The Religious Critic in American Culture (Emotions)

This book provides a new rationale for religious criticism in American society. First, Dean shows why today s academic intellectuals are relatively indifferent to questions of meaning in America, pointing to the loss of American exceptionalism, the professionalization of the academy, and the rise of post-structural criticism. He then shows how intellectuals may reclaim a prophetic role by offering a new theory of the nature of religious thought. Tracing this theory to a twentieth-century emphasis on conventions, Dean provides a way to understand how imaginative social constructions can become active historical conventions, with real historical force. He suggests that the sacred itself begins as an imaginative construct and becomes a convention, thus working as an active, living force in history. Finally, Dean argues that religious critics must now reclaim a responsibility for shaping their society s sacred conventions."