"[6] During the late 1980s and 1990s, Raschke published works on (and made media appearances regarding) Satanism, the occult, heavy metal music, and subjects such as Dungeons & Dragons.
In an interview with the Evangelical Philosophical Society in 2009, Raschke explains he borrowed this term because “globalization is an ongoing, simultaneous transformation of nations, cultures, and religious outlooks and practices everywhere on the planet which they term ‘de-territorialization.’”[11] Commenting on GloboChrist scholar Richard Haney criticizes the book for its "breezy terminology", but concludes the book "will challenge Christians to think missionally and philosophically at the same time.
Danish reviewer Michael Raubach writes: "Carl Raschke has spent his entire career at the intersection of theology, social theory, political philosophy, and the hurly-burly of practiced American religion, and in his 75th year he remains as provocative and insightful as ever.
His book,The Revolution in Religious Theory: Toward A Semiotics of the Event, lays out how postmodern philosophy has impacted and reshaped both classical and contemporary paradigms of how we understand what is meant by the “religious.” In an interview with David Hale, Raschke criticizes many scholars of religion, particularly in regard to "cults", for approaching their subject as a "pseudo-phenomenology" that "does not seek to probe, or dialectically reflect, beyond the bare given.
"[15] In reviewing the book, McGill University scholar Nathan Strunk writes that Raschke criticizes the history of religious studies as colonializing with a tendency toward "Aryanization", and thus "readers should not be surprised if some areas they consider sacred are tread over lightly.
In a review in the Journal of Religion Samuel Hayim Brody writes that "Force of God is ostensibly an entry in the genre of critical Schmittianism", but that "it also works on several other levels: as an extended exegesis and application of Nietzsche; as a survey of concepts of 'force' in modern Continental philosophy (as Kraft in Hegel and Schelling, as Gewalt in Schelling and Benjamin, as Macht in Nietzsche and force/pouvoir in his French interpreters); and as an argument for the continuing relevance of the Western philosophical canon to contemporary problems.".
[20] University of Bonn philosopher Kieryn Wurts observes that "Raschke’s work...is intended to hold up a mirror to us and to make clear through the genealogical method that we are the neoliberals.
Commenting on the 2020 George Floyd protests Raschke, drawing on Fraser and Louis Althusser, asserted that In a word, “oppression” remains invisible because it is coded into the “common sense” of any social organization, while it is correspondingly legitimated and augmented by the communicative and educational apparatuses themselves that preserve a society’s unique “knowledge base.”[22]Raschke asserted that the New Left had unintentionally contributed to the rise of the Alt-right.
His work in this area as well as his role in the development of the Satanic ritual abuse moral panic of the late 1980s and early 1990s, in particular the book Painted Black (1990), have been much criticized in academia.
[30] In 1995, scholar Wouter J. Hanegraaff writes "Raschke's eagerness to include everything "gnostic" into a "genealogy of darkness" (Painted Black, 133) inspires sloppy historical scholarship.
"[31] Writing in 1998, scholar Phillip Jenkins cites Raschke's Painted Black next to Maury Terry's Ultimate Evil and Larry Kahaner's Cults That Kill along with an episode of Geraldo Rivera's talk show (Geraldo, "Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground") as examples of major works that popularized the Satanic ritual abuse moral panic in the late 1980s and 1990s.
[34] Scholar Arthur Versluis (2006) is highly critical of Raschke's Painted Black, which he describes as an "effort to awaken an American inquisition" and refers to the book as "breathless sensationalism".
[35] Versluis cites Raschke's description of the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons as a means of initiation into "black magic" as an example and says that "it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the hysterical nature of this book, nor the number of errors in it (although some have tried at least to chronicle them).
Petersen (2015) provide examples of Raschke "quoting ... misleadingly and out of context" and "hav[ing] forgotten all his academic training, and reverted, in a telling manner, to the folklore of evil".
Raschke himself cites a group of sociologists of religion who determined that there was 'not a shred of evidence' that Satanism is a problem in America, directly contradicting the thesis of Rashke's book.
Citing this claim as an example of the reception of Heathenry in his overview, scholar Mattias Gardell (2003) says "I have found nothing to substantiate the alarmist allegations of Raschke".