Michael R. Slater argues for the contemporary relevance of pragmatist views in the philosophy of religion.

Pragmatic Theology argues for a vision of religious life that is derived from the tradition of American pragmatism (James, Dewey, Royce); empirical theology (Chicago School, D.C. Macintosh, H. Richard Niebuhr); and American philosophy of religion (Stone, Frankenberry, Corrington). The author argues that there is a divine reality in human experience that when encountered gives meaning and value to a person's need for cultural fulfillment and to his or her religious need for self-transcendence. The book commends the openness of nature, the world, and human experience to creative transformation and growth. It supports the increase of human capacities to create morally livable and fulfilling communities, the enhancement of the free play of interpretation, and a social order where democratic utopian expectations are envisioned and actualized.

Shows how an understanding of the intentionality underlining the pragmatism of Peirce and James can herald new interpretations of the interplay between philosophy and religion.

In this book, Michael R. Slater provides a new assessment of pragmatist views in the philosophy of religion. Focusing on the tension between naturalist and anti-naturalist versions of pragmatism, he argues that the anti-naturalist religious views of philosophers such as William James and Charles Peirce provide a powerful alternative to the naturalism and secularism of later pragmatists such as John Dewey and Richard Rorty. Slater first examines the writings of the 'classical pragmatists' - James, Peirce, and Dewey - and argues for the relevance of their views for thinking about such topics as the nature of religion and the viability of natural theology. His final three chapters engage with the religious views of later pragmatists such as Rorty and Philip Kitcher, and with current philosophical debates over metaphysical realism, naturalism, and evidentialism. His book will be of particular interest to philosophers of religion, theologians, and specialists in American philosophy.

In Pragmatic Philosophy of Religion: Melioristic Case Studies, Ulf Zackariasson argues for the fruitfulness of pragmatic philosophy of religion by bringing it to bear on a number of classical topics within the contemporary philosophy of religion. Zackariasson first outlines a version of pragmatic philosophy of religion that takes the pragmatic insistence on the primacy of practice to heart. Here, he shows that religious traditions and their secular counterparts transmit a number of paradigmatic responses that adherents can draw on in their encounters with human life’s existential contingencies. He further discusses the upshot of this approach for how we think of miracles, religious diversity, and what it is to be religiously mistaken. In each case, Zackariasson shows that a pragmatic approach offers important novel perspectives and insights that contemporary (primarily analytic) philosophy of religion tends to neglect. By relating to debates and well-known positions within the contemporary philosophy of religion, he also makes these novel perspectives and insights concrete for those who are not already committed pragmatists. The case studies thus serve as invitations to constructive dialogue within an increasingly pluralistic philosophy of religion.

This distinctive collection of classical and contemporary readings comes at a time when pragmatism is undergoing a renaissance across a spectrum of disciplines. Pragmatism and Religion addresses an important but overlooked issue: whether or not the deep passions and commitments of American pragmatism's central figures are independent of Western religious traditions. The first of the book's three sections samples pragmatism's religious roots. "Classical Sources" includes works by John Winthrop, Jonathan Edwards, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as Charles Sanders Peirce's "Evolutionary Love," William James's "Philosophy" (chapter 18 of The Varieties of Religious Experience), and selections by John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, John McDermott, and Richard Rorty. Part 2, "Contemporary Essays on the American Tradition of Religious Thought," features Richard Bernstein's "Pragmatism's Common Faith," Stuart Rosenbaum's "Morality and Religion," and Robert Westbrook's "Uncommon Faith," among others. Part 3, "Theism, Secularism, and Religion: Seeking a Common Faith" includes Raymond D. Boisvert's "What Is Religion?" Sandra B. Rosenthal's "Spirituality and the Spirit of American Pragmatism," Carl Vaught's "Dewey's Conception of the Religious Dimension of Experience," and Steven C. Rockefeller's "Faith and Ethics in an Interdependent World," among others. Stuart Rosenbaum's contemporary contributors are among the best in the fields of pragmatism and pragmatism in religion. A unique resource, Pragmatism and Religion will serve students of religion, history, and philosophy, as well as those in interdisciplinary core courses.

Argues that while contemporary American philosophies and philosophers of religion are proclaiming the end of theology, a neopragmatism has arrived to fill the void in meaning and moral fulfillment to which theology once supplied answers.