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Dan Rhodes

Loyola University Chicago, Institute for Pastoral Studies, Faculty Member

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I'm currently clinical associate professor of social justice at Loyola University Chicago, Institute of Pastoral Studies. I have a particular interest in the intersection of political theology, pedagogy, radical democracy, and social change.

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Daniel D. Hutto

University of Wollongong

The University of Texas at Austin

Lydia Schumacher

King's College London

Timothy Williamson

University of Oxford

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Birkbeck College, University of London

University of Birmingham

Rob S E A N Wilson

University of California, Santa Cruz

University of Genova

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Papers by Dan Rhodes

A New Geography of Theological Education and the Ethics of Community Centered Learning

by Dan Rhodes, Timothy Conder, and Angela Cowser

Religion & Education, 2024

Institutions and scholars working in the area of communitybased education are keenly attuned to t... more Institutions and scholars working in the area of communitybased
education are keenly attuned to the ethics of engaging
those communities and their members. The concern is that the
local community not be exploited but be treated with respect
and understood as a mutual partner in the program. Yet continually,
as we argue in this essay, such programs tend to repeat
the very instrumentalization they are hoping to avoid because
their design focuses more on student-centered experiences of
individual growth and enrichment constructed upon a relational
geography that privileges the ends of the learning institution.
Such a dynamic shapes community-based theological education
too, the institutional location we focus on in this essay. Hence,
we propose that our institutions of learning need to be (re)located
within local communities if we are going to shift this structural
dynamic. To develop more just and transformative learning
institutions, we argue, requires a new geography of education
by developing community-centered modes of knowledge production
through action-research practices that foster collaboration,
solidarity, and collective action to forge a shared ethic.
Moving in this direction will require a new geography of education
for community-based learning. As an example, we offer a
sketch from our own work at The Black Mountain School of
Theology & Community.

Review of Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church

Virtue and Power: The Narrative of Reason and the Reasoning of Public Narratives in the Construction of a New Politics of the Collective Good

Political Theology, 2023

This essay argues for a politics constructed on a refined version of virtue ethics that is more r... more This essay argues for a politics constructed on a refined version of
virtue ethics that is more radically democratic and thereby more
directly concerned with imbalances and asymmetries of power.
Beginning with a critique of MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotelian account,
I contend that he does not sufficiently tend to the full dynamic
between rationality and power thereby occluding key democratic
practices needed to counter the dominion of modern capitalism.
While he offers the prospect of social protection and integration,
his virtue ethics fails sufficiently to incorporate emancipatory
movement, a problem I trace to his dismissal of Periclean isegoria
and his truncated narrative of the oppression inherent to
capitalism. Returning to this Periclean practice, I look to the
example of Zapatista Kuxlejal politics to develop a virtue ethics
that incorporates social integration with emancipation through
receptive self-making in public narrative, collective governance in
mutual obedience, and a participatory pedagogy of the collective
good.

Against the World: The Doctrine of Separation within the Political Context of the Origins of Swiss Anabaptism

The cost of cheap freedom and the liberation of discipleship

Review & Expositor

This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. De... more This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. Describing the freedom associated with market relations, as conceived by F. A. Hayek, as a negative and cheap form of freedom primarily exercised in a freedom from outside interference, I discuss the cost of fully embracing this kind of freedom to the common life of a society and its constituents, identifying its true price in pervasive fragmentation, animosity, and injustice. I will then contrast this view of freedom with the positive freedom of discipleship described as the new way of life (κοινωνíα) koinonia for God’s people in Acts 2. In conclusion, I argue that the liberation of discipleship can ultimately free us from the economic enslavement to which we have become so accustomed.

Multiple Entries in the Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States

Life in the Struggle: Liturgical Innovation in the Face of the Cultural Devastation of Disaster Capitalism 1

Journal of Moral Theology, 2020

, SEVEN MONTHS AFTER hurricane Katrina enveloped the coast of Louisiana submerging 80 percent of ... more , SEVEN MONTHS AFTER hurricane Katrina enveloped the coast of Louisiana submerging 80 percent of New Orleans under water, 2 I travelled with a group of young adults from my church in North Carolina on a mission-relief trip to join in on the recovery efforts. Partnering with a local urban ministry, we descended upon the Central City district, working by day in one of the surrounding communities most affected by the floodwaters. Our church team was one of thousands of such groups to converge upon the city in the wake of the storm to assist in the process of cleaning up and rebuilding. Even seven months afterward, most of the city was still in shambles. When the levees broke, the ensuing flood killed over 1,800 people, wreaking $108 billion in damage and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. 3 Driving through, I remember block upon block of vacant houses, a black high-water stain nearly touching the roof still evident across their façades. Spray-painted letters and symbols were scrawled on the front of the homes, the remnants of the National Guard's sweep of the neighborhood checking for bodies and pets in the weeks following the hurricane. It was a somber and hauntingly empty place; too still, too deserted. Amid such devastation, our team was tasked with pulling everything out of the houses and gutting them completely, as the first stage of clean up and restoration post-disaster. The desolation of these previously lively neighborhoods is hard to illustrate, and working within these homes was quite disorienting. We were not just removing waterlogged, rotten, and moldy dry wall, but

Whose Revolution? Which Future? The Legacy of Alasdair MacIntyre for a Radical Pedagogy in Virtue

Expositions, 2020

Most readers of Alasdair MacIntyre do not take him to be a revolutionary. If one reads only his w... more Most readers of Alasdair MacIntyre do not take him to be a revolutionary. If one reads only his works from the past thirty years, one might easily categorize him as a conservative. No doubt due to his sustained critique of modern liberalism, many of those labelled today as neoconservatives have embraced this ersatz version of his thought. 1 Yet as becomes clear in his most recent book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, MacIntyre's Aristotelianism and his critique of liberal moral theory are not rooted in a reactionary longing for a golden-age past. 2 They derive, on the contrary, from his deep engagement with that bane of all economic and moral conservatives, Karl Marx, and his interest in Marxist revolution. Of course, MacIntyre is no "vulgar Marxist." Instead, his work stands as revolutionary in its own way. As Walter Benjamin once wrote, amid unleashed and overwhelming capitalism, revolutions may be more like an attempt "to activate the emergency break" than to launch history forward. 3 As we narrate in §1 below, there can be no doubt that we all now live in a time of capitalism run out of control. Thus, to resist the new brand of nihilism emerging from capitalism's unceasing stream of "creative destruction" will require new ways forward that are nothing short of radical. MacIntyre, we suggest, might just be the revolutionary we need. Or, to be more precise, the counter-revolutionary. In this article, we argue that at the heart of MacIntyre's work is not a template for visions of isolated communities of restorationist reactionaries. Rather, he points us toward a radical pedagogy dedicated to the creation of thickly-engaged communities of virtue capable of resisting the fragmenting, isolating, and vicious forces of capital. To make this case, we bring MacIntyre into conversation with others who share this vision, in particular Paulo Freire, and we connect MacIntyre's agenda with the creation of communities of practice, as prototyped by the base communities of liberation theology. In conclusion, we argue that what MacIntyre has sought so thoroughly to develop over the entire course of his career is a moral theory capable of sustaining a revolutionary alternative to the alienating and dehumanizing operations of capitalism located in the basic elements of shared concrete practices. Thus, virtues are the elements of a

The cost of cheap freedom and the liberation of discipleship

Review and Expositor, 2019

This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. De... more This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. Describing the freedom associated with market relations, as conceived by F. A. Hayek, as a negative and cheap form of freedom primarily exercised in a freedom from outside interference, I discuss the cost of fully embracing this kind of freedom to the common life of a society and its constituents, identifying its true price in pervasive fragmentation, animosity, and injustice. I will then contrast this view of freedom with the positive freedom of discipleship described as the new way of life (κοινωνíα) koinonia for God's people in Acts 2. In conclusion, I argue that the liberation of discipleship can ultimately free us from the economic enslavement to which we have become so accustomed. Glenn Beck-the host of an eponymously named and extremely popular Fox News show-devoted his entire program to a discussion of a mid-twentieth-century Viennese economist most people knew nothing of and whose name they likely could not even pronounce. The economist was Friedrich August von Hayek, better known as F. A. Hayek. Discussion of Hayek was a strange choice for a program usually devoted more to current events and hot-button political commentary. Beck, however, clearly thought the country was at a "crossroads" and that the future of the nation was at stake. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression had rocked the country only a few years earlier, and many people and institutions were still reeling. Furthermore, the nation's leaders were torn regarding how to move forward in recovery. As Beck perceived it, the nation was flirting with socialism if not full-blown crimson communism , the end of which could only be totalitarianism and oppression. With such weighty decisions hanging in the balance, Beck thought it essential to return to this historical figure who had championed the free-market system against its socialist despisers. On the line was freedom itself. As Beck saw it, and as he desperately wanted his viewers to see it, capitalism was the only option, the only system consistent with liberty, prosperity, and human dignity. As indicated by the title to Hayek's

Against the World

Baptist History and Heritage, 2019

TIME EMPTIED AND TIME RENEWED: THE DOMINION OF CAPITAL AND A THEO-POLITICS OF CONTRETEMPS

JCRT, 2018

In his long-awaited interjection into the debates on the future of Marxism after the collapse of ... more In his long-awaited interjection into the debates on the future of Marxism after the collapse of Soviet state communism, Jacques Derrida introduces the notion of contretemps. 1 It is a concept that appears amid his call for a New International to bear the legacy of critique in a (final) epoch dominated by the new world order with its ten pervasive plagues. As is to be expected however, Derrida is no orthodox Marxist, and his intervention seeks, in part, to proffer a deconstructionist critique of the canonical concepts of class, history, party, etc. At the same time, he seeks to channel the critical spirit of Marx in order to re-politicize the current moment, introducing contretemps in order to highlight the persistent openness and counter-temporality intrinsic to the work of democracy. The details of Derrida's heterodoxy and his dispute with more mainstream Marxists, however, are not of primary interest for this essay. Still, I take his notion of contretemps to be an entry point for looking at how the church can draw upon Marxist insights for reimagining its own transformative political practice, particularly in an age of global capital. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, wherein the ghost of the murdered Danish king continues to disturb his perplexed son, Derrida's engagement suggests that the specter of Marx haunts the dominion of global capital, as a troubled spirit arising from the ache of a society whose relations have been pulled out of joint. At the heart of an unfettered and regnant capital, he suggests, is a distorted time. Derrida asserts, "The age is off its hinges. Everything, beginning with time, seems out of kilter, unjust, dis-adjusted," as the time of quantifiable instants and unlimited accumulation distorts the structure and rhythm of social and political relations. 2 Given the madness and the dislocation of time, a resistance that works toward democracy, justice, and solidarity must be something of an untimely, out-of-step practice.

TIME EMPTIED AND TIME RENEWED: THE DOMINION OF CAPITAL AND A THEO- POLITICS OF CONTRETEMPS1

Using a Marxish framework of contretemps, this article provides an analysis of the configuration ... more Using a Marxish framework of contretemps, this article provides an analysis of the configuration of time under capital as the key ordering mechanism of its dominion. Any attempt to resist its hollowing out of life, therefore, must act to change time. While radical attempts to enact such a change remain forestalled, a theo-politics of contretemps constituted in the ecclesial practices of the Table and the Rule of Christ constitute a counter-force to capital's dominion through the renewing of time. I argue that as the reign of God infuses these practices, structuring the community's flows with an alternative tempo resonant with a peculiar mode of co-governance, they can resist the homogenizing circuits of capital time and embody a real political alternative. In his long-awaited interjection into the debates on the future of Marxism after the collapse of Soviet state communism, Jacques Derrida introduces the notion of contretemps.2 It is a concept that appears amid his call for a New International to bear the legacy of critique in a (final) epoch dominated by the new world order with its ten pervasive plagues. As is to be expected however, Derrida is no orthodox Marxist, and his intervention seeks, in part, to proffer a deconstructionist critique of the canonical concepts of class, history, party, etc. At the same time, he seeks to channel the critical spirit of Marx in order to re-politicize the current moment, introducing contretemps in order to highlight the persistent openness and counter-temporality intrinsic to the work of democracy. The details of Derrida's heterodoxy and his dispute with more mainstream Marxists, however, are not of primary interest for this essay. Still, I take his notion of contretemps to be an entry point for looking at how the church can draw upon Marxist insights for reimagining its own transformative political practice, particularly in an age of global capital. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, wherein the ghost of the murdered Danish king continues to disturb his perplexed son, Derrida's engagement suggests that the specter of Marx haunts the dominion of global capital, as a troubled spirit arising from the ache of a society whose relations have been pulled out of joint. At the heart of an unfettered and regnant capital, he suggests, is a distorted time. Derrida asserts, " The age is off its hinges. Everything, beginning with time, seems out of kilter, unjust, dis-adjusted, " as the time of quantifiable instants and unlimited accumulation distorts the structure and rhythm of 1 My thanks to [intentionally deleted for purposes of anonymity] for their insightful comments and suggestions on this essay.

Beyond Contemplation: The Possibility of an Apocalyptic Political Orthodoxy

The Virtue of Revelation: A Post-Secular Politics of Property

Hegel and Labor

Marks of Messianic Time

A New Geography of Theological Education and the Ethics of Community Centered Learning

by Dan Rhodes, Timothy Conder, and Angela Cowser

Religion & Education, 2024

Institutions and scholars working in the area of communitybased education are keenly attuned to t... more Institutions and scholars working in the area of communitybased
education are keenly attuned to the ethics of engaging
those communities and their members. The concern is that the
local community not be exploited but be treated with respect
and understood as a mutual partner in the program. Yet continually,
as we argue in this essay, such programs tend to repeat
the very instrumentalization they are hoping to avoid because
their design focuses more on student-centered experiences of
individual growth and enrichment constructed upon a relational
geography that privileges the ends of the learning institution.
Such a dynamic shapes community-based theological education
too, the institutional location we focus on in this essay. Hence,
we propose that our institutions of learning need to be (re)located
within local communities if we are going to shift this structural
dynamic. To develop more just and transformative learning
institutions, we argue, requires a new geography of education
by developing community-centered modes of knowledge production
through action-research practices that foster collaboration,
solidarity, and collective action to forge a shared ethic.
Moving in this direction will require a new geography of education
for community-based learning. As an example, we offer a
sketch from our own work at The Black Mountain School of
Theology & Community.

Review of Judith A. Merkle, Beyond Our Lights and Shadows: Charism and Institution in the Church

Virtue and Power: The Narrative of Reason and the Reasoning of Public Narratives in the Construction of a New Politics of the Collective Good

Political Theology, 2023

This essay argues for a politics constructed on a refined version of virtue ethics that is more r... more This essay argues for a politics constructed on a refined version of
virtue ethics that is more radically democratic and thereby more
directly concerned with imbalances and asymmetries of power.
Beginning with a critique of MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotelian account,
I contend that he does not sufficiently tend to the full dynamic
between rationality and power thereby occluding key democratic
practices needed to counter the dominion of modern capitalism.
While he offers the prospect of social protection and integration,
his virtue ethics fails sufficiently to incorporate emancipatory
movement, a problem I trace to his dismissal of Periclean isegoria
and his truncated narrative of the oppression inherent to
capitalism. Returning to this Periclean practice, I look to the
example of Zapatista Kuxlejal politics to develop a virtue ethics
that incorporates social integration with emancipation through
receptive self-making in public narrative, collective governance in
mutual obedience, and a participatory pedagogy of the collective
good.

Against the World: The Doctrine of Separation within the Political Context of the Origins of Swiss Anabaptism

The cost of cheap freedom and the liberation of discipleship

Review & Expositor

This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. De... more This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. Describing the freedom associated with market relations, as conceived by F. A. Hayek, as a negative and cheap form of freedom primarily exercised in a freedom from outside interference, I discuss the cost of fully embracing this kind of freedom to the common life of a society and its constituents, identifying its true price in pervasive fragmentation, animosity, and injustice. I will then contrast this view of freedom with the positive freedom of discipleship described as the new way of life (κοινωνíα) koinonia for God’s people in Acts 2. In conclusion, I argue that the liberation of discipleship can ultimately free us from the economic enslavement to which we have become so accustomed.

Multiple Entries in the Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States

Life in the Struggle: Liturgical Innovation in the Face of the Cultural Devastation of Disaster Capitalism 1

Journal of Moral Theology, 2020

, SEVEN MONTHS AFTER hurricane Katrina enveloped the coast of Louisiana submerging 80 percent of ... more , SEVEN MONTHS AFTER hurricane Katrina enveloped the coast of Louisiana submerging 80 percent of New Orleans under water, 2 I travelled with a group of young adults from my church in North Carolina on a mission-relief trip to join in on the recovery efforts. Partnering with a local urban ministry, we descended upon the Central City district, working by day in one of the surrounding communities most affected by the floodwaters. Our church team was one of thousands of such groups to converge upon the city in the wake of the storm to assist in the process of cleaning up and rebuilding. Even seven months afterward, most of the city was still in shambles. When the levees broke, the ensuing flood killed over 1,800 people, wreaking $108 billion in damage and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. 3 Driving through, I remember block upon block of vacant houses, a black high-water stain nearly touching the roof still evident across their façades. Spray-painted letters and symbols were scrawled on the front of the homes, the remnants of the National Guard's sweep of the neighborhood checking for bodies and pets in the weeks following the hurricane. It was a somber and hauntingly empty place; too still, too deserted. Amid such devastation, our team was tasked with pulling everything out of the houses and gutting them completely, as the first stage of clean up and restoration post-disaster. The desolation of these previously lively neighborhoods is hard to illustrate, and working within these homes was quite disorienting. We were not just removing waterlogged, rotten, and moldy dry wall, but

Whose Revolution? Which Future? The Legacy of Alasdair MacIntyre for a Radical Pedagogy in Virtue

Expositions, 2020

Most readers of Alasdair MacIntyre do not take him to be a revolutionary. If one reads only his w... more Most readers of Alasdair MacIntyre do not take him to be a revolutionary. If one reads only his works from the past thirty years, one might easily categorize him as a conservative. No doubt due to his sustained critique of modern liberalism, many of those labelled today as neoconservatives have embraced this ersatz version of his thought. 1 Yet as becomes clear in his most recent book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, MacIntyre's Aristotelianism and his critique of liberal moral theory are not rooted in a reactionary longing for a golden-age past. 2 They derive, on the contrary, from his deep engagement with that bane of all economic and moral conservatives, Karl Marx, and his interest in Marxist revolution. Of course, MacIntyre is no "vulgar Marxist." Instead, his work stands as revolutionary in its own way. As Walter Benjamin once wrote, amid unleashed and overwhelming capitalism, revolutions may be more like an attempt "to activate the emergency break" than to launch history forward. 3 As we narrate in §1 below, there can be no doubt that we all now live in a time of capitalism run out of control. Thus, to resist the new brand of nihilism emerging from capitalism's unceasing stream of "creative destruction" will require new ways forward that are nothing short of radical. MacIntyre, we suggest, might just be the revolutionary we need. Or, to be more precise, the counter-revolutionary. In this article, we argue that at the heart of MacIntyre's work is not a template for visions of isolated communities of restorationist reactionaries. Rather, he points us toward a radical pedagogy dedicated to the creation of thickly-engaged communities of virtue capable of resisting the fragmenting, isolating, and vicious forces of capital. To make this case, we bring MacIntyre into conversation with others who share this vision, in particular Paulo Freire, and we connect MacIntyre's agenda with the creation of communities of practice, as prototyped by the base communities of liberation theology. In conclusion, we argue that what MacIntyre has sought so thoroughly to develop over the entire course of his career is a moral theory capable of sustaining a revolutionary alternative to the alienating and dehumanizing operations of capitalism located in the basic elements of shared concrete practices. Thus, virtues are the elements of a

The cost of cheap freedom and the liberation of discipleship

Review and Expositor, 2019

This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. De... more This article argues that the freedom of the market has in turn become a new form of captivity. Describing the freedom associated with market relations, as conceived by F. A. Hayek, as a negative and cheap form of freedom primarily exercised in a freedom from outside interference, I discuss the cost of fully embracing this kind of freedom to the common life of a society and its constituents, identifying its true price in pervasive fragmentation, animosity, and injustice. I will then contrast this view of freedom with the positive freedom of discipleship described as the new way of life (κοινωνíα) koinonia for God's people in Acts 2. In conclusion, I argue that the liberation of discipleship can ultimately free us from the economic enslavement to which we have become so accustomed. Glenn Beck-the host of an eponymously named and extremely popular Fox News show-devoted his entire program to a discussion of a mid-twentieth-century Viennese economist most people knew nothing of and whose name they likely could not even pronounce. The economist was Friedrich August von Hayek, better known as F. A. Hayek. Discussion of Hayek was a strange choice for a program usually devoted more to current events and hot-button political commentary. Beck, however, clearly thought the country was at a "crossroads" and that the future of the nation was at stake. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression had rocked the country only a few years earlier, and many people and institutions were still reeling. Furthermore, the nation's leaders were torn regarding how to move forward in recovery. As Beck perceived it, the nation was flirting with socialism if not full-blown crimson communism , the end of which could only be totalitarianism and oppression. With such weighty decisions hanging in the balance, Beck thought it essential to return to this historical figure who had championed the free-market system against its socialist despisers. On the line was freedom itself. As Beck saw it, and as he desperately wanted his viewers to see it, capitalism was the only option, the only system consistent with liberty, prosperity, and human dignity. As indicated by the title to Hayek's

Against the World

Baptist History and Heritage, 2019

TIME EMPTIED AND TIME RENEWED: THE DOMINION OF CAPITAL AND A THEO-POLITICS OF CONTRETEMPS

JCRT, 2018

In his long-awaited interjection into the debates on the future of Marxism after the collapse of ... more In his long-awaited interjection into the debates on the future of Marxism after the collapse of Soviet state communism, Jacques Derrida introduces the notion of contretemps. 1 It is a concept that appears amid his call for a New International to bear the legacy of critique in a (final) epoch dominated by the new world order with its ten pervasive plagues. As is to be expected however, Derrida is no orthodox Marxist, and his intervention seeks, in part, to proffer a deconstructionist critique of the canonical concepts of class, history, party, etc. At the same time, he seeks to channel the critical spirit of Marx in order to re-politicize the current moment, introducing contretemps in order to highlight the persistent openness and counter-temporality intrinsic to the work of democracy. The details of Derrida's heterodoxy and his dispute with more mainstream Marxists, however, are not of primary interest for this essay. Still, I take his notion of contretemps to be an entry point for looking at how the church can draw upon Marxist insights for reimagining its own transformative political practice, particularly in an age of global capital. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, wherein the ghost of the murdered Danish king continues to disturb his perplexed son, Derrida's engagement suggests that the specter of Marx haunts the dominion of global capital, as a troubled spirit arising from the ache of a society whose relations have been pulled out of joint. At the heart of an unfettered and regnant capital, he suggests, is a distorted time. Derrida asserts, "The age is off its hinges. Everything, beginning with time, seems out of kilter, unjust, dis-adjusted," as the time of quantifiable instants and unlimited accumulation distorts the structure and rhythm of social and political relations. 2 Given the madness and the dislocation of time, a resistance that works toward democracy, justice, and solidarity must be something of an untimely, out-of-step practice.

TIME EMPTIED AND TIME RENEWED: THE DOMINION OF CAPITAL AND A THEO- POLITICS OF CONTRETEMPS1

Using a Marxish framework of contretemps, this article provides an analysis of the configuration ... more Using a Marxish framework of contretemps, this article provides an analysis of the configuration of time under capital as the key ordering mechanism of its dominion. Any attempt to resist its hollowing out of life, therefore, must act to change time. While radical attempts to enact such a change remain forestalled, a theo-politics of contretemps constituted in the ecclesial practices of the Table and the Rule of Christ constitute a counter-force to capital's dominion through the renewing of time. I argue that as the reign of God infuses these practices, structuring the community's flows with an alternative tempo resonant with a peculiar mode of co-governance, they can resist the homogenizing circuits of capital time and embody a real political alternative. In his long-awaited interjection into the debates on the future of Marxism after the collapse of Soviet state communism, Jacques Derrida introduces the notion of contretemps.2 It is a concept that appears amid his call for a New International to bear the legacy of critique in a (final) epoch dominated by the new world order with its ten pervasive plagues. As is to be expected however, Derrida is no orthodox Marxist, and his intervention seeks, in part, to proffer a deconstructionist critique of the canonical concepts of class, history, party, etc. At the same time, he seeks to channel the critical spirit of Marx in order to re-politicize the current moment, introducing contretemps in order to highlight the persistent openness and counter-temporality intrinsic to the work of democracy. The details of Derrida's heterodoxy and his dispute with more mainstream Marxists, however, are not of primary interest for this essay. Still, I take his notion of contretemps to be an entry point for looking at how the church can draw upon Marxist insights for reimagining its own transformative political practice, particularly in an age of global capital. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, wherein the ghost of the murdered Danish king continues to disturb his perplexed son, Derrida's engagement suggests that the specter of Marx haunts the dominion of global capital, as a troubled spirit arising from the ache of a society whose relations have been pulled out of joint. At the heart of an unfettered and regnant capital, he suggests, is a distorted time. Derrida asserts, " The age is off its hinges. Everything, beginning with time, seems out of kilter, unjust, dis-adjusted, " as the time of quantifiable instants and unlimited accumulation distorts the structure and rhythm of 1 My thanks to [intentionally deleted for purposes of anonymity] for their insightful comments and suggestions on this essay.

Beyond Contemplation: The Possibility of an Apocalyptic Political Orthodoxy

The Virtue of Revelation: A Post-Secular Politics of Property

Hegel and Labor

Marks of Messianic Time

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