America is Obsessed with Problems but Denies Catastrophe

About this episode

Dr. Tripp Fuller reflects on Cornell West's insights about America's obsession with problems and the significance of the resurrection as a form of apocalyptic blues.

Cornell West says America is obsessed with problems but denies catastrophe — and the moment you reduce the catastrophic to the problematic, you have already deodorized the discourse, sanitized it, and started looking at the wasteland from the air-conditioned office of upper management. That line has been working on me since I sat with his Gifford Lectures, and this reflection is what came of it. I want to make one claim and trace it through two unlikely conversation partners. The claim is that the resurrection is apocalyptic blues — catastrophe lyrically expressed, the tragic named without evasion, despair stubbornly refused the last word — and that a church which cannot stay in the room with what is true is not capable of the gospel, because the gospel is a blues song. The conversation partners are Cornell, who has been telling us this in technical philosophical language for forty years, and episode three of The Last of Us, "Long, Long Time," where Bill plays Linda Ronstadt on the piano and his voice cracks, and sixteen years of love inside the apocalypse becomes a kind of theology no committee meeting and no strategic plan and no air-conditioned think piece about the future of…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Tripp Fuller

Topics covered

• apocalyptic theology
• resurrection
• blues music
• catastrophe
• spiritual reflection
• Good Friday
• Easter

Keywords

• Cornell West
• apocalypse
• resurrection
• blues
• theology
• Good Friday
• Easter
• The Last of Us
• Linda Ronstadt

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Last of Us, Long, Long Time

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