Dwelling in Diaspora: Judith Butler’s Post-secular Paradigm

Abstract

This article aims to present Judith Butler’s theory of diaspora as a theological paradigm for post-secular social existence. Her accounts of dispossession, statelessness, and exilic identity all afford us a normative challenge for how to think politics and the theological together. We begin by framing Judith Butler’s diasporic theory of politics within Adriennes Rich’s poetic perspective on ecstatic identity. We proceed to argue that by emphasizing both the precariousness and interdependency of social life, Rich and Butler’s shared commitments to universalizing queer forms of collective belonging and affective relations offer an alternative post-secular paradigm to that offered so far by theorists such as Charles Taylor or Jürgen Habermas. Achieving a post-secular “state” may ultimately be a matter of embracing the failure of our own representations, particularly the failures of contemporary religion to represent either the divine or the human, or to constitute a society with its own political theology. It is paradoxically this kind of failure that can open us up to look at ourselves, and to focus on the precariousness and vulnerability of human existence that we see with our very eyes and reproduced by our very own hands.     

The Unquiet Frontier

Abstract

There are many different diagnoses of what constitutes the “post-secular.” My own view is that it constitutes the unprecedented and paradoxical coexistence of two supposedly contradictory social, religious, and cultural trends: on the one hand, the persistence of secular objections to public religion and on the other, the novel re-emergence of religious actors in the global body politic. John Caputo’s much quoted aphorism — that God is dead, but so also is the death of God — captures this agonistic model of the post-secular, in which what we are looking at is not the revival of religion, or the reversion of secular modernity into a re-enchanted body politic, but something more unprecedented and complex. Yet it also means there is little in the way of agreed discourse about the nature of the public square and the legitimacy of religious reasoning within it. This article considers one possible model, that of “post-secular rapprochement,” as one way of envisaging how newly-emergent forms of religious activism and discourse might be mediated back into a pluralist public domain.     

Activism for End Times: Millenarian Belief in an Age of Climate Emergency

ABSTRACT

To be labeled an “eco-millenarian” has invariably pejorative connotations, insinuating the use of catastrophic rhetoric of an ecological end-times to bypass rational decision-making and democratic processes. In this article I critically assess this association, and also consider whether new political concerns – the suggestion that we are in a “climate emergency” – lend a new credibility to the structure of millenarian belief for an era of climate change. Clearly, caution is required here: the legacy of Christian millenarianism to secular politics has at times inspired peaceful, egalitarian revolution, but it is probably better known for motivating violent conflict and new forms of authoritarianism. Thus, we need to specify carefully which theological legacies are being evoked when discussing the relevance of millenarian belief today. Political theology can offer guidance to a new generation of environmental activists seeking resources with which to renew politics in times of emergency.     

What's Missing? Gender,Reason and the Post-Secular

Abstract

This article considers whether contemporary debate about the "post-secular" has overlooked the extent to which, as a concept or epoch, it may be "gendered." Jürgen Habermas has suggested that there is something "missing" from secular reason in the shape of transcendental and metaphysical values; but I will contend that the debate is in danger of neglecting the central role of gender—so integral to the conceptual and political formation of modernity—in any rethinking of the symbolic of the post-secular. As feminist theorists have long been reminding us, many of the same processes that gave birth to modernity's elevation of public reason, impartial and non-contingent subjectivity, and models of the free, self-actualizing autonomous agent facilitated by the formation of liberal democracy, were not actually neutral or universal; but highly gendered. They rested on binary representations of women and men's differential nature; and they conceived of differential and gendered division of labour which often precluded women's claiming full humanity, let alone full and active citizenship. So gender, and women, are also in danger of disappearing from this new post-secular chapter in the debate about religion, politics and identity. This article examines how this omission might be corrected, and will outline what might be some of the most significant issues at stake.     

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.     

James Cone’s Legacy for White Christians

ABSTRACT

This article explores James Cone’s lesson and legacy for white Christians. Specifically, it analyzes Cone’s claim that whites can “become black.” Cone insists that a process of conversion to blackness “means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness), and follow Christ (black ghetto).” In this essay, I will draw upon Cone’s writings and original interview material to construct an outline of these three steps of becoming black. Making sense of what it means to convert to blackness begins with first analyzing his specific challenge to white theology, then his concepts of blackness and the Black Christ, and finally, the praxis of these three steps – that is, what does it look like, practically, to follow the black Christ as a white person.     

A Popular Public Theology

Abstract

The article begins by exploring what is meant by a popular public theology drawing on the work of the missiologist Werner Ustorf. A popular public theology refers to the informal and unofficial theological speech of society, distinct from the more formal theology of the Church and academy. Such popular public theology is found in contemporary culture, albeit often in diffuse and incoherent form. It is then argued that a popular public theology has an inbuilt relevance to the concerns of society, avoids problems associated with public theologians needing to be fluent in more than one academic discourse, and is not in danger of being reliant on the social sciences. Finally, it is suggested that by discussing the implications of cultural theological statements, public theologians are able to contribute critically to social and political debates.     

Reflections on the European Legacy (from the Plains of Anatolia)

Turkey's insistence on its European credentials, and its endeavours to join the European Union, provide an opportunity to reflect on what the European legacy means. While acknowledging the diverse contributors to Europe, and the extensive interactions with the rest of the world that have shaped European history and identity, this essay locates Europe's most important legacy—and measure—in the realm of ideas, especially the ideas we use to organise our experience and approach the challenges of the world. These ideas came to fruition in the Enlightenment, and they provide an approach that is potentially liberating for peoples but uncomfortable for those with power, and those that aspire to power, including within Europe itself. The challenge for Turkey is to recognise that the EU is not necessarily the last word on ‘Europe,’ while continuing to engage creatively with the European legacy.     

The Theology of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology

The theological turn in studies of Carl Schmitt is pronounced. This paper does not challenge this turn, but questions what theology means for Schmitt. Specifically, it challenges the assumption that Schmitt's political theology is grounded in divine revelation. By distinguishing between “theology in the sense of divine revelation” and “theology in the sense of epistemic faith,” it argues that Schmitt's political theology is epistemic in origin. Schmitt's political theology is not rooted in faith in divine revelation, but in the narrower notion that human cognition is, ultimately, rooted in faith not reason, revelation, or common sense.     

The Religious Crisis of the 1960s: The Experience of the Australian Churches

The decade of the 1960s in North America and Europe is generally seen by historians and sociologists as a time of sudden and unexpected religious upheaval. But was this the case in Australia? This article examines the changes in belief and behaviour within Australia’s major churches during the ‘remembered sixties’ from c. 1964 to c. 1972, in relation to the cultural and social context, and the extent to which these amounted to a religious turnaround or crisis. Areas examined include the impact of radical theology, symbolized by the book Honest to God, and the ‘new morality’; the changes in Australian Catholicism initiated by the Second Vatican Council; the debate among Catholics over birth control and the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae; the decline in weekly church attendance, Sunday school enrolments and the membership of church youth organizations; the ‘crisis’ in the ordained ministry; changing attitudes in the churches towards social issues; and the responses of the churches to the Vietnam War. The religious unsettlement that occurred in Australia during this period was very similar to North America and Europe, though there were distinctive local emphases. The central issues in debate were common to all major denominations: the relevance and authority of traditional institutions and formulations of belief.     

Science and Theology Diverse Resolutions of an Interdisciplinary Gap by the New Priesthood of Science

Abstract

In an age where the trend towards secularization has been slowed down, new religions and ideological movements are competing with the more traditional positions to be found in society. Those who are anxious to justify their own particular position share only one criterion for comparison with those holding other positions: a belief in the epistemological efficacy of science. A new priesthood of scientist has emerged to offer justification in the name of science for a variety of ideological positions and to explain to a bewildered public what the real relationship is between the various disciplines of science and those of theology or moral and political philosophy. This paper describes the variety of positions taken up by the new priesthood, typifying these as Fundamentalism, Orthodoxy; Liberalism, Modernism, Agnosticism and Atheism.     

Tourist or vagabond?

Abstract

Poverty isn't an option for the poor so why should it be one for the Church? How do we relate to the experience of being poor in the UK, to the phenomenon of globalization which increasingly shapes all our experiences, and to the task of theological interpretation of the signs of the times? This article explores dimensions of poverty in the UK and in particular the phenomenon of the invisibility of the poor, offers some explanation as to why poverty has grown substantially in the UK over the past two decades and seeks to set this within the wider context of the debate about globalization and its victors and victims—the tourists and vagabonds. Finally, it suggests that much of what passes for modern theology is in fact a form of ‘tourist theology’ and explores ways of creating a new ‘vagabond theology’ for the twenty-first century.     

The Idea of a Category Mistake: From Ryle to Habermas,and Beyond

Summary

The term ‘category mistake’ began to turn up regularly in public discourse in the 1990s as a general term to describe a confusion between different fields of thought with serious practical consequences. But it began its career in philosophy, introduced by Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind in 1949 to attack Cartesian dualism and assert a monistic solution to the so-called mind-body problem. This paper traces the stages by which it came into general usage, arguing that while by the later 1960s it had generally been rejected by philosophers, it was saved from disappearance by its migration into fields such as psychology and theology. From there, it moved into critical theory and then into international relations. Its entry into these latter areas first made plain its potential in political argument. Eventually, multiple meanings of the term came to coexist with one another, with the practical and rhetorical usage supplementing rather than replacing its original philosophical sense.     

What Reformed Theology in a Calvinist Key Brings to Conversations about Justice

Abstract

This essay distinguishes John Calvin's participatory stance toward civil government and society from Peter Rideman's Anabaptist view. It outlines three theological frames that Reformed theology in a Calvinist key brings to conversations about justice. And, in distinction from some other trajectories in Reformed theological ethics, for example, Karl Barth, Miroslav Volff, it tries to retrieve a Calvinist emphasis on natural equity and human moral sensibility with the help of philosophers such as John Rawls and Michael Walzer.     

Living the Theologico-Political Problem: Leo Strauss on the Common Ground of Philosophy and Theology

Leo Strauss argues that the “theologico-political” problem arose from the competing claims of rationalist philosophy and theology. Although he urges others to take sides in this debate, most theorists see it as insoluble, since it is rooted in competing traditions and different, non-demonstrable, epistemic principles. Strauss, however, argues that there is a common ground capable of sustaining a contest between the two: their appeal to the pre-philosophic understanding of justice as moral virtue. The contest between the Bible and Socratic-Platonic philosophy centers on which of the two better understands what justice is, what completes it, and in what respect it is good. Strauss enables us to see why Plato’s Socratic dialogues became indispensable models for classical and medieval philosophers who sought to meet the challenge of theology on the vital common ground of philosophy and theology.     

Natural theology and ancient theology in the Jesuit China mission

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the proselytical use of ancient theology that developed in the environment of the Jesuit China Mission in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This period is roughly coeval with the European diffusion of deistic doctrines based on a secularized interpretation of natural theology. I argue that the threat posed by the spread of such doctrines produced a significant effect on the philosophy that Jesuits developed in order to relate to Confucianism. In particular, in the late seventeenth century, Jesuits belonging to the China Mission gradually abandoned Matteo Ricci’s natural theology and espoused an approach grounded in ancient theology. The situation changed, however, after the turn of the eighteenth century. Deism continued to spread, and even ancient theology came to be perceived as dangerously close the libertinism. The increasing suspicion towards ancient theology was reflected, in the China Mission, by the reception of the doctrines advanced by the so-called “Figurists”, a group of French Jesuits who proposed an interpretation of certain characters of the Chinese Five Classics as figurae of the Bible.     

Retrospective Speculative Philosophy: Looking for Traces of Zizek's Communist Collective in Emerging Christian Praxis

Abstract

In the closing chapter of Living in the End Times, Slavoj Zizek endeavours to "look for traces of the new communist collective in already existing social or even artistic movements." This article explores what Zizek might see if he were to turn his cultural-critical gaze towards emerging Christianity, which is presented as an artistic and social, as well as religious (or irreligious), "movement." His work is increasingly used by emerging church practitioner Peter Rollins to retrospectively explain his own thought and practice. This article examines some of the ways in which Zizek's atheological speculative philosophy and John D. Caputo's theology of the event are impacting contemporary Christian praxis.     

The Organisation of a Zoo-archaeological Reference Collection of Bird Bones

Abstract

This note describes how we have organised part of our reference collection of bird bones in a series of drawers. The layout takes into consideration a) part of the skeleton (all humeri, for example, are housed together), b) size (smallest species are in the first drawer, larger in the second and so on), and c) taxonomic position (within each drawer specimens within orders, whose labels are colour-coded, are grouped together). Empty cells, reserved for species still missing from the collection, serve as reminders of possible alternative identifications for an archaeological specimen and therefore help to prevent the tendency of forcing identification to what is present in the reference collection.     

Sentiment,Sensation and Sensibility: Adam Smith,Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis and Wilhelm von Humboldt

Summary

This article focuses on the analysis of sensibility in the works of three major late eighteenth-century philosophers: Smith, Cabanis and the young Wilhelm von Humboldt. It analyses to what extent Smith's concept of sympathy influenced Cabanis in France and Humboldt in Germany. It argues that modern anthropology, based on a specific theory of sensibility, assumes a strong connection between knowledge acquisition and life in society. This article reveals the strong links between the three authors which were made possible precisely because of their common philosophical background. It proves, for the first time, that Humboldt had access to Condillac's ideas before 1798, since in an early work on the state, the former makes numerous borrowings from speeches Cabanis wrote for Mirabeau, which were in turn strongly influenced by Condillac.