Product Description

"Capitalism and Christianity, American Style" is William E. Connolly's impassioned call for the democratic left to counter the conservative stranglehold over American religious and economic culture in order to put egalitarianism and ecological integrity on the political agenda. An eminent political theorist known for his work on identity, secularism, and pluralism, Connolly charts the path of the "evangelical-capitalist resonance machine," a bellicose ethos reverberating through contemporary institutional life. He argues that the vengeful vision of the Second Coming that motivates a segment of the evangelical right resonates with the ethos of greed animating the cowboy sector of American capitalism. The resulting evangelical-capitalist ethos finds expression in church pulpits, Fox News reports, the best-selling Left Behind novels, consumption practices, investment priorities, and state policies.These practices resonate together to diminish diversity, forestall responsibility to future generations, ignore urban poverty, and support a system of extensive economic inequality. Connolly describes how the evangelist-capitalist machine works, how its themes resound across class lines, and how it infiltrates numerous aspects of American life. Proposing changes in sensibility and strategy to challenge this machine, Connolly contends that the liberal distinction between secular public and religious private life must be reworked. Traditional notions of unity or solidarity must be translated into drives to forge provisional assemblages comprised of multiple constituencies and creeds.The left must also learn from the political right how power is infused into everyday institutions such as the media, schools, churches, consumption practices, corporations, and neighborhoods. Connolly explores the potential of a "tragic vision" to contest the current politics of existential resentment and political hubris, explores potential lines of connection between it and theistic faiths that break with the evangelical right, and charts the possibility of forging an "eco-egalitarian" economy. "Capitalism and Christianity, American Style" is William E. Connolly's most urgent work to date.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139674 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
"William E. Connolly is a towering figure in contemporary political theory whose profound reflections on democracy, religion, and the tragic unsettle and enrich us. In this powerful work he casts his philosophical gaze on the internal dynamics of the American Empire--especially the role of Christian traditions and capitalist practices. The result is vintage Connolly, namely, indispensable!" Cornel West , Princeton University "I immensely enjoyed reading Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. William E. Connolly offers insight, innovation, and wisdom. He brings substantive theorizing to the pressing political concerns of the moment, providing a sense of momentum and sheer energy. This book is relevant, in the strongest sense." Nigel Thrift, author of Knowing Capitalism "In these times, we desperately need William E. Connolly's impassioned study of inequality and the destruction of nature, his sheer awe at living-ness itself, his philosophy of immanent naturalism and deployment of the Deleuzian assemblage, and, especially, the interdisciplinary concreteness of his proposals for a resonance machine of resistance on the left. Along with Connolly's description of an ethos, or spiritualization, of academic engagement, a key contribution of this book is to advance what has been dangerously lacking on the left, a powerful analytics of the right's resonance machine and its recognition that the intellectual and the corporeal, the theological and the secular, never exist in purified, 'clean' categories."--Linda Kintz, author of Between Jesus and the Market: The Emotions That Matter in Right-Wing America "Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is the latest tour do force by William Connolly, who has been a leader in political theory for the past several decades...it is hard to find flaw in a book that is based on much of Connolly's recent work...it is a stirring call to action...if you, like me, sometimes tire of either utopian visions of revolution or dystopian accounts of the forthcoming end of the world, you will likely enjoy this book...Connolly's prose reflects the fundamental humility that is at the core of his message...the book is not just about political theory, but it is also a way forward." Jason Dittmer, University College London