Of Theology's Resurgence

A snippet of this article, taken from The Curator:

Theology is returning to the intellectual scene, says John Milbank, professor of religion, politics and ethics at the University of Nottingham. "That's why people like Richard Dawkins are so frightened, and why we're getting a more militant atheism."

He rattles off a list of renowned philosophers - Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux - who are currently writing about Christianity. In The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?, due for publication next month, Milbank debates with Slavoj Zizek, Marxist theorist and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, about secularism, politics and the meaning of Christianity. The pair will also cross swords at an Institute of Contemporary Arts debate in mid-June.

"Forty years ago it would have been very unusual for a theologian to be in a public debate with a major intellectual. It's a sign of a shift," Milbank says. "Even Marxists take religion seriously. It's only the Anglo-Saxon left liberals that don't."

So then, I while the rising militant anti-Christian movement can be very annoying and disheartening, it can actually be considered a good thing. In my opinion, one reason that it is occurring is because American Christianity is finally emerging from a generational lapse in clinging to good theology.

Finally, it seems, the up-and-coming generation has actually lept from their parents faith to own it as their own, and in doing so has lept to solid theological footing, or at least the pursuit of such.