Carl Raschke

Author Raschke abuses his academic credentials in this sensationalistic and dishonest presentation about contemporary Satanism, which uses a scholarly format to offer garden-variety paranoia, tying together such disparate phenomena as the Matamoros drug murders, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, and the aesthetics of heavy metal music. Painted Black provided a great assist to rumor panics in the early 1990s, and to professional scaremongers and scapegoaters then and since. The book is show more full of false details and baseless claims. In the final section on popular culture, Raschke laughably demonizes innocuous fantasy role-playing gamers.

The photographic plates are the main reason I keep this book around. Several of them (obtained by the photographer under false pretenses) depict the old Aleister Crowley Oasis temple, where I received my first Thelemic initiations. show less

It is important to know that this author's defining religious experience was in a charismatic context. His primary thesis is that the "foundationalism" of the Enlightenment and modernism has been embedded in evangelicalism (although they are antagonists) and that the epistemology, philosophy of language and metaphysics of modernism has been rejected and superseded by postmodernism. Of course, trying to define postmodernism is like trying to nail jello to the wall. For Raschke, postmodernism show more is bound up with Heiddiger, Derrida and others of that -- especially French -- ilk. His primary complaint against modernistic Christianity is against the "hellenistic" systematic theology. He also doesn't like the doctrine of inerrancy. He promotes "faith" which is "postpropositional."

It would take a major essay to critique this book adequately. Good things: the survey of Western intellectual history; the summary and discussion of major intellectual figures: Luther, Calvin, Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidigger and others; the emphasis that systematic theology is not the essence of Christian faith. Bad things: the elevation of Derrida's views of language (he was a snake-oil salesman, in my view); he demonizes what his disagrees with; he uses rhetoric to inform the reader what conclusions to have without a rationale for those conclusions; he elevates the neo-charismatic religious experience and spontaneity as normative for Christian experience without providing reasons for the "modernist, foundationalist" evangelical to change his views.

After reading this book, I have a much more articulate understanding of why I reject so much of postmodernist polemic. show less

NCLA Review - This is a very challenging book replete with philosophical and theological terms and concepts, written for laymen who wonder what shapes the emerging postmodern church will take. Rashke writes of missional activities in Europe and elsewhere, and of changes in strategy that must occur if Christians are to be listened to in the future. From his impressive familiarity with religious history, he outlines the deep challenge Islam poses for Christianity. Laying waste both evangelical show more and mainstream suppositions, he tackles head-on the troubling subject of eschatology (end times) from both Christian and Islamic perspectives. Despite the verbal thickets, I was powerfully drawn through the pages, eager to learn what conclusions the author would draw, and what action he would advocate. Rating: 3 —DKW . 175p, paper, Baker 2008, $14.99 [261] show less