Michael R. Ott is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan, USA.  He received his Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Sociology from Western Michigan University in 1998, where he specialized in the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory of Society and Religion.  Dr. Ott is also an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, having served the church as a full-time pastor for 25 years prior to his becoming a professor.  As a minister, he developed in both theory and praxis the connection between the Frankfurt School's critical theory of society and religion and a critical, political theology of social critique and liberation toward a more reconciled future society. His book, Max Horkheimer's Critical Theory of Religion: The Meaning of Religion in the Struggle for Human Emancipation gives expression to this dialectical development.  As a professor, he continues to research, teach and write on the liberational negative or inverse theology of the critical theory of society and religion as a critique of neo-liberal globalization. His writings have been published in the United States, France, and the Ukraine.  Dr. Ott is a Co-Director of the international courses "The Future of Religion" held annually at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, Croatia and of Religion and Civil Society held annually in Yalta, Ukraine.

Books:

 

 

 

Michael R. Ott, ed. The Future of Religion: Toward a Reconciled Society.
     Hardcover 2007. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.
     Paperback 2009. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael R. Ott. 2001. Max Horkheimer's Critical Theory of Religion: The Meaning of Religion in the Struggle for Human Emancipation, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.

 

 

  

 

Articles:

2010. "The Semantic Potential of Religion in Habermas' Struggle for Modernity: Something's Missing" in Islamic Perspective: Journal for Sociological Studies, pp. 198-242, Number 4, Dec. 6.

-reprinted in Seyed Javad Miri (Ed.), Social Theory, Religion and Critical Discourses. (Chapter 3, pp. 225-269). Koln: Lambert Academic Publishing. 2011.

2007. "Max Horkheimer's Negative Theology of the Totally Other" in Michael R. Ott, ed. The Future of Religion: Toward a Reconciled Society, pp. 167-186.

2007. "Civil Society and the Globalization of Its 'State of Emergency: The Longing of the Totally Other as a Force of Social Change,'" in The Future of Religion: Toward a Reconciled Society, pp. 273-306.

2006. "The Notion of the Totally 'Other' and its Consequence in the Critical Theory of Religion and the Rational Choice Theory of Religion," in Marx, Critical Theory and Religion, [Ed.] Warren S. Goldstein, Leiden, NL: Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 121-150.

         2009. Chicago: Haymarket Books (paperback). 

2006. "A Translation of Max Horkheimer's 'Psalm 91'" in Marx, Critical Theory and Religion, [Ed.] Warren S. Goldstein, Leiden, NL: Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 115-120.

2005. "Reclaiming the Revolutionary Substance and Potential of Religion: The Critical Theory of Religion," in the Michigan Sociological Review, Vol. 19, 2005, [Ed.] Joseph M. Verschave, p. 155 -180.

2005. "A Critique of the Ambiguity of Religion: Max Horkheimer's Critical Theory of Religion" in Religious Innovation in a Global Age: Essays on the Construction of Spirituality, [Ed.] George N. Lundskow, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., p. 97-113.

2005. "A Critical Theory of Religion Critique of the Globalization of Civil Society," in Religion and Civil Society: Between Nationalism and Globalism, [Ed.] Tatyana Senyushkina, Simferopol, Ukraine: Tavria, p. 184-191.

Editorial Work:

2010. Editor of Rudolf J. Siebert's 3 Volume Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion:The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness and the Rescue of the Hopeless. Leiden, Boston: BRILL.

2011. Siebert, R. J., Ott, M. R. [Ed.] "Toward a Radical Naturalistic and Humanistic Interpretation of the Abrahamic Religions" in Roland Boer, Julie Kelso (Ed.) The Bible and Critical Theory. (2nd ed., vol. 7, pp. 1-74). Newcastle. www.relegere.org/index.php/bct/issue/view/27.

Continuing Work:

Editing papers written for the Dubrovnik Future of Religion course over the past 6 years for a 3rd volume on the Course topic. To be submitted for publication in 2012/2013.

Working on a manuscript on "The Revolutionary Potential of Walter Benjamin's Historical and Religious Theory of the 'Dialectical Image.'”

Contact Information:

Dr. Michael R. Ott
2156 AuSable Hall
1 Campus Drive
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49401