Trotted out the dead white men in "After Religion" today, as part of a rather overambitious overview of secularization as a god that failed, secularism as an imperfect and embattled political ideal, and secularity as the frame of contemporary spiritual subjectivity.
It was introduced by Nietzsche's famous claim that "God is dead" and underscored by an attempted coup de théâtre. There's a whiteboard on wheels in the lecture hall, and at one point I casually spun it around to reveal a famous piece of bathroom grafitti:
GOD IS DEAD - Nietzsche
NIETZSCHE IS DEAD - God
This wasn't the last word, of course. Indeed, we had a google.doc asking the question Time magazine put on its cover in 1966, in the heyday of "death of God theology," which provoked some interesting reflection on what was and is and can be alive in the first place.
What God (sic) makes of all this is anyone's guess!
