On Ambivalence and (Anti-)Normativity (or,Theology as a Way of Life?)

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that queer theory’s ongoing reflection about its own disciplinary identity yields insights that could benefit contemporary political theology. Exploring how internal discussions and debates on the queerness of queer theory can serve as an instructive analogy for similar conversations about the “theologicalness” of political theology, this essay proposes two potential insights that can be gleaned. First, political theology should continue to draw on and do theology, but it should not worry about venturing outside the bounds of what is presumed to be the theological. Theological reflection develops from, and also engenders, communicative and critical expressions, which are deeply important theological modes of political theology, central to its identity even as they appear at times to broaden or stray from it. Second, political theology should look more to politics, broadly understood as the various ways of ordering human life and the utilization and manifestation of power in that structuring, for the theology it offers. In these ways and more, this essay concludes, political theology, like queer theory, is both theory and praxis, a body of knowledge and way of life.     

Leopards and Invisible Calculators: Violent Incorporation,Political Theology,and Kafka’s “Leopards in the Temple”

ABSTRACT

This essay reads Kafka’s aphorism “The Leopards in the Temple” together with some of the concerns of political theology to think about visibility and agency, the sacred and the profane, the violence of incorporation, and the field of political theology itself. Methodologically, it brings literary studies and political theology into richer engagement without consuming one into the other, either as mere illustration or as gloss. The condensed power of Kafka’s aphorism draws us right into the midst of questions about the dangers of consumption and incorporation, as well as the possibilities for meaningful interaction between these fields of study.     

God’s Sovereign Word

Abstract

Much political theory is funded by a purportedly “theological” notion of sovereignty. This essay re-reads and thereby deconstructs such a view. The argument presented herein is that certain political theorists—notably Schmitt, Bodin, and Hobbes—uncritically appropriate a “theological” notion of sovereignty as an analogy for political sovereignty. Engaging the work of Karl Barth, this essay undercuts such analogizing tendencies, contending that the “theological” superstructure on which so-called political theology is constructed is not theological but anthropological. Barth’s reconfiguration of theology, grounded not on natural law or reason, but on God’s self-revelation of Godself in Jesus Christ, offers a very different terminus a quem for political theology.     

Political Theology as Liberative Theology

ABSTRACT

Challenging the widespread assumption that “political theology” as a discipline began with Carl Schmitt in the 20th century, this essay explores the biblical theme of God’s preferential option for the poor and oppressed first articulated as a modern political theology by Latin American theologians, but organically and independently manifest in US black liberation theology, and First World feminist theologies. At the heart of this movement is a commitment to speak truth to power at the risk of personal loss and even martyrdom.     

Hobbes as Political Theologian

Abstract

Although an orphaned subject among scholars of religion, the theology of Thomas Hobbes is now among the most contested issues in Hobbes studies and the study of early liberal political theory. This essay maps the state of the question and offers a theological appraisal of it. In so doing it attempts to critique a leading reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan by highlighting its attack on civil religion and endorsement of a biblical political theology. The relationship between Hobbes’s political and theological views in Leviathan also receives sustained attention.     

Theology and Democratic Futures

Abstract

The essays in this special issue of Political Theology engage in a vigorous and wide-ranging conversation between theology and theologically inspired forms of critical thought and the possible futures of democracy as an idea(l) and as a political practice. This collection seeks to provide some key coordinates for thinking through the linkages and disjunctures between the theological and the political in formulating new conceptual frameworks that obtain a critical purchase for understanding the multiple meanings of democracy in the (post)modern world. By posing the question, "What is the fate of theology in a post-theological moment?" this introductory essay focuses our attention on the contemporary configurations of intellectual and political power that animates so much of our discourse on the interrelationships between theology and politics and proceeds to provide a brief rehearsal of the essays included in this special issue.     

Muslim Political Theology Before and After Empire: Shāh Muḥammad Ismāʿīl’s Station of Leadership (Manṣab-i Imāmat)*

ABSTRACT

This essay examines an important yet hitherto unexplored early-nineteenth century Indo-Persian work of Muslim political theology Station of Leadership (Man?ab-i Imāmat; also known as Darājāt-i Imāmat), written by the towering and contentious Sunnī thinker and political theorist from Delhi Shāh Mu?ammad Ismā?īl (d. 1831). In this hugely critical though lesser known of Ismā?īl’s texts, he sought to detail a theory and framework of ideal forms of Muslim political orders and leaders. Man?ab-i Imāmat presents a fascinating example of a text of Muslim political theology composed during a moment marked by a crisis of sovereignty as South Asia gradually yet decisively transitioned from Mughal to British rule. In this essay, through a close reading of Man?ab-i Imāmat, I aim to bring into view a vision of Muslim political thought and understanding of sovereignty that exceed and subvert the modern privileging of a territorial conception of the nation-state as the centerpiece of politics. I show that while tethered to an imperial Muslim political theology that assumed Islam’s superiority over and subsumption of other religious identities and traditions, sovereign power for Ismā?īl indexed not territorial sovereignty but the maintenance of Muslim markers of distinction in the public performance of everyday religious life.     

Mansfield Park and Political Theology

ABSTRACT

This essay examines Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park in the light of classical understandings of political theology. It does so by placing the novel in its Anglican and Erastian contexts as well as by showing that it belongs to a lineage of English prose fiction, whose famous names are Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, which also had theopolitical interests.     

Approaching the Approaches

Abstract

Students of political theology need a broad introduction to, and some understanding of how to distinguish between, varying approaches to the discipline. This article argues that differing approaches should be introduced in ways which emphasize the historical, theological, geographical, and ecclesial situatedness of their practitioners. Such introduction to the situatedness of various approaches should not pretend to be objective, but should be sympathetic. Those teaching political theology should also carefully incorporate their own situatedness, showing students how they are working within particular approaches themselves without reducing their teaching to advocacy for their own approaches. The proposal for teaching political theology argued here focuses on inviting students to become active practitioners of political theology, instead of mere consumers of information about the discipline.     

From Dionysus to the Anti-Christ

Abstract

This essay is a reconstruction of Rene Girard's Christian apology in “I saw the Devil fall like Lightening.” It develops Nietzsche's antithesis between Christ and Dionysius which Girard identifies as the antithesis of modernity as such. Against Girard's own alliance with Carl Schmitt the essay adopts the Trinitarian point of view suggested by the author, in order to show that it is Erik Peterson's “Trinitarian” critique of Carl Schmitt's political theology of sovereignty which could fulfill the “true” aim of the author in fact much better.     

Responding not Believing: Political Theology and Post-Secular Societyzxht

Abstract

In the past decade social theorists and Continental philosophers have returned again to an engagement with Christianity and the legacy of Christian belief. This is framed in the context of a Europe seen in transition to a post-secular identity and, often implicitly, against what is seen as an encroaching Islamic presence within Europe. This move has often brought together Marxist, post-Marxist, and Catholic-legacy philosophers, together with philosophical Protestants in an attempt to recover what I term a political theology of response. Response, in opposition to belief, signals an alternative post-secular turn of attempted inclusion out of a perceived shared cultural legacy. This essay asks if, in such a cultural-philosophical turn, the alternative post-secular turn of a political theology of response signals that belief remains within the private sphere as we seek to engage in a public conversation of non-believing "response"?     

How Theological is Political Theology? The Case of Twentieth-Century American Protestantism

ABSTRACT

How theological is political theology? Twentieth century American Protestantism illustrates that the answer depends on more than the extent to which a political theology is theological. For example, Walter Rauschenbusch and subsequent emancipatory political theologians understand theology's political significance very differently than John Howard Yoder and other political theologians influenced by the Radical Reformation. Nevertheless, both groups conceive the Christian gospel as a politics and so concur that Christian theology is essentially political. By contrast, Reinhold Niebuhr interpreted the gospel as disclosure of God's mercy and therefore denied that Christian theology is primarily a politics--for society or the church. Hence, although all three of these political theologies are thoroughly theological, they are not political in the same manner or for the same reasons. Accordingly, in addition to quantitative considerations, ascertaining theology's place in political theology involves discerning how a political theology is theological and why a theology is political.     

Theology and the Origins of Conflict

Abstract

War has its origins in the clash of socially-constructed identities, interests, and norms of behavior of states and armed nonstate actors. This essay examines the economic, political, and cultural factors that contributed to the construction of such identities, interests, and norms during the Shining Path insurgency and the Peruvian government’s response in the years from 1980 to 2000. Drawing on the three levels of liberation outlined by Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, the essay then describes how theology enriches without replacing socio-political and cultural explanations of the Peruvian conflict. The practices that formed both the Shining Path and the government’s response to it can be described as social sin, whereas the Catholic Church in Peru’s commitment to truth and the creation of community solidarity became practices that, by imitating the self-giving love of Christ, helped overcome violence and build peace.     

Theology in Post-Democracy

Abstract

This essay confronts the problem of how theology is to respond to conditions of post-democracy in the United States. Building off the distinction between "politics" and "the political" in the work of Sheldon Wolin, this article asserts that his notion of "fugitive" democracy provides a useful tool to calibrate democratic engagement. The argument here identifies evangelicalism as the most historically relevant theological worldview for American politics. The analysis identifies three strands of evangelicalism: conservative, progressive and emergent. By tracing the theological foundations of each type of evangelicalism, this essay evaluates the capacity of each to speak to conditions of the fugitive in post-democracy     

Liberation Theology and "Democratic Futures" (By way of Karl Barth and Friedrich Schleiermacher)

Abstract

To engage the question of democratic futures, this essay considers Christian liberation theologies. It pursues an interpretative, constructive, and political agenda. Interpretatively, it identifies parallels between the methods and claims of liberation theologians and two classical theologians: Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth. Constructively, it suggests ways in which liberationist thought might improve theology in its Schleiermacherian and Barthian modes. Politically, it proposes that liberation theology— a mode of reflection both continuous with and constructively critical of classical theological outlooks— be viewed as a vanguard discourse that could dynamize the project of radical democracy     

‘Global Capitalism’ vs ‘End of Socialism’: Crux Theologica? Engaging Liberation Theology and Theological Postliberalism

Abstract

This article offers a critical assessment of two political theologies: liberation theology and theological postliberalism, as represented by the writings of Gustavo Gutiérrez and John Milbank. Paying particular attention to the concepts of society and Church, a partial defence of liberation theology is offered in tandem with a critical affirmation of some aspects of postliberal political theology. The discussion is then contextualized historically in relation to the ‘victory’ of global capitalism and the ‘end’ of socialism. I conclude that the renewal of political theology in the twenty-first century will aim to overcome the ironic crux theologica of this article's title.     

Normative Political Theology as Intensified Critique

ABSTRACT

Some theorists are suspicious of normative political theology because they believe it undermines critical rationality. In my view, these theorists neglect theological traditions that resist dogmatism through intensified critique. Because authoritarian dogma is not unique to religion, theology offers sophisticated techniques that may be useful for those who are not themselves religious. A normative theology that intensifies critique represents a valuable resource for political reflection, and not only for the faithful.     

Editorial: Social Spirituality: Monastic Cell or Hectic Street?

Abstract

What makes theology political? Is it the social location of the author, the sources drawn upon, or the content of the argument? Each of these three possibilities is theologically significant, but a little reflection proves none of them decisive in claiming the adjective ‘political’ for a theology. The ‘material production’ of theological works cannot, by itself, render one theology political and another apolitical; for all theological works share a similar ‘social location’ given the similar socio-economic reality of publishing. Whether or not theology is political, or adequately political, cannot finally be determined by material production, the authors' social location or the content of the argument per se. Such forms of apodictic reasoning cannot distinguish apolitical from political theology. It can only be a function of practical reasoning. It alone can advance the current stalemate among persons that theology should be characterized as ‘church’, ‘confessional’, ‘sectarian’, ‘liberatory’, ‘political’ or ‘public’. I argue that the best we can do to adjudicate these differences is to engage in, as Charles Taylor has so aptly put it, practical ad hominem arguments.     

The Judgment of God and the Immeasurable: Political Theology and Organizations of Power

Abstract

This article considers how political theologies understand and organize power. It begins with an axiomatic understanding of politics as concerned with the organization of power. This understanding of politics requires a theological inquiry, as it is concerned with questions of piety and belief that underlie and direct power within these conscious organizations. It then provides a survey of three dominant forms of political theology: liberal political theology, exemplified by John D. Caputo; conservative political theology, exemplified by John Milbank; and political anti-theology, exemplified by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It ends by way of a speculative account of a political non-theology, based on the non-philosophy of François Laruelle, that makes each of these political theologies relative to the immeasurable itself and thus turns them into simple material that may be used to construct relative different organizations of power with greater situational efficacies.     

Political Theology,Religious Diversity and the Nature of Democratic Citizenship

ABSTRACT

Driving this essay is a question central to political theology; that is, how can I keep faith with my distinctive commitments while also forming a common life with neighbors who have a different vision of life to me? My response has four parts. First, I develop a normative definition of politics within which to situate an account of citizenship and the political implications of deep religious plurality in a shared polity. Second, I examine how citizenship is not just a legal status that entails certain rights and duties, but also denotes an identity, a performance of politics, and a shared rationality. Third, I identify the dominant ways in which citizenship is understood in the contemporary context, namely, through either a nationalist or cosmopolitan framework, contrasting these with a consociational conception of citizenship. And lastly, I lay out how a consociational framework provides a more generative basis for conceptualizing religious diversity.