The 2008 election crystallized a growing tension between different understandings of the “prophetic” element of religious faith. The contrast between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama’s “pastor problems” reflects a struggle between those who would consolidate established power and those who seek to expand democratic ideals by demanding greater integrity from the social institutions that claim to represent them. Competing discourses of the prophetic unfold in the context of a critical juncture in media and religion, as demographic and technological shifts promise to alter the course of religious politics. The current moment is an opportunity for critical scholars to intervene on behalf of a new, more progressive religious politics. This article contributes to such intervention in two ways: first, by analyzing how competing discourses of the prophetic unfolded during the election and second, by explaining how the “prophetic” can serve as a key organizing concept in contemporary critical scholarship.
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