Circling the Square: Moving between Practical Politics and Eschatological Performance

Abstract

The article explores some dilemmas of current Western liberal democratic politics. It proposes that a necessary tension be held between practical politics and radical critique. It reviews the Christian prophetic tradition as a contribution towards doing that and argues for ‘eschatological performance’ as an appropriate way of re-reading this tradition in a contemporary pluralistic context. The article suggests that, to be useful politically, ‘prophetic imagination’ must retain its theological identity and questioning. It critiques the realist/non-realist philosophical framework for doing this, and suggests how responsibly prophetic political theology can be both fluid and critically realist in its outlook.     

Prophetic Activism in an Age of Empire

Abstract

The paper explores the emergence of prophetic activism as a counter-narrative to the dominance of conservative Christianity in national politics. It is based on the premise that the use of religion in American politics remains highly contested. While portions of American Christianity support an imperial project, alternative visions of a more humane future are simultaneously gaining strength. These new forms of prophetic activism are emerging in two distinct yet overlapping social locations: the borderlands and among cosmopolitans. Given the marginality of the borderlands context, prophetic activism has become firmly grounded in liberative religious paradigms that empower people to identify the commonalities between contemporary forms of exploitation and those against which the ancient biblical prophets once raged. An embrace of these same liberative paradigms also enable cosmopolitans to enter into solidarity with the struggles of others for justice.     

Prophetic Perfectionism: The Afterlives of Nat Turner and John Brown

ABSTRACT

Recent fiction, film, art, and scholarship on nineteenth-century American abolitionists Nat Turner and John Brown shed light on the politics of their prophetic religion. Both men led violent rebellions against slavery for which they were executed. Prophetic perfectionism drove Turner and Brown but tended to fade in works about them. Exceptions to this pattern of reception include Jacob Lawrence's John Brown series (1941), Nate Parker's film The Birth of a Nation (2016), and Ted Smith's book Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics (2014). This essay situates Turner's and Brown's prophetic perfectionism and their reception in the context of contemporary political theologies and aesthetics of religion and race.     

Radical (Evangelical) Democracy: The Dreams and Nightmares of Martin Luther King,Jr. and Antonio Negri

Abstract

This essay critically examines the theories of radical democracy offered by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of the beloved community and Antonio Negri's vision of the multitude. The radical democratic visions of King and Negri continue to critically inform progressive reflections on democratic theory and propel new dreams of democracy. Despite their similarities, the differences between Negri and King are substantial. I argue that Negri's dream of the multitude and King's dream of beloved community have been shaped by different conceptions of radical democracy. While Negri works out of a tradition of Italian Marxism, King works within a critical tradition of prophetic evangelicalism. Thus, the political task, according to King, is to translate Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom of God into a beloved community on earth. King's creative negotiation of transcendence and history provides the requisite theological and political resources to develop a truly transcendent and immanent vision of a radical democratic society that is attentive to the demands and dignity of "all God's children."     

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

Summary

R. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.     

The Form and Function of Poverty: Examining National Identity through Public Housing Architecture

Abstract

Lawrence J. Vale tells us that “grand symbolic state buildings need to be understood in terms of the political and cultural contexts that helped to bring them into being,” ¹ 1. Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (London: Routledge, 1992), 3. and that these buildings can help us understand our national identity. But all buildings are part of a broader political and cultural context. Even unimpressive state-funded buildings express meaning about the politics, power, and priorities of a nation. Because these buildings are not purposefully symbolic, their symbolism has the potential to provide a less contrived—though perhaps less appealing—portrayal of the nation in which they are built. Public housing provides an example of this idea. Public housing in the United States is latent with negative meanings that are reinforced and perpetuated by its architecture, siting, and design. This article examines three historical and iconic public housing communities and analyzes the meanings of these spaces through Goodman's four frames of reference—denotation, exemplification, metaphorical expression, and mediated reference—to determine what these spaces, as architecture, say about the American national identity and our relationship with public housing.     

Books Reviews

Abstract

The author underscores the uniqueness of the situation which produced a text but also the process of rewriting and interpretation which followed later applications of the same text. Laato's belief in seeking for historically fixable ideological contexts of prophetic texts is, however, unjustified in light of the unhistorical nature of this context as presented by the OT. Any recurrence to the tradition process of Mesopotamian epic texts in this connection is wrong, as the Mesopotamian tradition was very different from the Palestinian one. Instead of looking for a fixed redactional pattern for all prophetic texts, we should reckon each book to have its own history.     

The Power of the Future: Prophetic Politics Between Political Crises and Civil Rights

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the political life of Malcolm X in the context of the Black Prophetic Tradition. By exploring historical, literary, and theological considerations of political violence and divine warnings, “Catch on Fire” evaluates Malcolm X’s legacy as one of the iconic figures within more contemporary prophetic politics.     

September 11: A Christian Fundamentalist Interpretation

Abstract

This article analyses sermons preached by Free Presbyterian ministers in the United States following the World Trade Centre tragedy and the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It explores how these religious fundamentalists made sense of the event theologically. While terrorists carried out the attack, ultimately God was believed to have been responsible. It was considered God's way of punishing the American nation for its sin. Ministers' use of the Old Testament and God's covenantal relationship with ancient Israel is both the theological and historical backdrop to their explanation of September 11. Concentration on the Old Testament and fundamentalists' exegetical approach means that politics and religion are tightly intertwined. Emphasis on the militaristic portions of the Old Testament also helps justify the war in Iraq. Although Free Presbyterian doctrine is based on institutional separatism and believers' withdrawal from "the world" the sermons connect parishioners to their wider society through a shared sense of patriotic loyalty and national loss.     

The Prophetic and the Limitation of Authority in Modernist Islam

ABSTRACT

The “prophetic”, as a central concept in modernist Islamic political philosophy, has been invoked to show that Islamic political philosophy takes into account the spiritual as well as the material world. However, this expansion of the prophetic had remained relatively silent as to the authority that is granted to experiencing individuals. This essay is a story of these reinterpretations the “prophetic” by three major Muslim thinkers – Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), Ali Shari‘ati (d. 1977), and Abdolkarim Soroush (b. 1945). Writing in different periods and trying to respond to different questions, these authors engaged with the question of politics by reference to prophetic experience. I will explain their intellectual context, according to their cosmologies and their notions of language (participation vs. representation). Then, I will see how in different intellectual context, the force of a democratic notion of the prophetic was undermined by different reinterpretations.     

Canaan Banana,Churches and the Land Issue: Revisiting Theology of Zimbabwe’s Vilified Prophet

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to revisit and evaluate the “combat theology” developed by Canaan Banana, a contemporary theologian, Methodist minister and the first president of Zimbabwe, notably with regard to the issue of land dispossession. It does so primarily against the backdrop of the historical analysis of the ways in which power operated at the intersection of religion and politics during the first three decades after Zimbabwe’s attainment of political independence (1980). The article interrogates several facets of Banana’s liberationist view of justice with regard to the land issue, including (a) speaking truth to political power, regardless of consequences; (b) bearing a prophetic witness vis-à-vis the church’s own complicity in wrongdoing; as well as (c) making a distinction between the selective acts of “liberating violence” and the systemic violence inherent in unjust socio-political structures.     

: The prophetic act of consulting Yhwh in Jeremiah 21,2 and 37,7

Abstract

The paper studies Jer 21,2; 37,7 and some related examples, focusing on the functions performed by the prophet. An investigation of the word as a designation of the act of “consulting a deity by a prophet,” provides data to demonstrate that this activity forms an important part of Biblical prophecy.

Claiming that previous studies of Jer 21 and 37 in relation to prophetic intercession have been largely dominated by the form‐critical concern to establish the the Sitz im Leben of the texts and the Amt of the prophet, a renewed analysis attempts to look beyond these concerns, and rather ask what the texts say about the prophetic act of consulting YHWH.     

“A Different Kind of Theo-Politics: Abraham Joshua Heschel,the Prophets and the Civil Rights Movement”

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the sharp differences in the understanding of the Hebrew prophets by theologians, Jewish and Protestant, in Germany and the United States, with a particular focus on their invocation of prophetic teachings in relation to social and political movements. The sharp denigrations of the prophets – described as ecstatics (Gunkel) or rural naifs (Troeltsch) rendered the prophets useless as figures of inspiration in Germany in relation to racism, colonialism, and WWI. By contrast, the prophets have played a crucial role in American civil thought, especially in the Civil Rights Movement. The distinctive and influential interpretation of prophetic consciousness developed by the German-American Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel is examined for its parallels with the prophetic theology of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the political ramifications of Heschel's link between prophetic revelation and political leadership.     

President Obama,the Bible,and Political Rhetoric

Abstract

How has President Obama made use of the Bible in his political rhetoric, especially as it relates to public policy debates? This article addresses Obama's religious origins, his work as a community organizer in Chicago, his coming to Christian faith under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the development of his understanding regarding the relationship between faith and politics. In particular President Obama has emphasized the notion that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. He also stresses the present generation of black Americans as "the Joshua Generation." The article considers President Obama's hermeneutics, as well as the important context of the black church for his own use of Scripture. The lenses of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr are also addressed as they relate to Obama's use of Scripture in political rhetoric.     

Feminist geographies in Aotearoa New Zealand: cultural,social and political moments

Abstract

Aotearoa New Zealand is a nation of promise, potential and enigma: it was the first country in the world where women gained the vote in 1893 and now boasts the youngest woman world leader in 2017. It is also a postcolonial nation where structural racism, homophobia, and sexism persist, yet it has also given legal personhood to a river. Our Country Report foregrounds Aotearoa New Zealand feminist geographic scholarship that responds to, reflects, and sometimes resists such contrasts and contradictions at the national scale. We employ the lens of the 2017 national election to critically engage with current gendered and indigenous politics in the country. Analyzing these politics through three ‘feminist moments,’ our paper highlights the breadth and scope of current Aotearoa New Zealand feminist geographic scholarship and directions.     

Competing Political Theologies: Intra-Muslim Polemics on the Limits of Prophetic Intercession

Abstract

This essay revolves around an analysis of a polemical exchange between two highly prominent Indian Muslim thinkers in Delhi, Shah Isma'il Shahid (d. 1831) and Fazl-i Haqq Khayrabadi (d. 1862), over the limits of the capacity of Prophet Muhammad to intercede (shafa'at) on behalf of sinners on the day of judgment. While focusing on this polemical moment, it explores the question of how this ostensibly theological debate on the limits of prophetic intercession connected to a much broader political debate surrounding the sociology of sovereignty under conditions of political change and transition. It argues that the opposing arguments on the limits of prophetic authority made centrally visible in this debate were intimately connected to larger questions surrounding the normative status of social hierarchies, distinctions and monarchical modes of being in early nineteenth-century India.     

God and the illegal alien: United States immigration law and a theology of politics

This essay considers the marks of authentic Christian prophecy in Fra Anton Montesino's 1511 sermon in Hispaniola, in its political and cultural context, arguing that these marks are witness, courage, discernment and a concrete, contextual focus. It then reflects on the ways in which these marks of authentic prophecy might be displayed in our own very different context, drawing a characterization of that context from Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. It concludes with reflections on the foundation of prophecy in prayer and hope, and with critical discussion of Luke Bretherton's use of the motif of “exile in Babylon” (Jeremiah 29) as a Biblical image for Christian prophetic presence in liberal, secular societies.     

Going Global: Assessing Presidential Foreign Travel

Abstract

Since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke the “Ironclad Custom”—and especially following World War II—presidents have routinely traveled outside of the United States to visit other countries and meet foreign leaders and publics. Presidents are expected to engage in face-to-face diplomacy, but they must also be present and active in domestic politics. To balance these pressures, presidents need to be strategic and mindful of their limited political resources and the opportunities the political environment creates. How, then, do international and domestic political resources and opportunities affect the extent and frequency of foreign travel? To examine this question, we collected and analyzed a dataset of presidential foreign travel—number of trips, countries visited and days spent abroad—during the post-World War II period (1953–2016) and estimated the frequency of travel with a set of explanatory variables that capture U.S. foreign involvement as well as the domestic policy agenda and political incentives that affected presidents from Eisenhower to Obama. Our findings demonstrate that domestic policy and political incentives are strong determinants of presidential foreign travel.     

Hannah Arendt's Political Theology of Democratic Life

Abstract

In this essay, I explore Hannah Arendt's suggestion that we conceptualize human power and freedom polytheistically if our aim is to understand the challenges and requirements of democratic self-governance. Although it is not clear that politics must always be understood through theological grammars, if it is to be, polytheism affirms that there may be multiple sources of value and of right, offering both a metaphysical counterpart to value pluralism and a vision of how to create political practices and institutions that mirror and honor both the equality and distinction of human beings.     

“Going Public” Reconsidered: Reagan's 1981 Tax and Budget Cuts,and Revisionist Theories of Presidential Power

This paper examines the thesis of the public presidency. In light of the success of Ronald Reagan, many revisionist scholars have criticized traditional models of presidential politics. Whereas traditional views emphasized the bargaining presidency, these recent scholars now argue that, today, the politics of rhetoric dominate the politics of bargaining. This paper examines the central case study of the going-public model, Reagan's 1981 tax and budget cuts, a critical case because it represents Reagan's central legislative success and because many scholars and pundits have credited this success to Reagan's frequent televised public appeals. The case reveals that a strong bargaining dynamic played a part in the 1981 process, and that going public strategies were not as dominant as previously thought.

What has changed significantly is the balance of incentives and constraints that influence strategic choice and the kinds of politicians in the Oval Office who make them. Contemporary presidents, after carefully considering their options, will choose going public over bargaining more often than did their predecessors.

–Samuel Kernell, Going Public