And It Begins

Met with Dr. Heather Eaton today to start setting up my directed reading course. It pretty much went as I expected. We set some goals including a paper which we plan on up to 10 revisions (basically something I can turn around and submit for publication). I need to determine about four academic journals that I want to get articles in, preferably either read by or vetted by evangelical academics. Part of the trouble with studying at a historically Roman Catholic institution is that I don't know what journals would be good to look at. But this side of the course can wait until Oct., the job I have first of all is developing my reading list.

We worked on that a bit, 20-25 books. I'm looking primarily at political theology in this paper. So I need to get a sense of how this is working out in the evangelical theological world. On my to investigate list I have:

• Moltmann - Religion, Revolution and the Future; Theology of Hope; On Human Dignity
  
• *Volf/Katerburg - The Future of Hope
  
• Yoder - The Politics of Jesus
  
• Muller-Fahrenholz - The Kingdom and the Power
  
• Grenz - Renewing the Center
  
• Stackhouse - Evangelical Landscape
  
• *Bevans - Models of Contextual Theology
  
• *Schweitzer/Simon - Intersecting Voices
  
• Scott - Blackwell Companion to Political Theology
  
• Lakeland - Theology and Critical Theory
  
• Johnston - The Use of the Bible in Theology
  
• Metz - Faith in History and Society
  
• *Campbell - Critical Theory and Liberation Theology
  
• Siebert - From Critical Theory to Critical Political Theology; The Critical Theory of Religion, the Frankfurt School
  
• Baum - Religion and Alienation
  
• Rush - Cambridge Companion to Political Theory
  
• *Moore - The Kingdom of Christ
  
• Nolan - Jesus Before Christianity

That gives me a place to start. I need texts about evangelical theological methodology, serious works that aren't afraid to question the faith stances within the evangelical world. I'm going to spend some time looking at articles tomorrow, but I need to nail the reading list soon. Many of the above books are just out of simple searches, so except the ones with stars (those I anticipate keeping on the list) they can all go. I expect at least something from Moltmann and Metz on the list as I need to cover European Political Theology; Intersecting Voices is a good coverage of the North American version called Critical Theology; and if Campbell is not good I have a lot of decent texts on Liberation Theology (the Latin American version). Moore excited me because the synopsis sounds like a historical version of my PhD topic!

What will be cool is that I'm going to work with different hermeneutics of reading, I'll read the texts one way then Prof. Eaton will give me a different hermeneutic to re-read the texts with. Should be fun, but a lot of thinking. I started doing this with my masters research when doing revision work. But at this level it is all about method and thinking.

Next Friday the PhD seminar starts up. I'm actually looking forward to it, even though I've not heard good reviews of it.