Empire,Deep Solidarity,and the Future of Liberation Theology*

In recent years the term empire has been used to describe an oppressive global situation. Empires are marked by their efforts to control all of life, not only politics and economics, but also society, culture, and religion. Since their inception, liberation theologies have addressed this oppressive global situation by focusing on its various manifestations in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class. As the oppressive global situation tightens and contemporary liberation movements increasingly bring together its various manifestations, liberation theologies need to devise common strategies and models for resistance without abandoning their diverse legacies.     

Liberation Theology Undercover

In this article, I start from the claim that liberation theology's ultimate realization lies beyond the discipline and discourse of theology, in other spheres of knowledge and more practical domains of life. Through an elaboration of examples from diverse fields, such as urban planning and architecture, education, and health policy, I develop the concept of an “undercover liberation theologian” the theologian who leaves behind liberation theology's specific theological discourse to better infiltrate and colonize other disciplines through liberation theology's core concerns (the option for the poor and liberation). My aim with this exercise is to demonstrate how the task of the liberation theologian in the world can be extended beyond the theological, ecclesial, or pastoral domain, and how this requires a different model of future-oriented education for theologians.     

Blondel,the Philosophy of Action and Liberation Theology

Abstract

Maurice Blondel's philosophy of action and concrete political theology provide foundations for modern theologies of action. By commencing with the reflective subject, Blondel compensates the deficiencies of collectivist Marxist social analysis. He did not live to complete his account of the social, political and economic implications of his philosophy, but they are realized in the work and witness of others: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Yves de Montcheuil, Henri de Lubac and John McNeill. Liberation theologians of diverse persuasions need especially to acknowledge their debt to Blondel in an era when, in Western societies, the fundamental context of action is no longer material but intellectual, spiritual and interpersonal. The abstract nature of his thought means that he frequently opens suggestive paths into further reflection rather than prescribing complete solutions to specific practical questions.     

Liberation Theology and Zombies: Paralysis and Praxis

In Fredric Jameson's formulation it may now be “easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” What Jameson suggests is that our current preoccupation with the drama of the apocalyptic belies a deeper paralysis of the imagination, and with this the concomitant loss of actions conducive to a new politics. Jameson's comments here foreground a contradiction in our experience of late capitalism, representations of dramatic rupture which obscure fundamental political stasis. This paper takes Jameson's reflections and the contradiction of action which is also non-action as the point of departure to query the current state of Liberation Theology, particularly the work of Ivan Petrella, to defend the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez, and ask how our contemporary predicament might be illuminated by Danny Boyle's zombie film, 28 Days Later.     

Plasticity and the Future of Philosophy and Theology

Abstract

This article develops a theoretical and political critique of the contemporary notion of the deconstruction of Christianity, primarily in the later work of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. The deconstruction of Christianity relies upon an understanding of temporality and messianicity derived from Heidegger and Benjamin, and we challenge this privileging of messianism in contemporary philosophy and theology. Messianism is contrasted with plasticity, and plasticity is shown to have resources to overcome the impasses of contemporary thought in a counter-messianic way. To oppose messianism is not to oppose theological thinking, but to open a creative and productive political space for a radical theological and philosophical reflection.     

Jihadism au rebours: Orientalism and Occidentalism for a Counter‐Hegemonic Liberation Theology

Following its colonial project, Western Europe imposed a political and cultural understanding of state nationalism and religious homogeneity on the entire world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In parallel with this twofold process, “Religious Nationalism” emerged during the Cold War, affecting the Middle East and framing an updated Abrahamic version of religious supremacism: Wahhabi Islam, the Iranian Revolution, and Israeli Orthodox Judaism were politically backed, becoming the frontrunners of a new Global‐Religious narrative of conflict. This article aims to critically analyse the Western‐Islamic manipulation of “Jihadism” as an artificial and fabricated product, starting from the “deconstruction” of Jihad–Jihadism as an anti‐hegemonic narrative. The anti‐colonial “Islamic” framework of resistance to the Empire (United States) has effectively adopted the same colonial methodology: using violence and sectarianism in trying to reach its goals. Is the Islamic Supremacist “narrative” more influenced by Western thought than by a real understanding of Islam? At the same time, this article aims to stress the historical reasons why the Arab world has been artificially affected by a peculiar form of “Religious Revanchism” which can be understood only if O. Roy's Holy Ignorance dialogues with Steve Biko's Consciousness in emphasising the need for an updated Islamic Liberation Theology.     

Ignatian Spirituality,Political Effectiveness,and Spiritual Discernment: Dean Brackley's Account of Liberation Theology

Dean Brackley offers a helpful, yet underutilized, way to understand liberation theology, namely as a politically and more than politically effective practice of spiritual discernment: a way of life in which one contemplatively and actively distinguishes the true divine liberator from false idols of death. Like several other Jesuit Catholic liberation theologians, Brackley draws on Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises – but he does so more persuasively, thoroughly, and accessibly. While some critics question whether liberation theology is too political, as if it reduced the human relationship with God down to worldly criteria of effectiveness, and others question whether it is too theological, as if its Christian faith commitments necessarily obstructed its practical aims, Brackley provides a promising way forward by turning to spirituality. His method of spiritual discernment not only overcomes political reductionism; it also supports an effective praxis of liberation by transforming self and community through an immersive meditation on Christ.     

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     

Illusions of a Future: Ishiguro,Liberalism, Political Theology

ABSTRACT

This article explores the fate of political theology in Kazuo Ishiguro's speculative fiction Never Let Me Go (2005) and, by implication, in contemporary fiction more broadly. To pursue a reading of Christianity that extends from Hegel through Lacan to ?i?ek, the article argues that political theology’s future may perversely lie in a materialism emptied of all transcendental guarantees: political theology is the historically privileged master fantasy or illusion which reveals the fantastic or illusory status of our entire relation to the real in (neo-)liberal modernity. In conclusion, the article argues that Ishiguro’s fiction may thus be read less as a melancholic dystopian study in total ideological capture or surrender than as the representation of a state of immanent freedom beyond the power relations of (neo-)liberal subjectivity.     

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.     

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.