ABSTRACT
This piece asks what responsibility scholars have to be leaders able to respond to the rise of “post-truth.” It answers that at least part of an appropriate response will entail making more room for aesthetic and poetic aspects of research, publication, and pedagogy. Specifically, the discipline of public theology is considered, with particular attention paid to the way it is undergirded by the assumption that pluralistic societies must engage in intercultural “rational public discourse.” This paper questions that assumption, particularly given the increase of the “post-truth politics” associated with the UK’s Brexit vote and the US presidential campaign and administration strategies of Donald Trump. The collective responsibility of public intellectuals engaged in religious and theological scholarship may be to consider that part of what we might have to accept is that propositional argumentation -- though it has been the vaunted coin of the academic realm for centuries -- may not be sufficient.
