During World War II, the German theologian Paul Tillich, then a professor at Union Theological Seminary, partnered with the United States’ organization Voice of America to deliver over 100 religious addresses in the German language into his homeland. In these broadcasts, Tillich utilized the Lutheran categories of Law and Gospel to identify and discuss the sins of the Nazis (and Hitler in particular) and to remind the German population that there was still hope in redemption. Remarkably, well before the war's end, Tillich argued for German collective guilt and the need for the atonement and expiation of the German people. He continually warned them of impending judgment and inescapable punishment – both human and divine – as the Allies advanced on the battlefield in a race toward Berlin. Yet Tillich often tempered this focus on judgment with an emphasis on the Gospel, the certain hope Germans have in God's salvation. This prism of Law and Gospel pervades the religious addresses. I will place these broadcasts in the context of the war, the wartime work of Voice in America, and what we know of other religious addresses delivered over the airwaves to Nazi Germany, to reveal how Tillich preached resistance to Nazi Germany.

This essay returns to a largely forgotten achievement of mid-twentieth-century philosophical theology, Richard Kroner’s Culture and Faith (1951) and the “philosophy of faith” presented therein. It focuses on Kroner’s idea of religious imagination as the inspired medium of revelation. It considers implications of this idea with regard to religious epistemology and theological language. In doing so, it puts Kroner in conversation with John Caputo, Iain McGilchrist, and Kroner’s friend and colleague Paul Tillich.

This article applies Paul Tillich's existentialist analysis of the human predicament, particularly what it means to exist and to be fallen, to social media. I argue that social media heightens feelings of alienation and estrangement, supporting this claim with evidence from empirical research in psychiatry and communication studies. Thus, I offer an application of a Tillichian approach to an area of culture previously unexamined in this way. I identify three primary ways in which social media exacerbates existentialist emotional states: (1) social media allows us to construct artificial versions of ourselves through the use of filters and photo editing software; (2) it provides the means to quantify social approval in groups the size of which the human brain has not evolved for; (3) it extends the size of our social networks but decreases the quality of interactions. Social media is yet to receive significant philosophical or theological engagement despite its prevalence, particularly within younger generations. I argue that this is a mistake – philosophy has a duty to engage with such a ubiquitous feature of modern life.

The question “What is religion?” has again been roiling the academy, the courts, and public debate. In 1965, the Supreme Court of the United States opined on this question, deciding the fate of would-be conscientious objectors who would not affirm the existence of God. Relying largely on Paul Tillich, the Court ruled in their favor, expanding the notion of “religious belief” beyond its conventional Western confines. This article reexamines the issues raised in this case by exploring the theology of Paul Tillich, particularly its critique of religion as a separate sphere and its challenge to basic tenets of liberal political theory inherited from John Locke. The article, however, also juxtaposes the religion-expanding aspects of Tillich's thought with his strictures about “demonic” distortions of religion, requiring an excursus into Tillich's notions of the divine/demonic relationship. Tillich's rejection of the compartmentalization of “religion” led him to declare that more religious meaning may be found in putatively “secular” artifacts, such as Cubist art, than in conventionally “religious” symbols and institutions, including the Church. This approach both demands a radically interdisciplinary approach to “religion” and casts a skeptical eye on some putatively “religious” claims. The article concludes by juxtaposing Tillich's anti-essentialist critique of “religion” with more recent, and dramatically different, critiques, particularly those advanced by Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood.