Richard Tawney: Moral Theology and the Social Order

Abstract

After noting the impressive scope of Tawney's contribution as an economic historian, labour theoretician and Christian moralist, attention is given to his three classic socialist texts: The Acquisitive Society, Equality, and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Tawney's critique of capitalism is rooted in his Christian convictions concerning the worth of each human person and also informed by his historical analysis of the evolution of capitalist social relations. His telling exposure of the transitory historical nature of so much of capitalism's vaunted absolutes has lent an authority to his contribution. Wealth, property and the mechanisms of the market are not sacrosanct, and must be subject to measures that will ensure more equitable social objectives. As a social theorist he straddled the Christian and secular humanism that formed the lifeblood of the labour movement, and this remains relevant to our more pluralist society, where agreement upon basic moral norms can help construct a social consensus that will promote a greater justice and human flourishing.     

Marina Lewycka,A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Abstract

Jim Wallis's The Call to Conversion features an apocalyptic theological imagination with an ecclesiological focus. The church is entrusted with the communal mission of making visible the intrusion of the reign of God in Jesus Christ. The thesis of this essay is that The Call to Conversion is a better resource for Christian political engagement than Wallis's more recent book, God's Politics, which is characterized by a turn toward a "public church" social ethic. The accent has shifted to the formation of a larger political movement seeking social change primarily through congressional lobbying. Wallis's error is the extent to which he has pinned his hopes on the institutions of American democracy. The Call to Conversion helps us recover an account of political engagement flowing from local ecclesial witness. Sheldon Wolin, Romand Coles, and other political theorists, provide support for approaches to political engagement that begin with local struggles for justice.     

‘An Angel Directs the Storm’: The Religious Politics of American Neoconservatism

Abstract

In his inaugural speech, President George W. Bush suggested that the mission of America to spread freedom and democracy in the world is a divinely authored mission. The intention first announced in Bush's inaugural to globalize an American Christian vision of freedom and democracy, and of free market capitalism, reflects the theological underpinnings of the neo-conservativism of the Bush administration. In this article I trace the remarkable continuities between the neo-conservative political theology of Bush and his acolytes and more mainstream Niebuhrian approaches to democracy and the ‘manifest destiny’ of America. I then subject the emergence of an American imperium, and the political theology associated with it, to a critique in dialogue with early Christian critics of Roman Empire, and with the Christian pacifist tradition as recently retrieved by North American theological ethicists John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas.     

Globalising the US Christian Right: Transnational Interchange During the Cold War

This article investigates the Cold War era efforts by self-identified Christian fundamentalists in the United States to export their political agendas and their methodologies of exerting political pressure to the rest of the world. It focuses on the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC), the era's only worldwide interdenominational association by Protestant Christian fundamentalists, founded by North Americans in 1948 but functioning through autonomous regional and national councils on all continents. The article shows that US fundamentalists affiliated with the ICCC were systematically trying to create a global Christian Right from the beginning of the Cold War, but that their initial agenda – anticommunism coupled with free enterprise capitalism – failed to gain widespread support among their allies abroad. Central in moving both the US and the global fundamentalist community into the politics of morality instead were the ICCC's Northern and Western Europeans, who first had to grapple with and suffered defeats over the moral issues that came to cohere the modern Christian Right – abortion, gay rights, religious instruction versus sex education in schools, free circulation of pornography and threats to the traditional marriage. Through a synthesis of originally European agendas and US-derived methods this politics of morality was significantly globalised already during the Cold War.     

Liberated from the Liberator: Frederick Douglass and Garrisonian Political Theology

I argue that Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison held very different political theologies, even while they seemed to work productively together from 1841 to 1847. Examining Douglass's self-presentation on both sides of his split with Garrison, I conclude that he stifled his Christian moral vision in order to comply with Garrisonian theological ideals while working in New England. After moving to Rochester, New York, Douglass was free to give full voice to his authentic Christian political vision. I explore their differing approaches to the Bible's authority, theological anthropology, and the moral permissibility of force, which influenced their political responses to slavery. Scholars such as John Stauffer and John Sekora have argued that his departure facilitated esthetic and racial forms of emancipation for Douglass; I argue that leaving Garrison allowed Douglass to express not only his authentic literary and black identities, but his true Christian identity as well.     

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.     

To Travel in One Place: Openings for a New Asceticism in the Theology of Stanley Hauerwas

Abstract

The article argues that there is an ascetic character implicit in Stanley Hauerwas's thinking and that a more explicit engagement with the Christian ascetical tradition could clarify some lines of thought in it, in particular the relationship between moral formation and witness. The way Hauerwas treats e.g. the virtues and practices that are used to pursue them, the role of spiritual authority and the difference between Church and world show clear similarities to the thought of early Christian ascetics, such as Evagrios of Pontos, Isaac of Nineveh and John Cassian. By showing how Hauerwas by addressing some key theological, ethical and political developments in modern theology opens up the possibility to overcome modern misunderstandings of asceticisms, the author argues for the relevance of asceticism as a political concept in today's world.     

Responsibility Ethics and Postliberalism: Rereading H. Richard Niebuhr's The Meaning of Revelation

Abstract

Postliberals have hailed H. Richard Niebuhr's The Meaning of Revelation as a harbinger of narrative theology. A careful reading of Niebuhr's argument, however, suggests a theological ethic that is at once attentive to the narrative formation of agency and yet distinct from postliberalism because of its attention to the divine object of Christians' stories. Niebuhr's theocentrism yields a view of narrative as opened from the inside because it requires appropriation of what he calls "external" narratives in order to do justice to the sovereignty of God. The result is a theological ethic which is sharply critical of modern conceptions of agency and yet continually sifted by contemporary insights and experience.     

Philosophy,Eros, Judaism

Abstract

A careful reading of Caritas in Veritate shows it to be framed and permeated by two principles. The first is that human persons in their consciences and deeds are the principal agents of economic and political life, whether directly in interpersonal relations or mediated through their work in and for institutions. The second is that human persons as citizens are best prepared to promote “integral human development” and “the common good” when they are urged on by charity or love that is lived in truth. In these respects Caritas in Veritate is a clear continuation of the line of thought that Benedict developed in his earlier encyclicals Deus Caritas Est and Spe Salvi, and before that in his theological writings as Joseph Ratzinger. Benedict's work thus underscores the need modern societies and political communities have for charity, and thus for faith and for hope. We explicate this aspect of Benedict's political vision throughout this essay, anticipating and beginning to respond to some objections to the thesis that politics even in a secular age requires theological virtues to flourish.     

Proclaiming the jubilee year for undocumented migrants: anti-immigration biopolitics and a Christian theopolitical response

President Obama announced a major executive action on immigration policy on November 20, 2014, which will protect up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. Obama's executive order, however, outraged Republicans in Congress, who argue that the president does not have the authority to delay deportations in such magnitude. On December 3, 2014, a coalition of 17 U.S. states led by Texas Governor-elect Greg Abbott sued the Obama administration to stop it from protecting undocumented immigrants from deportation. The purpose of this paper is to respond to the current political (d)evolvement with a new theological appropriation of the biblical concept of “jubilee.” I argue in this paper that Christian churches and communities should adopt a new theopolitical paradigm modeled after jubilee in engaging the political process to promote justice and peace for many undocumented people. The strength of this new model lies in its theological emphasis on the Christian ideal of forgiveness, and a key theological insight we can draw on from the concept of jubilee is that no humans should be kept under permanent indebted, enslaved, or illegal status.     

From Republican Party to Republican Religion: The New Political Evangelists of the Right

Abstract

This essay shows an important shift in the Religious Right from Evangelical participation to Renewalist participation in politics. Renewalists, who are largely Pentecostals, Charismatics and non-denominational Christians, have been lumped into the "Evangelical" category by scholars and the media alike. Yet their theological orientations and concerns drive political questions and actions in different ways. Sarah Palin's placement on the Republican ticket in 2008 as the Vice Presidential candidate represents the first time an explicitly Renewalist Christian has been nominated. Since then, Palin's weaving of her theological orientation has influenced both political activity and Republican candidates in the 2012 election. Butler's essay explores Palin's contribution to this change, and poses questions about how this shift affects the future of the Religious Right.     

Oliver O'Donovan,The Ways of Judgment

Abstract

Investigating how Christians best understand their political role on the receiving side of political authority, the essay revisits the older "citizens versus subject" debate and presents exegetical, doctrinal and historical considerations that suggest keep this tension alive instead of seeking to dissolve it on either side. The author argues that the peculiar interweaving of "citizen" and "subject" traditions characterizes the Christian attitude towards political authority from the outset. This is demonstrated by a fresh reading of Romans 13 in which the arguably "conservative" origin of Christian political thought is shown to bear clear, albeit often overlooked, marks of a genuine "citizen" ethics. Extemporising on Luther's commentary on Romans 13, the essay demonstrates how the idea of a Christian as "subject-as-citizen" is rooted in a theological refusal to compartmentalize the human existence into separate spheres of authority As "embodied soul" the Christian responds to political authority in a way that engages the human being in all its faculties, simultaneously free and bound. The essay concludes by suggesting that the crucial shift in the more recent history of political thought can be explained more readily as a shift from this theologically motivated duality towards a monochrome political voluntarism that insisted a citizen's submission to political rule could be conceived as essentially submission to one's own will.     

Morality and the Concept of the Market Seller among Gehamo

This paper examines the negative moral evaluations of people who buy and resell fresh food by Gahuku and Gehamo people in and around Goroka, the capital of Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. During my fieldwork from 2010 to 2015, vendors in the Goroka fresh food market argued that the value of fresh food should be based on the work that people did to produce it rather than on price competition, or on supply and demand. An examination of market vendors’ practice of ‘giving extra’ to customers, and the responses of vendors who resold food to negative moral evaluations of their activities, led me to an examination of the morality of production in relation to land, ancestors, and social relations; the morality of the marketplace; as well as ideas about what makes someone a good social person. Drawing on Erik Schwimmer's (1979) discussion of the concept of work in Melanesian societies, I argue that vendors in the Goroka market continue to emphasize use value and their own identification with the food that they are selling rather than the exchange value of alienated produce. While marketplaces are the apparent locus par excellence of capitalist economic activity, a consideration of the morality of Goroka market vendors leads to the caution that just because one sees something that looks like a marketplace in which people are engaging in commodity transactions does not necessarily mean that it is a marketplace in which people are engaging in commodity transactions. Similarly, just because something looks like a price does not necessarily mean that it is a price. Those considerations, in turn, lead to a re‐examination of Kenneth Read's (1955) characterization of morality and personhood among Gahuku in light of contemporary market exchange.     

A Response to the Conference

Abstract

The question discussed in this article is whether Christian theology should influence contemporary political debates. The topic is discussed through two practical case studies: (1) technological advances in genetic engineering and (2) the just war tradition and the use of force. In the first discussion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's unfinished Ethics is employed to demonstrate the importance of substantial theological categories to resist a reductionist technological utilitarian discourse about the body. Intrinsic human dignity is essentially God-given. In the second, Aquinas and Augustine add theological complexity and substance to secular discussions of war and peace. Human caring is more than the protection of the sovereign state. A peace that is only the absence of war can disguise many harmful situations. In conclusion, theological discussion brings nuance, richness and depth to secular political debates so long as theologians go beyond simplistic contributions such as ‘God demands’ or ‘The Bible forbids’.     

Free Christian Speech: Plundering Foucault

Abstract

This article explores the meaning of free speech through an analysis of Michael Foucault's lectures on parrhesia in order to show how questions of freedom are bound up with questions of truth. The activity of speaking freely is a function of truth-telling rather than merely subject to regulative principles that underwrite claims of sovereignty. The Christian proclamation of the gospel extends Foucault's insights into a theological register and supplies a foil for considering some of the shortcomings of his constructive proposal. By surveying parrhesia in the New Testament, together with some attendant political implications, this article attempts to explain the political transformation enacted by those who bear witness to the gospel without sovereign benefits. The freedom of such speech, it is asserted, is irrespective of these benefits.     

America in Speech and in Deed

The author's primary aim in what follows is to fully articulate Chantal Delsol's critique of late modern universalism as an attempt to depoliticize the individual for the sake of replacing politics with morality. The result of this depoliticization is a quasi-pantheistic cosmopolitanism that not only effectively denies the significance of individuality, despite rhetorically lionizing it, but also undercuts the freedom of individual conscience that makes moral choice possible. Genuine political prudence and moral judgment are subsequently replaced by the rigid exactitude of a technocratic analysis that reintroduces the "clandestine ideology" it was, despite protestations to the contrary, intended to eliminate. The unhappy paradox produced by the attempt to replace the necessary limitations of political judgment with the universality of a priori moral decree is that a new set of culturally and historically idiosyncratic political attachments are surreptitiously introduced beyond the pale of reasonable debate and disagreement. Delsol's measured response is not a precipitous rejection of universalism as such but a rehabilitation of it that recaptures the Christian moral realism at its core.     

Red Tory and Blue Labour: More Theology Needed

Abstract

Phillip Blond's Red Tory project has been widely credited with influencing the policies of the Conservative Party under David Cameron, and especially Cameron's "Big Society" thinking. Maurice Glasman has, meanwhile, been a key voice in rethinking Labour Party policy in the post-Blair/Brown years—the so-called Blue Labour programme. Both make space for religion, and Christianity in particular, within the core narratives of their projects and both have sought to build alliances with church bodies. The two projects are united in their critique of liberal assumptions, and this leads to significant congruences between them. Yet the place of Christianity and religion in their thinking is surprisingly different, reflecting the political genealogy of their projects in Burkean Toryism on Blond's part and Alinskian Community Organizing on Glasman's. Nevertheless, the attacks which both have suffered at the hands of social and economic liberals suggest that their ideas have traction. Both, however, are deficient in that their focus on communities as sources of virtue refuses to acknowledge that Enlightenment liberalism has any virtues to its credit. This is fundamentally a theological, rather than just a political, error, since it fails to capture the essential both/and embedded in Christian orthodoxy and the importance of corrective perspectives in Christian practice this side of the eschaton.     

Obeying,Believing and Rebelling

Abstract

This article offers a decisive alternative to a growing consensus within public theology that political liberalism represents the pro-Pelagian, atomistic and un-ecclesial face of modernity. Through a careful reappraisal of the sceptical theology of Michel de Montaigne I claim that contemporary Christian advocates of liberalism can develop a deeply Augustinian counter-account which has the ability to reconcile notions of individual autonomy and conscience with a strong sense of ecclesial authority. At the centre of this innovative settlement, I point to the value of Montaigne’s theological anthropology, which, in its sensitivity to human fragility and sin, offers a rich validation of pluralistic and tolerant societies by contesting absolutist claims to both knowledge and power. In framing political liberalism in these explicitly theological terms, such an account comes into sharp confrontation with the movement known as Radical Orthodoxy, which has defined the liberal tradition as intrinsically anathema to an authentically Christian understanding of politics. In contrast, this article claims that political liberalism, far from being automatically antagonistic to Christian theological commitments, can be justified by them.     

How Does Theology Go Public? Rethinking the Debate between David Tracy and George Lindbeck

Abstract

The possibilities for taking theological ethics ‘public’ have taken on added significance amidst debates over the nature of moral norms. If realist theological ethics can find a public voice, it will enhance the prospects for interreligious ethical collaboration and the place of theology in it. A key question remains whether particular contexts of religious symbols render them meaningful only within communities of ‘origin’, or particularity actually enables broadly compelling meaning or a public voice for theology. At issue in the Tracy-Lindbeck debate are their understandings of ‘public’, their responses to philosophical anti-foundationalism, and their theological presuppositions. While postliberal emphases on the distinctiveness of the Christian community and attention to the ecclesial community complement Tracy's emphases on dialogue and coherence, Tracy's recent methods provide more adequate responses to the challenges posed by postmodernism.     

Pious Aspects in the Ethical and Moral Views of Matthias Bel

The author of the paper studies the ethical views of Matthias Bel expressed in his Preface to Johann Arndt's treatise and in Davidian-Solomonian Ethics, which contain a critique of false Christianity and ancient (especially Aristotle's) ethics. Bel refuses any philosophical ethics based on human nature, since man, in his very essence, is sinful and vicious. This leads to the general moral downfall of the young and mankind. He only recognises ethics whose source and the highest good is God. He accepts ancient ethics as long as it is useful for achieving Christian moral values. Bel was a vociferous critic of the morality of the time; he adopted a highly negative stance towards the Jews and Gypsies living in the then Historical Hungary. The author considers Matthias Bel a confident, or enthusiastic, Pietist in the early period of his life and work; later, he rates him as a moderate Pietist.