God on Broadway

by Charles A. Gillespie

2025 · Fortress Press

What has Broadway to do with Jerusalem? God on Broadway explores the theological questions cracked open by commercial theatre. It shows how the Great White Way--that apex of tourist consumerism and a synonym for the business of spectacle--can be a place for theophany and critical reflection on religion. God is ready to be part of the show. God takes the stage as the clowning Jesus Christ of Godspell and in the comedian of An Act of God; God seems to overhear Tevye's soliloquy-prayers from the balcony; God gets invoked in Backstage traditions and superstitions, in the booming voice of a director calling cues with a "god mic" and in the mystifying rules about a Scottish King's name. Broadway has a God "waiting in the wings." Broadway shows operate in wider culture as a secular catechist. They instruct us about God outside the walls of an institutional church. God on Broadway sits out in the house--where an audience of paying customers and strangers transform into co-players--and shows how God is revealed in the small choices of a playwright and in the flashy song-and-dance numbers of musicals. Looking for God "on Broadway" is a way of doing theology, a method for interpreting and talking about God for and with a mixed, public, and inclusive audience. A commercial theology performs on Broadway. This book invites theatre-lovers and theologians to play along.

Reframing the Feudal Revolution

by Charles West

2013 · Cambridge University Press

This book revisits the idea of a 'Feudal Revolution' in Europe between 800 and 1100, examining the causes of profound socio-economic change.