term. He has been developing it for the last forty years. In the essay that he
contributed to this volume, Siebert sets his eyes on sociology of religion. He
explains how a critical theory of religion has a dialectical understanding of
the relationship between the religious and the secular but also engages in a
critique of the positivism used by rational choice theory and the clerico-
fascism which it legitimizes.
In Siebert’s article, he reveals that Max Horkheimer, the most influential
director of the Institute for Social Research (the Frankfurt School), had the
passage “In you Eternal One, alone I trust” (Psalm 91:2) inscribed on his
gravestone in Bern, Switzerland (for photograph, see page x). Horkheimer
wrote an essay on Psalm 91 five years before his death. Michael Ott, who did
his dissertation under Rudi Siebert, has beautifully translated this essay for
this edited volume. The paradox is that Horkheimer, as a founder of critical
theory, which is neo-Marxist, in his later life returned to Jewish theology with-
out giving up the Marxism. Horkheimer comes to advocate trust in the eter-
nal one as a way to deal with the conditions of oppression, injustice and
suffering here on earth. Siebert and Ott explain that the imageless nameless
totally other, articulated by Horkheimer, is the theological inversion or nega-
tion for what is and thus serves as the basis for the critique.
Michael Ott, in his article for this book, takes rational choice theory of reli-
gion head on. Ott sees rational choice theory’s positivistic market-based
approach to religion as a legitimation of the larger capitalist economic sys-
tem to which it belongs. The rise of rational choice theory coincides with the
rise of the Christian right. He offers as an alternative to this a critical theory
of religion, which dialectically retains the prophetic messianic roots of Judeo-
Christianity.
Christopher Brittain continues the critique of rational choice from the per-
spective of critical theory. He uses a scene from the film A Beautiful Mind
which is about John Nash, one of the developers of game theory (which is
associated with rational choice). He points out the limitations of the one-
dimensional type of rationality of rational choice and juxtaposes it with the
multidimensional types of rationality articulated by Max Weber and the
Frankfurt School. Brittain explains how rational choice theory, which is market-
based and uses the term supply-side to describe itself, has elective affinities
with neoconservativism. He proposes critical theory’s interdisciplinary approach
to religion as providing a less reductionist explanation.
4 • Warren S. Goldstein