Publications

Weber and the Persistence of Religion: Social Theory, Capitalism and the Sublime (London: Routledge, 2006).

Shows how dominant interpretations of religion and capitalism around the turn of the last century failed to account for the deeply religious character of the capitalist social formation. Contrary to Weber's analysis, religion not only survived, but flourished in the modern epoch. Its two-fold form, fleeting surface forms of appearance, eternal underlying value forms, reflects and is structured around the two-fold form of the commodity.

"The End of Seminary," Borderlands in Theological Education, edited by Deirdre Good and Joshua B. Davis (London: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2022), 29-82.

Mainstream churches, synagogues, and mosques are emptying. Seminaries are closing down. Some maintain that these are signs of a "Fourth Great Awakening," evidence of the primacy of the spirit over the flesh. By placing this and other awakenings in their historical and social context, the end of seminary can instead be interpreted as evidence of how capitalism has come to dominate all dimensions of social life, including our religious and spiritual practices, beliefs and affections.

"One Absolute Substance," Misrecognitions: Gillian Rose and the Task of Political Theology, edited by Joshua B. Davis (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 143-174.

Before her death, the renowned Cambridge philosopher Gillian Rose showed how George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's "one absolute substance" might be understood as an expression both of the divine subject of Hebrew and Christian scripture and the emancipatory force inspiring critical social theory. Here I argue to the contrary that Hegel's self-moving Substance that is Subject should instead be understood as an expression of the abstract value form of the commodity.