Hope and the Longing for Utopia: Futures and Illusions in Theology and Narrative

At present the battle over who defines our future is being waged most publicly by secular and religious fundamentalists. Hope and the Longing for Utopia offers an alternative position disclosing a conceptual path toward potential worlds that resist a limited view of human potential and the gift of religion. In addition to outlining the value of embracing unknown potentialities these twelve interdisciplinary essays explore why it has become crucial that we commit to hoping for values that resist traditional ideological commitments. Contextualized by contemporary writing on utopia and drawing from a wealth of times and cultures ranging from Calvins Geneva to early twentieth-century Japanese childrens stories to Hollywood cinema these essays cumulatively disclose the fundamental importance of resisting tantalizing certainties while considering the importance of the unknown and unknowable. Beginning with a set of four essays outlining the importance of hope and utopia as diagnostic concepts and following with four concrete examples the collection ends with a set of essays that provide theological speculations on the need to embrace finitude and limitations in a world increasingly enframed by secularizing impulses. Overall this book discloses how hope and utopia illuminate ways to think past simplified wishes for the future. This is a strong and timely volume that in its counter to the dystopic tendencies of the last hundred years offers significant hope in breaking down the old (and ongoing) divisions between the religious and the secular and between our status in quo and our future longing. --Andrew W. Hass University of Stirling Scotland With so much reflection on the future wallowing in the sensationalistic ends of the spectrum from paralysis to rage reading this collection of essays was an unexpected delight. They run the gamut from sober to joyful but all of them serve the purpose of illuminating the coming future and what is more making me optimistic about participating in it if these folks will be my companions on the way. --G. Michael Zbaraschuk Pacific Lutheran University Tacoma WA Daniel Boscaljon is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Iowa. He has doctorates in Religious Studies focusing on secularism and modern religious thought and in English focusing on nineteenth-century American literature. He is the author of Vigilant Faith: Passionate Agnosticism in a Secular World (2013) and editor of Resisting the Place of Belonging (2013).