Abstract
William Hamilton was one of the highest-profile theologians of the “death of God” controversy, simultaneously writing about literature, popular culture, and academic theology with a natural eclecticism which was both inviting and alienating to his readers. An ordained Baptist minister, Hamilton, was marginalized by the world of theological education and the church but continued his theological project that he began in his The New Essence of Christianity and his coauthored Radical Theology and the Death of God until the time of his death.
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Notes
- 1.
I am following Lloyd Steffan’s classic description of Hamilton’s work here in “A Dangerous God” (The Christian Century [27. Sept. 1989]: 844) and adding my own characterization of the artist as a distinct third type. For further work on this topic, see Michael Zbaraschuk, “God Is Still Dead,” Resurrecting the Death of God, eds. D. Peterson and M. Zbaraschuk (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014): 71–82.
- 2.
Unpublished and written in 1996, prepared for his friends and family.
- 3.
Hamilton, unpublished memoir, 226–227.
- 4.
See Zbaraschuk (2014).
- 5.
I’m here relying on William Dean’s The Religious Critic in American Culture (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994).
Works Cited
Hamilton, William. 1966. The New Essence of Christianity. New York: Association.
———. 1974. On Taking God out of the Dictionary. New York: McGraw-Hill.
———. 1989. Reading Moby-Dick and Other Essays. New York: P. Lang.
———. 1994. The Quest for the Post-Historical Jesus. New York: Continuum.
Hamilton, William, and Thomas Altizer. 1966. Radical Theology and the Death of God. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Zbaraschuk, Michael. 2014. God Is Still Dead. In Resurrecting the Death of God, ed. D. Peterson and M. Zbaraschuk, 71–82. Albany: SUNY Press.
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Zbaraschuk, G.M. (2018). William Hamilton. In: Rodkey, C., Miller, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theology. Radical Theologies and Philosophies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96595-6_15
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