A Materialism for the Masses: Saint Paul and the Philosophy of Undying Life (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)

Nietzsche and Freud saw Christianity as metaphysical escapism, with Nietzsche calling the religion a "Platonism for the masses" and faulting Paul the apostle for negating more immanent, material modes of thought and political solidarity. Integrating this debate with the philosophies of difference espoused by Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ward Blanton argues that genealogical interventions into the political economies of Western cultural memory do not go far enough in relation to the imagined founder of Christianity.

Blanton challenges the idea of Paulinism as a pop Platonic worldview or form of social control. He unearths in Pauline legacies otherwise repressed resources for new materialist spiritualities and new forms of radical political solidarity, liberating "religion" from inherited interpretive assumptions so philosophical thought can manifest in risky, radical freedom.

• Paul and the Philosophers
• Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Cultural Memory in the Present)
• Paul's Summons to Messianic Life: Political Theology and the Coming Awakening (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)
• A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)
• St. Paul among the Philosophers (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion)
• The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
• The Political Theology of Paul (Cultural Memory in the Present)
• The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Short Circuits)