Inwardness and commodification: how romanticist hermeneutics prepared the way for the culture of managerialism - a theological analysis

Journal article

Abstract:: This essay undertakes a theological genealogy of the spirit of managerialism as it affects churches today by tracing it back to hermeneutical shifts in the history of (Protestant) theology: the loss of the externality of the word as a result of Schleiermacherian hermeneutics as it moved the centre of attention from a doctrine of the word to a doctrine of faith. The author demonstrates how the shift to inwardness created the conditions in which the market of 'spiritual needs' could emerge that today's church managers capitalize on. Theological analysis is embedded in a narrative account of an instructive controversy in the German Protestant churches in the 1990s when a group of theologians produced a manifesto 'Against the Economisation of the Church'.

Language:: English
Keywords:: managerialism

theology of the word

commodification of religion

Schleiermacher

hermeneutics

spirituality

external word
Subjects:: Theology and Religion
UUID:: uuid:e9d80f91-3258-49b4-8492-98945d7aab99
Local pid:: ora:3774
Deposit date:: 2010-05-13
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_e9d80f91325849b4849298945d7aab99

Copyright holder:: SAGE Publications
Notes:: The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Studies in Christian Ethics, 21(1), April 2008 by SAGE Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. © 2008 SAGE Publications.

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