Editor's Note

Across every page, every paragraph, or every sentence, reading is an act of constant movement. This is a fitting theme for the present issue, which moves within each article and across the issue as a whole with what feels like an unusual degree of propulsion. If you'll pardon the martial imagery, the image I'm getting is that of a slingshot, one that pulls far back into the tradition, then releases, with particular vehemence, a projectile that passes through time from past-through-present-and-ahead-into-the-future. Staying with the image, if the space between the fork of the slingshot is the present, and if the tautly stretched cord at its moment of maximum tension is some point in the past, then the future is wherever the projectile goes once it's released. The slingshot is the intellectual inheritance that sustains this journal. And the projectile? That's your imagination.If all this talk of slingshots leaves you bewildered, consider the contents of the present issue. Speaking to the present, first we have Anne Guillard's article, “The Relevance of Theological Rationality to Public Discourse,” which makes a robust case for liberal theology as a vital contributor to public discourse in liberal-democratic societies and enlists pragmatism to disclose the specific forms of reasoning that make liberal theology so promising. Given that the public influence of liberal theology—indeed, of liberalism itself—is currently at such a low ebb, Guillard's case is inspiring, a worthy contributor to the legacy of such writers on this topic as Gary Dorrien. Second, pulling deep into the past, we have Renato Rancan, whose “Science and Ethical Neutrality: A Nineteenth-Century American Alternative” identifies in Francis Ellingwood Abbot a neglected resource for renewing scientific thought and practice as an ethically-responsible, even spiritually significant pursuit. At a time in which the moral and epistemic status of science is contested and unclear, Rancan's recovery of Abbot is also inspiring, a worthy contributor to the legacy of such writers on Abbot as W. Creighton Peden and Michael Raposa. Third, slinging ahead into the future, we have Mike Hogue's “Of Gods and Monsters: Populist and Pluralist Prospects in the Anthropocene,” which marshals the AJTP's core traditions on behalf of “pluralist pedagogies of cultural difference [. . .] contextualized within a superordinate eco-religious paradigm of trans-cultural species solidarity.” With right-wing and authoritarian impulses on the rise, the solidarity Hogue is seeking is, if not exactly inspiring, then at least some combination of hopeful and bracing. It's a worthy contributor to the legacy of such writers as, well, Hogue himself, whose American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World inspired both an IARPT annual meeting and a special issue of this journal.Scrutinizing readers will doubtless note that these articles don't fall quite so tidily into a simple present-past-future sequence as the slingshot image might make it seem. All of these articles speak to all of these modes of time, as all are responding to urgent contemporary problems in a manner that both looks back into core traditions and ahead into how these traditions might be reimagined and applied in the future. But you know what? Like David against Goliath, I'll take the slingshot, and I stand by the claim that the traditions we're committed to are slingshot-like in projecting ideas forward on the basis of having been pulled back. The image is fitting, if nothing else, for these eloquent words from Rancan's article, “This is not a matter of mechanically reviving the past but of reclaiming a perspective in which scientific inquiry, beyond merely describing reality, contributes to the construction of a shared ethical horizon, responds to the persistent human need for meaning, and actively participates in the realization of a more just and sustainable future.” If one specifies “scientific inquiry” as the traditions of pragmatism, process thought, naturalism, and empiricism, the case here is well made for the capacity of these resources to help us rethink science, public discourse, liberal theology, and our cultural capacity to respond to ecological transformation. If, as with anything that looks into the future, it isn't quite possible to foretell where things will land, it's at least reassuring to think that the slingshot itself remains true of aim. In any case, happy reading!