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Kroeker Travis, Professor

photo of Travis Kroeker

Travis Kroeker

Professor

Members
Institute on Globalization & the Human Condition

Faculty
Department of Religious Studies

Area(s) of Interest:

Biography

Research Interests

My teaching and research attend critically to the place of theology and ethics in western thought and culture.  I am interested in the intellectual and cultural premises underlying the growing dominance of the technological paradigm in modern and postmodern societies, and in the religious, moral and socio-political implications of this spiritual shift in human self-understanding.  I explore these and related questions through the comparative study of classic texts and traditions–the Bible, Plato, Augustine–and modern/postmodern works of literature, philosophy, theology and ethics.  Current research interests include messianic ethics and political theology, and the relationship between immortality, ethics and political judgement in selected ancient and modern theologies.  For a list of MA theses and PhD dissertations I have supervised, see the above linked CV.

Education

  • University of Chicago, Ph.D. in Religious Studies, 1989

Research

Monographs 

 

Journal Articles

  • “Technology as Principality: The Elimination of Incarnation,” Pro Ecclesia XXIV, 2 (Spring 2015): 162-177.
  • “Gulag Ethics: Russian and Mennonite Prison Memoirs from Siberia,” with Bruce Ward, Journal of Mennonite Studies, special issue on “Mennonites in Siberia,” ed. Royden Loewen & Paul Toews (2012): 249-266.
  •  “Mennonite and Metis: Adjacent Histories, Adjacent Truths?” with Carole Leclair, Journal of Mennonite Studies 28 (2010): 187-202.
  •  “Rich Mennonites in an Age of Mammon: Is a Messianic Political Economy Possible?” Journal of Mennonite Studies 27 (2009): 168-178.
  •  “Messianic Political Theology: Yoder contra Redekop,” Direction 38/1 (Spring 2009): 67-78.
  •  “Messianic Freedom and the Secular Academy: Educating the Affections in a Technological Culture,” Consensus 32/2 (2006): 41-57.
  •  “Whither Messianic Ethics? Paul as Postmodern Political Theorist,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 25.2 (Fall/Winter 2005): 37-58.
  •  “Is a Messianic Political Ethic Possible? Recent Work by and about John Howard Yoder,” Journal of Religious Ethics 33:1 (Spring 2005): 141-174.
  •  “Educative Violence or Suffering Love? Radical Orthodoxy and the Radical Reformation,” Conrad Grebel Review 23.2 (Spring 2005): 19-24.
  •  “Eschatology and Ethics: Luther and the Radical Reformers,” Consensus 27/1 (2001): 9-25.
  •  “Why O’Donovan’s Christendom is not Constantinian and Yoder’s Voluntariety is not Hobbesian: A Debate in Theological Politics Redefined,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 20 (2000): 41-64.
  •  “The War of the Lamb: Postmodernity and John Howard Yoder’s Eschatological Genealogy of Morals,” Mennonite Quarterly Review LXXIV/2 (April 2000): 295-310.
  •  “Anabaptists and Existential Theology,” Conrad Grebel Review 17/2 (Spring 1999): 69-88.
  •  “Theocentric Ethics and Politics,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 17 (1997): 19-27.
  •  “Spirituality and Therapy in Secular Culture,” Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy 64/3 (June 1997): 122-26.
  •  “The Peaceable Creation: Stanley Hauerwas and the Mennonites,” Conrad Grebel Review 13/2 (Spring 1995): 136-41.
  •  “The Humanization of Production: A Critique of Economic Justice For All,” Eglise et Theologie 25/1 (January 1994): 65-83.
  •  “Reply to Donald Wiebe,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 23/1 (1994): 81-2.
  •  “The Ironic Cage of Positivism and the Nature of Philosophical Theology,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 22/1 (1993): 93-103.
  •  “The Theological Politics of Plato and Isaiah: A Debate Revisited,” The Journal of Religion 73/1 (January 1993): 16-30.
  •  “Pluralism and Policy Monism: The Political Irrelevance of Theology,” Toronto Journal of Theology 7/1 (Spring 1991): 35-43.
  •  “Theology, Ethics and Social Theory: The Social Gospel Quest for a Public Morality,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 20/2 (1991): 180-99.
  •  “Ethics, Economics, and Christian Realism: Religious Social Theories of Reinhold Niebuhr and Gregory Vlastos,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (1988): 77-89.
  •  “Canada’s Catholic Bishops and the Economy: A Theological Ethical Analysis,” Toronto Journal of Theology 2/1 (Spring 1986): 3-18.

 

Book Chapters 

  • “Technology as Principality: The Elimination of Incarnation,” Life Amid the Principalities, ed. Michael Root and James J. Buckley, Pro Ecclesia series, volume 6 (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016), 99-116.
  • “Augustine’s Messianic Political Theology: An Apocalyptic Critique of Political Augustinianism,” in Augustine and Apocalyptic, ed. John Doody, Kari Kloos, Kim Paffenroth, Augustine in Conversation: Tradition and Innovation series (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014): 129-149.
  • “Jesus is the Bread of Life: Johannine Sign and Deed in The Violent Bear It Away,” in Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away, ed. Susan Srigley (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012): 136-56.
  • “Recent Continental Philosophers,” in The Blackwell Companion to Paul, ed. Stephen Westerholm (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011): 440-54.
  • “On the Difference Between Torture and Punishment: Theology, Liturgy and Human Rights,”
    in Theology, University, Humanities: Initium Sapientiae Timor Domini, ed. Christopher Brittain and Francesca Murphy (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011): 19-38.
  •  “Making Strange: Harry Huebner’s Church-World Distinction,” in The Church Made Strange for the Nations: Essays in Ecclesiology and Political Theology, ed. Paul Doerksen & Karl Koop, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 171 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011): 92-99.
  • “Living ‘As If Not’: Messianic Becoming or the Practice of Nihilism?” in Paul, Philosophy and the Theopolitical Vision, ed. Douglas Harink (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010): 37-63.
  • “The War of the Lamb: Postmodernity and Yoder’s Eschatological Genealogy of Morals,” in The New Yoder, ed. Peter Dula & Chris Huebner (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010): 70-89.
  • “Messianic Ethics and Diaspora Communities: Upbuilding the Secular Theologically from Below,” in Religious Voices in Public Places: Religion and Liberal Reason, ed. Nigel Biggar & Linda Hogan (Clarendon, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009): 110-130.
  • “Sexuality and the Sacramental Imagination: It All Turns on Affection,” in Wendell Berry: Life and Work, ed. Jason Peters (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2007): 119-37.
  •  “A Contemporary Perspective on Spirituality,” in Spirituality and Occupational Therapy, 2nd edition, ed. Mary Ann McColl (Ottawa: CAOT Publications, 2011): 81-89. Revised version of “Spirituality and Therapy in a Secular, Pluralistic Culture: Toward an Ethic of Care,” in Spirituality and Occupational Therapy, ed. Mary Ann McColl (Ottawa: CAOT Publications, 2003): 55-66.