On recomendation from Nate Frambach, I read Mieke Bal's essay Postmodern Theology as Cultural Analysis in the Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology. Bal says a number of provocative and powerful things in the essay, but this section has had me thinking for days.

As long as religious themes and narratives permeate a culture, they partake of the ideological make up of that culture. Clothed in the joint authority of moralism and aethetics, the forms they take, be they framed as "high art" or as "popular culture" -- belong to that domain of contemorary culture where theology has its part to play in the general critique, or deconstruction, of what makes that culture constrictive and limiting. A postmodern theology, then, need not decide whether God exists or not, and which one God has priveledges over which other Gods in a multiple society. Instead, staying rigorously on the side of human subjects who make up and are shaped by that culture, such an atheological theology can break open the confining limitations imposed by authoritarian religion and open up possibilities of different forms of relationality that are insensitive to old, ill-conceived taboos. If I have my way, then this is theology's postmodern mission -- if such a thing is thinkable, which, perhaps, it isn't.

I love the way Bal is thinking about theology and culture. Bal's atheological theology for the purposes of human liberation is a curious thought; I'm not sure I fully understand what it means, but I have been pondering it.