Engaging Hanna Reichel's After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology

This paper theorizes doubt as a type of disruption to theological meaning and examines whether it may be harnessed as a theological method in pursuit of a “better” theology. To do so, it reads doubt through the lens of Hanna Reichel’s proposal for an “after method” theological approach, holding in tension insights from systematic and constructive theologies while resisting the urge to synthesize them. Drawing on several interlocutors—including Karl Barth and Marcella Althaus-Reid, whom Reichel deploys in their own project—this paper will position doubt in two main ways: as a tool that contributes to (and benefits from) Reichel’s model of theology as conceptual design, and as a means for queering theological method by subverting expectations that method must be simultaneously stable and absolute. Ultimately, this paper draws upon Reichel’s project to ask whether doubt may contribute to better models of theology without necessary lionizing doubt as a virtue.