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David Kline

David Kline is Teaching Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the author of Racism and the Weakness of Christian Identity: Religious Autoimmunity (Routledge, 2020) and the co-editor of Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion (Fordham, 2025). He is also a musician and video artist actively involved in the Knoxville music and arts scenes.

Symposia

Symposium on Video Essays

While in recent years there has certainly been a shift towards more thoughtful and creative presentations of academic ideas within the various contexts of academic life, academics, mostly still exclusively trained in text-centered methods and deliveries, are still grappling with a contemporary culture dominated by images and digital technology that has profoundly disrupted the standard traditions of academic expression.

The Political Theology of Sylvia Wynter

Essays

Sylvia Wynter and Religion

While Sylvia Wynter is not a scholar of religion, religion plays a significant role in her thinking, offering important lessons for political theology.

Autopoiesis

In autopoiesis, there is no separation between what we do and the particular way in which the world appears to us.

Niklas Luhmann

David Kline introduces the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann for political theology and reflects on how it might think about its own limits of observation.

“Self-Portrait of an Enigma”

But academics usually wish for more. We fantasize about some audience scattered in the future who will not just read what we write but do something with it, who will see and feel that our words and ideas carry an energy or force that calls for more to be said, more to be thought, more to be created, even if it is critical.