Spaces of modern theology: Critical geography and the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher

In recent years, space has emerged as a critical concept in theoretical literature, but little has been written on the relationship between religion and the production of space. This dissertation addresses that gap by investigating the imagination of space in the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, widely regarded as one of the founders of liberal Christian theology. Schleiermacher wrote against the backdrop of expanding European colonialism and nationalism, features that enter his theological discourse in subtle but profound ways. Those features can be seen in two alternating impulses in Schleiermacher's texts: Fernweh, or Wanderlust, and Heimweh, or the Longing for a Home, desires that map onto a wider spatial and cultural imaginary in nineteenth century Germany.;Schleiermacher's Fernweh is best witnessed in relation to his imagination of God, where visions of the infinite, the absolute, and the Divine carry specific geographical implications. There, religion becomes a matter of imagining oneself as a part forming a whole, a piece within a global totality, all of it dependent upon an omnipresent Deity. Theology becomes a technology, by which the diverse populations and religions of the globe can be united into a single spatial frame, an early and questionable moment of religious pluralism. Schleiermacher's Heimweh can be witnessed in relation to his imagination of Christology and Incarnation, where having religion implies the need to "take place." There, religion becomes a tool for imagining the borders and boundaries necessary for individuals and cultures to thrive, yielding an ambiguous instance of religion and nation coordinating with one another. When read critically, however, Schleiermacher's careful rhetoric provides the means to distort the dominant understandings of space in his period away from colonial domination and national control. Those distortions create a sense of planetary obligation and human interconnection, a vision of precarious life amidst the newly emergent time and space compressions of capitalism.;Schleiermacher's visions of space indicate the powerful ways that religion has shaped the modern world. Selectively appropriated, the spaces of modern theology articulated by Schleiermacher can be a valuable contribution to contemporary attempts to theorize the importance of space and place in human geographies.