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The Religion & Culture Web Forum

November/December 2005

Eagle of Power, Raven of Guilt: Conversations with Langdon Gilkey

by Jeff B. Pool, Berea College

This month, the Web Forum departs from its usual essay format to present an interview with the late Langdon Gilkey, Shailer Mathews Professor Emeritus of the Divinity School, who died last November at the age of eighty-four. The interview was conducted in December 2001 by Jeff Pool, Associate Professor of Religion at Berea College, Kentucky, and former student of Professor Gilkey. Pool used the events of September 11, 2001, as a focal point for his questions. In his wide-ranging response, Professor Gilkey reflected on history, theology, politics, and his own development as a scholar:

When I was going to Europe in 1939, a Junior in college at the time, I found a Britisher on the boat going over; and I hounded that poor guy—I think, with objectionable enthusiasm—about how evil the British Empire was. And I remember that the poor guy was running around the deck, and I’d follow him. Then, during the Vietnam War, when I was in Toronto, a Canadian came up to me and sat down while I was having coffee: he worked me over, in exactly the same way. I remember smiling to myself, as I held up my arms to withstand the blast, thinking of my innocent self-righteousness in 1939—because we [the U.S.] didn’t exercise power in 1939. That’s when I developed the thesis that the eagle of power has a buddy, the raven of guilt.

Read Jeff Pool’s full interview.

Later in November, invited commentary from Kyle Pasewark will be offered. Responses may be viewed on the forum’s discussion board, where readers are also invited to post their own responses. Please note that, to eliminate automated spam, the discussion board now requires a login and password. When prompted, please enter the username "rcwf" and the password "discussionboard" to proceed to the forum.

The Martin Marty Center's Religion and Culture Web Forum is an online forum for thought-provoking discussion on the relationship of scholarship in religion to culture and public life. Each month the Marty Center, the research arm of the University of Chicago Divinity School, invites a scholar of religion to comment on his or her own research in a way that "opens out" to themes, problems, and events in world cultures and contemporary life. Scholars from diverse fields of study are invited to offer responses to these commentaries on the forum's discussion board, where the public is also encouraged to post thoughts and reactions to commentaries and invited responses.

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