This paper, a modified version of the final chapter of my dissertation, was presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Antonio, TX. It is currently under review at the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy.
Abstract
Piety, to the contemporary ear, conjures a sense of personal religious feeling and practice. This paper retrieves the classical sense of the word piety—which, contrary to that contemporary connotation, signifies a practice which is both public and publicly transformative—and to show why the practice of piety is so essential today. I draw on previous efforts at such retrieval undertaken by pragmatists like Dewey and Santayana, as well as their contemporary interpreters, including Stout, Rogers, and Winters. At the same time, I want to amend, sharpen, and expand that work. I thus make three interventions. The first insists that piety is not merely a retrospective activity, but involves “contemplating our collective futures,” in the words of this year’s presidential theme. The second specifies that piety entails two features: both symbolic and material appreciation for the object of one’s piety. The third and final intervention shows that the appropriate and just response to our sources of existence may require not approbation but renunciation; insofar as white supremacy and patriarchy are sources of our existence, piety requires that we disclaim such toxic sources of our being.