The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust: Radical Theology Encounters the Shoah

The Death of God theologians represented one of the most influential religious movements that emerged of the 1960s, a decade in which the discipline of theology underwent revolutionary change. Although they were from different traditions, utilized varied methods of analysis, and focused on culture in distinctive ways, the four religious thinkers who sparked radical theology-Thomas Altizer, William Hamilton, Richard Rubenstein, and Paul Van Buren-all considered the Holocaust as one of the main challenges to the Christian faith. Thirty years later, a symposium organized by the American Academy of Religion revisited the Death of God movement by asking these four radical theologians to reflect on how awareness of the Holocaust affected their thinking, not only in the 1960s but also in the 1990s. This edited volume brings together their essays, along with responses by other noted scholars who offer critical commentary on the movement’s impact, legacy, and relationship to the Holocaust.