A Vexing Gadfly

This essay on Soren Kierkegaard and economic matters from a theological perspective is well grounded in the Dane’s journals. In these writings, the late nineteenth-century thinker shows his solidarity with rural residents (90 percent of the population) and urbanite menial workers. Topics include the option for the poor; the ideology of impotence; the denouncing of a competitive society; the correlation of wealth and poverty; media, church, university, and theatre as social institutions shaping reality; Christendom; and the retribution doctrine.