depravity (calling someone out for their sins is a tricky business, especially if you don't know how to operate a bullhorn), and the supremacy of Christ (or why Thor's God is bigger than your god), along with a host of other essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Packed with funny stories and hard-hitting truths, this comprehensive collection of biblical insights and personal anecdotes will surprise readers, destroy their misconceptions, and leave them wanting more. For readers looking alternatives to the conversation of traditional faith, or those who have a taste for fearless (and hilarious) honesty, A Comedian's Guide to Theology will permanently change how we all look at Christianity--or at least offer a good-hearted shove out of the box (or back in the box, if that's where you need to be).