Political theology articles, fourth installment

A fourth installment of recent articles on political theology:

Richard Shorten (University of Birmingham), "Political Theology, Political Religion and Secularisation", Political Studies Review, 8 (2), May 2010: pp. 180-91.

Excerpt: "Recent work on the connection between religion and politics has often aligned itself with one of two intellectual traditions. On the one hand there is an expanding body of thought on the problem of the 'theological-political'. On the other, various discourses of 'political religion' amount to a different angle of approach to similar issues. The exact relation between the two orientations has seldom been spelled out. Nevertheless, it is intriguing for a number of reasons. The disjunction between the two is, in the foremost sense, disciplinary in character. The remit of the first is typically that of political philosophy, while the second body of work is largely historiographical. More prosaically, the two traditions are also readily identifiable with the 'big names' with whom they are invariably associated; Leo Strauss might just as well be a shorthand for political theology, and Eric Voegelin (albeit less well known) occupies a similar place in the tradition of political religion theory. To begin to establish that relation is therefore the primary intention of this short review article. The appearance, over the past few years, of a substantial set of monographs would seem an appropriate occasion on which to do so."

Cosmin Sebastian Cercel (University of Bucharest), "European Legal Integration as Phantasmagoria: On Jus Commune and Political Theology", Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 18 (2), June 2010: pp. 241-52.

Abstract: "This paper tries to explore the place of phantasmatic structures in the production of discourses on the past and the instrumentalization of historiography in the framework of the construction of a European identity. During the last decades, in strong connection with European institutional framing, a heterogeneous discourse tries to impose by means of symbolic violence and authoritative arguments its own truth about Europe's 'Common Legal Past' in order to legitimize European politics in the field of legal integration. In doing so, it conjures both a shared legal tradition and a paradigm for understanding the status of the legal, the jus commune, a kind of Roman Law, a patchwork of Canon Law and scholar interpretation techniques, that emerged in the twelfth century and might have been at work throughout Europe as late as the beginning of nineteenth century. What this discourse also brings to the fore is the idea of a common legal culture that has been largely informed by the religious milieu where most of modern legal concepts have been forged. From this point of view this arguments reveal themselves as variations on Carl Schmitt's problematic stand of a political theology. This paper tries to unravel the internal tensions that undermine the discourse and questions its relation to historical truth and the phantasmatic dimension of meaning construction in historical enterprise. On the other hand, it tries to give an account by means of genealogy of the uncanny relation between this contemporary emergence of the jus commune and other legal ontologies of European modernity that presuppose a strong relation between the legal and the religious. In respect to this, I try to sketch the image of the contemporary discourse on the European 'Common Legal Past' as a discursive strategy that hasn't dealt with its own idiosyncrasies and proffers a doubtful legal ontology with dubious intellectual links that places it in an history of exclusionist and essentialist conservative thought."

Pamela Slotte (University of Helsinki), "Political Theology within International Law and Protestant Theology: Some Comparative Remarks", Studia Theologica: Nordic Journal of Theology, 64 (1), June 2010: pp. 22-58.

Abstract: "An upsurge of efforts to understand history, society and law through their Christian roots has been witnessed in recent years. Some of these attempts are explicitly referred to as political theology, and some are not. However, they do share the feature of seeking to explicate social phenomena by tracing their theological and political roots. This article reflects on this current trend. The primary focus is international legal discourse. The article asks questions about the theological in political theology found in this discourse by presenting thoughts about political theology as found in writings of the Protestant feminist theologian Dorothee Sölle."

Vendulka Kubálková (University of Miami), "A 'Turn to Religion' in IR?", Perspectives: Review of International Affairs, 17 (2), 2009: pp. 13-42.

Abstract: "The Anglo-American discipline of International Relations defends its main principles and resists with an almost religious fervor any change to them, although the explanation of world affairs has been eluding it since its inception. The article attempts to draw up possibly the first historiography of the IR scholarship about religion in world affairs since the 90s, showing the heightened interest in the subject from most other social sciences and humanities. The article proposes the use of the term 'International Political Theology' to bridge the multiple literatures as well as to underscore the theological commitment of the IR discipline to its basic creeds and dogmas."

Mika Luoma-aho (University of Lapland), "International Relations and the Secularisation of Theological Concepts: A Symbolic Reading", Perspectives: Review of International Affairs, 17 (2), 2009: pp. 71-92.

Abstract: "This article takes seriously Carl Schmitt's argument that secular political concepts share structural identity with certain concepts in Christian theology and exposes its implications for contemporary International Relations. The key for understanding Schmitt's argument is in its orporeal [sic] social imaginary. What connects the theological structures of Christianity with those of the contemporary social order is the corpus mysticum: the image of an embodied polis. The origin of the image is in scripture and it has been a subject of much theological speculation in the Christian tradition. The same image has a secular incarnation in the institution of the state, wchich [sic] is, of course, an omnipresent element in contemporary IR as well as in the everyday discourse of international relations. The article concludes with a thought on the role of political theology in the study of IR."

John P. McCormick (University of Chicago), "From Roman Catholicism to Mechanized Oppression: On Political-Theological Disjunctures in Schmitt's Weimar Thought", Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 13 (2-3), June 2010: pp. 391-8.

Abstract: "This essay uses Carl Schmitt's often overlooked Roman Catholicism and political form to highlight generally neglected changes in Schmitt's thinking as it develops from the early to the late 1920s and then to the mid-1930s. In particular, the essay notes significant alterations in Schmitt's attitudes to the Roman Catholic Church, the concept of 'humanity', liberalism, the Jews and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan state."

Samuel J. Kuruvilla (University of Exeter), "Theologies of Liberation in Latin America and Palestine-Israel in Comparative Perspective: Contextual Differences and Practical Similarities", Holy Land Studies, 9 (1), May 2010: pp. 51-69.

Abstract: "This article concerns the development of a theology of Christian liberation and contextual polity from its early origins in Latin America to one of its present manifestations as part of the Palestinian people's struggle for justice and freedom from the state of Israel. This article will be primarily dedicated to a historical and political analysis of the theological context, which includes three different strands. First, there was the development of theologies of liberation, as they are made manifest in Latin America and elsewhere. Next, there was the theology of other Palestinian Christians, and particularly that of the Al-Liqa group that contributed to the development of a contextual Palestinian theology of liberation within the 'occupied' context that is Palestine today. And finally there was the case of Palestinian Protestant Christian theologians such as the Rev. Dr Naim Ateek and the Rev. Dr Mitri Raheb who have raised definitional issues regarding liberation theology and Palestinian contextual Christianity."

Yaniv Belhassen (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), "Fundamentalist Christian Pilgrimages as a Political and Cultural Force", Journal of Heritage Tourism, 4 (2), May 2009: pp. 131-44.

Abstract: "Based on fieldwork on a Midwestern American grassroots organization that conducts evangelical tours to Israel, this paper seeks to enrich analysis of the pilgrimage experience by suggesting a more contextualized approach to its study. To illustrate the implementation of the contextualized perspective, three thematic examples from the fieldwork are presented: men's emotional expression; religious deeds and their political meanings; and a case on the theo-political symbolism embedded in evangelical pilgrimage itineraries. It is argued that understanding not only the theological but also the historical, socio-cultural and political contexts in which evangelical tours operate can illuminate the way individual pilgrims construe meaning during their travel experiences. The paper concludes by suggesting that each of the examined examples illustrates the role of the pilgrimage as a cohesive force in the evangelical sub-culture."

Frederick Guyette (Erskine College and Theological Seminary), "Jonathan Edwards, The Ethics of Virtue and Public Theology", International Journal of Public Theology, 4 (2), 2010: pp. 158-74.

Abstract: "In The Nature of True Virtue, Jonathan Edwards does not deny that common morality is important; benevolence, beauty, conscience, justice, love for family and country are all threads in the fabric of a common morality. Without love for God as their chief end, however, the 'virtues' of common morality do not rise to the level of true virtue. This incommensurability can be problematic for Christian ethics in the public square. Edwards understood his project within the horizon of a commonwealth founded on Christian faith, but modern liberal democracies envision a different relationship between religious discourse and public life. In these contexts, so different from Edwards' setting, pluralism and tolerance are among the keys to a peaceful pursuit of the common good. With these differences in view, then, I explore what contribution Edwards' work on virtue might make to the practice of public theology in the areas of environmental ethics, bioethics and immigration policy."

Kirsteen Kim (Leeds Trinity University College), "Christianity's Role in the Modernization and Revitalization of Korean Society in the
Twentieth-Century", International Journal of Public Theology, 4 (2), 2010: pp. 212-36.

Abstract: "The development of South Korea and its growth to become the world's eleventh largest economy has been accompanied by the introduction of Christianity and its increase to become the major religious group, to which nearly thirty per cent of the population are affiliated. This article probes the connection between these two spectacular examples of development; economic and religious. By highlighting moments or episodes of Christian contribution to aspects of development in Korean history and linking these to relevant aspects of Korean Christian theology, there is shown to be a constructive, although not always intentional, link between Korean Christianity and national development. The nature of the Christian contribution is seen not primarily in terms of the work ethic it engenders (as argued by Max Weber in the case of European capitalism) but mainly in the realm of aspirations (visions, hope) of a new society and motivation (inspiration, empowerment) to put them into effect. In other words, it was the public theology of Christianity that played a highly significant role in the modernization and revitalization of Korean society in the twentieth century."

Max L. Stackhouse (Princeton Theological Seminary), "Public Theology and Democracy's Future", The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 7 (2), summer 2009: pp. 49-54.

Abstract: "Enduring civilizations have had a religious, moral architecture to guide leaders and evoke sacrificial commitments. The Judeo-Christian tradition offers two biblicalthemes [sic] that undergird the 'principled pluralism' that presses society toward democracy: the recognition of sin and the possibility of covenant. A serious public theology will engage the great world religions to find comparable concepts and prospects for an emerging global civil society. A viable democracy depends on a division of powers not only within the government, but among the institutions outside state control in a viable civil society. And civil society is strongest where multiple religious institutions are well developed."

Lisa O'Connell (University of Queensland), "The Theo-political Origins of the English Marriage Plot", Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 43 (1), spring 2010: pp. 31-7.

Abstract: "My paper re-historicizes the eighteenth-century marriage plot by shifting attention away from both the history of literary genres and the modes of social history that have generally informed accounts of the rise of the novel. Drawing instead on recent historiography of the period's religious-political currents, I argue that the novel's marriage plot emerged as both a cultural agent of the Erastian state and an expression of a highly labile, conservative, patriot opposition. It did so, therefore, as an English marriage plot which placed Anglican ritual and relations between vicars and squires at the heart of an imagined English nation. By returning a key tradition of the novel to its theo-political origins, and by offering an account of how marriage itself gained and retained intense topicality across the long eighteenth century in struggles between church and state, I show how the novel's new marriage plot worked to place prose fiction at the center of the literary field and, by that move, radically to augment literature's social resonance."

Leora Batnitzky (Princeton), "Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Predicament", in "The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss", ed. Steven B. Smith (Cambridge University Press, May 2009): pp. 41-62.

www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521703994

Excerpt: "This essay considers what Strauss meant by 'theologico-political predicament,' suggesting that there are at least two senses in which he employs the term, the first diagnostic, the second reconstructive. In its diagnostic sense, 'theologico-political predicament' refers to the ultimate results of the early modern attempt to separate theology from politics. However, Strauss in no way favors a return to theocracy or, like his contemporary Carl Schmitt, a return toward political theology. Strauss attempts to recover classical political philosophy, not to return to the political structures of the past, but to reconsider ways in which premodern thinkers thought it necessary to grapple and live with the tensions, if not contradictions, that by definition arise from human society. It is in this sense that Strauss's use of the theologico-political problem is reconstructive. [...] The conclusion considers the contemporary implications of Strauss's analyses."

Adam Kotsko (Kalamazoo College), "Dismantling the Theo-Political Machine: On Agamben's Messianic Nihilism", in "After the Postsecular and the Postmodern", eds. Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, May 2010): pp. 209-224.

www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/After-the-Postsecular-and-the-Postmodern--New-Essays-in-Continental-Philosophy-of-Religion1-4438-1987-5.htm

Excerpt: "In both cases [Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Žižek's], the impetus behind the turn to religion comes in large parts from within their own intellectual projects [...] but the end goal of their engagement with theology remains the same: to find a way out of religion, recognizing that 'the only way out is through.' This essay is in part an attempt to demonstrate that a similar pattern is at work in the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. [...] In retrospect, [...] one can see that Agamben had all along been shifting fluently between the religious and the political, a procedure he rarely thematises because the example of Walter Benjamin, perhaps his most significant intellectual influence, makes it seem like the obvious route to take. A significant portion of this essay will be taken up with a rereading of the Homo Sacer project with special attention to this continual slippage between the religious and the political. Yet for my purposes, Agamben's account of the theologico-political structure of the West is less important than the means he proposes for escaping or suspending that structure, a means that I will characterize as 'messianic nihilism.' Once I have established the basic outlines of Agamben's diagnosis of what ails Western culture and his proposed way out, I will turn from the exegetical to the constructive task, considering Agamben as one of the most fruitful interlocutors among the representatives of the 'theological turn' for interrogating the relationship between theology and philosophy."

CONF: Morals and Fear: New Insights from Moral Psychology and Political Theology

Symposium "Moral und Angst: Neue Erkenntnisse aus der Moralpsychologie und der politischen Theologie" ("Morals and Fear: New Insights from Moral Psychology and Political Theology"; my translation) of the Collegium Helveticum of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and the University of Zurich, Semper-Sternwarte (Semper-Observatory), Schmelzbergstrasse 25, Zurich, Switzerland, 21 May 2010, 9.30 am-5.45 pm

www.collegium.ethz.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/ch_events/100521_progr_angst_moral.pdf

Description: "We live in a time of mediatized moral outrage. There is talk of 'unfair trade', 'social injustice' and 'economic exploitation' – but most of all is there the permanent fear one could suddenly belong oneself to those affected and lose out. This mixture of real concern for the future wellbeing of humanity and the fear to be among the potential casualties of change indicates that our moral self is determined not least by our unconscious. The latter, on the other hand, is shaped by our biological constitution, our social and religious environment and our personal life style. During this symposium, philosophers, moral psychologists and theologians will be presenting insights from the areas of moral heuristics and political theology and discuss them in the context of the possibilities and restrictions of moral self-determination." (my translation)

The symposium includes a panel on "Moral und Religion: Erkenntnisse aus der politischen Theologie" ("Morals and Religion: Insights from Political Theology"; my translation), centring on fear of Islam and the historicity of the Qur'an, Israel as a political and theological place, and monotheism and political ethics in the Bible.

Most presentations will be given in German, those on moral psychology in English.

Seating capacity is limited. RSVP by 15 May 2010 to Philipp Aerni (ETH Zurich): aernip@ethz.ch

Followed by a reception.

Articles on political theology, third installment

Here's a third installment of recent articles:

Seyla Benhabib (Yale), "The Return of Political Theology: The Scarf Affair in Comparative Constitutional Perspective in France, Germany and Turkey", Philosophy & Social Criticism, 36 (3-4), March 2010:
pp. 451-71.

Abstract: "Increasingly in today's world we are experiencing intensifying antagonisms around religious and ethno-cultural differences. The confrontation between political Islam and the so-called 'West' has replaced the rhetoric of the Cold War against communism. This new constellation has not only challenged the hypothesis that 'secularization' inevitably accompanied modernity but has also placed on the agenda political theology as a potent force in many societies. This article analyzes the contemporary revival of political theology by focusing on the headscarf debate in comparative constitutional perspective. It compares the well-known decision of the French Parliament banning the wearing of the headscarf in public schools (2004) with the decision of the German Constitutional Court concerning whether Fereshta Ludin, an Afghani-German teacher wearing the hijab, could teach in German schools (2003) and with the more recent judgment of the Turkish Constitutional Court (summer 2008) upholding the ban on the wearing of the scarf or the turban in institutions of higher learning. At stake in these debates is not only the meaning of fundamental human rights but also why women and their bodies become the object of disciplinary conflicts in culture, law and religion."

Ola Sigurdson (University of Gothenburg), "Beyond Secularism? Towards a Post-Secular Political Theology", Modern Theology, 26 (2), April 2010: pp. 177-96.

Abstract: "In this article I analyse some of the reasons for a recent, resurgent interest in religion and theology by political philosophers and relate this interest to an inherent instability in modernity itself. In the first part I describe the landscape of current political philosophy with a particular emphasis on radical philosophers. In the second part I describe how the liberal distinction between religion and politics generates a theological instability due to the effective disappearance of the social embodiment of religion within modernity. In the third part I draw some conclusions regarding the challenges the new post-secular condition presents to theology."

Jared Hickman (Johns Hopkins University), "Globalization and the Gods, or the Political Theology of 'Race'", Early American Literature, 45 (1), 2010: pp. 145-82.

Excerpt: "Modernity is getting modernized. In order to explain the world in the early twenty-first century – a transnational world from which religion shows no signs of disappearing – recent scholarship increasingly considers modernity in terms of a long history of globalization whose relativizing effects cannot be equated with 'disenchantment.' In this framework, the colonial Americas – as the bridge between Atlantic and Pacific worlds – rather than Enlightenment Europe immediately take modernity's center stage insofar as globalization, by definition, became possible only with the European 'discovery' of the Americas and the momentous transformations this enabled. Eurocentrism takes an unprecedented hit when we trace modernity to an incipient globalization that necessarily coincides with intercultural encounter in the Americas and beyond rather than to an Enlightenment that proceeds from intracultural European self-reflection."

Charis N. Papacharalambous (University of Cyprus), "The Event and the Subject: The (IM)Possible Rehabilitation of Carl Schmitt", Law and Critique, 21 (1), February 2010: pp. 53-72.

Abstract: "The subject is the bearer of the sovereign decision, according to C. Schmitt. This decision grounds on certain situational pragmatics, yet mainly is born out of a 'null'; as the decision forms the political normalcy that follows after, it displays its nature as an 'event'. This subject is simultaneously a legal and a political one; it is the founder of the Nomos. This founding subject has been eclipsed in alignment with its post-modernly acclaimed 'death'. The subject is deemed to have been inherently divided, as long as its identity steadily postpones itself, is incessantly 'differing', according to the deconstructionist approach; or it is considered as fundamentally 'passive', meaning not so much 'weak', but rather dethroning the Western preoccupation with the active autonomous individual; or, it is maintained but intrinsically reversed, now held either as part of a fundamental ontological order and indirectly of the nature (Agamben), or, opposite to Kantian assumptions, as primarily captured in a radical heteronomy, which constitutes it as a proper ethical subject (Levinas). Crucial is how to develop a concept taking into account the eventfulness of the constitution of the subject, without effacing the political character of such constitution by reducing it to non-political discourses, i.e., to metaphysics, morals or economics; how to conceive of Derrida's 'democracy to-come' as political event, namely both as secular act and in the same time as referring to extramundane fundaments (to a 'political theology'?); how to go beyond the linearity of the liberalist ideology by equating the political event with a messianic miracle 'without messianism'; how to 'salute' democracy?"

Ronald Beiner (University of Toronto), "Has the Great Separation Failed?", Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, 22 (1), March 2010: pp. 45-63.

Abstract: "In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla illuminates why 'political theology' remains relevant today, in a world we might have assumed was thoroughly secularized. Lilla suggests that political theology is the norm, and that Christianity inadvertently gave birth to an exception. But the exception – liberal theology, or a separation of church and state that would give full play to religious impulses – was doomed. Religious impulses were not satisfied by mere moral sentiment, as offered by Rousseau and Kant; and Hegel opened the door to messianism – and eventually to Hitler – by bringing a philosophical version of redemption into liberal theology."

Michael Allen Gillespie and Lucas Perkins (both Duke University), "Political Anti-Theology", Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, 22 (1), March 2010: pp. 65-84.

Abstract: "In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla argues that political theology invariably leads to apocalyptic politics, and that we can avoid this fate only by maintaining a 'Great Separation' between politics and religion, such as the one that Hobbes initiated, but which was overturned by Rousseau and German liberal theology – leading to Nazism. We argue that Hobbes never established such a divide; political theology is far more diverse than Lilla suggests; and liberal German political theology was not a significant source of Nazism. Moreover, liberalism is itself a political theology, suggesting that religion and politics should not, and perhaps cannot, be divided – although they may be reconciled."

Ronnie Po-chia Hsia (Pennsylvania State University), "The Political Theologies of Empires: Jesuit Missionaries between Counter-Reformation Europe and the Chinese Empire", in "Friars, Nobles and Burghers – Sermons, Images and Prints: Studies of Culture and Society in Early-Modern Europe. In Memoriam István György Tóth", eds. Jaroslav Miller and László Kontler (Central European University Press, March 2010): page numbers not given.

www.ceupress.com/books/html/Friars-Nobles-and-Burghers.htm

No abstract or excerpt given.

Giacomo Coccolini (Associazione teologica italiana per lo studio della morale), "Il ritorno della teologia politica [The return of the political theology]", Rivista di teologia morale, 42 (165), 2010: pp. 45-55.

Abstract: "The contemporary political theology is again perceived as ambit of central reflection. It is owed to the renewed centrality of the theological matter in the current political debates, and also to the debate on the political matter related to its bases and legitimation. There are two aspects to deepen: the political one, that seems to forget its own theological origin, even though secularized; and the different theologies that, for long time, have refused a political declination of their fundamental assertions. To answer to these questions, the article analyzes three matters: the secularization of the political matter in the European public ambit; the historical relationship between Christianity and politics; the inseparable connection between theology and politics in the today's post-secular society [sic]."

Kristien Justaert (Catholic University of Leuven), "Liberation Theology: Deleuze and Althaus-Reid", SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism, 39 (1), April 2010: pp. 154-64.

Excerpt: "The contemporary relation between theology and philosophy is a complicated one, but there is at least one strand in theology that has always explicitly used philosophical mediations to clarify and support its theological programme: so-called liberation theology. [...] According to one of the most famous liberation theologians, Enrique Dussel, Marx's thought as a 'philosophy of liberation' was used to 'formulate a metaphysics demanded by revolutionary praxis and technologico-design poiesis against the background of peripheral social formations. To do this it is necessary to deprive Being of its alleged eternal and divine foundation' [...]. This last remark is crucial to understanding the world view and the general perspective of liberation theologians: it is holistic and immanent, not created by a transcendent God that made creation necessarily Good. On the contrary, creation is pervaded with sin, in every place and in every moment where or when human beings or other creatures are oppressed. It is in the 'face' of the oppressed that God can be found, and from the perspective of the 'poor' (in a broad sense) that resistance must grow."

Laura C. Robson (Portland State University), "Palestinian Liberation Theology: Muslim-Christian Relations and the Arab-Israeli Conflict", Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 21 (1), January 2010: pp. 39-50.

Abstract: "This article offers an investigation of the history and intellectual development of Palestinian liberation theology. It focuses in particular on the ways in which the movement's founding writers both made use of and departed from the Latin American model to produce a new theology firmly grounded in specific, local historical and political conditions; the importance of the first intifada for the genesis of this new Palestinian version of liberation theology; and the effort by Palestinian liberation theologians to recast the relationship between Christianity and Islam in the modern Israeli/Palestinian context. It argues that Palestinian liberation theology has become an important intellectual movement among Palestinian Christian elites who seek to convince both Western Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims of a Christian theological justification for a political solution to the Palestinian plight."

Nissim Leon (Bar-Ilan University), "The Transformation of Israel's Religious-Zionist Middle Class", Journal of Israeli History, 29 (1), March 2010: pp. 61-78.

Abstract: "This article argues that the emergence of a new religious-Zionist middle class in Israel may be a factor in restraining the radical potential of the political tendencies that research on religious Zionism has been pointing to for years. It examines, as test cases, the restrained protest against the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and the most recent attempt to change the political leadership of the religious-Zionist parties prior to the 2009 elections. It concludes by connecting the processes described here with a discussion of the possible role of the Israeli middle class in mitigating the rifts within Israeli society."

Anthony G. Reddie (Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education), "Exploring the Workings of Black Theology in Britain: Issues of Theological Method and Epistemological Construct", Black Theology: An International Journal, 7 (1), 2009: pp. 64-85.

Abstract: "This essay outlines two contrasting methods for undertaking Black theology in Britain, namely the respective work of Robert Beckford and that of the author of this paper. The paper is offered as a contribution to the wider development of urban theology in Britain. The author, who is one of the leading Black theologians in Britain, offers this work as a means of unpacking some of the methodological and epistemological concerns of this developing mode of largely Christian inspired Black theological reflection in this country."

Anthony G. Reddie (Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education), "Not Just Seeing, But Really Seeing: A Practical Black Liberationist Spirituality for Re-interpreting Reality", Black Theology: An International Journal, 7 (3), 2009: pp. 339-65.

Abstract: "One of the biggest challenges that confront Black people living in the UK is how to assess the veracity of the macro and micro contexts in which our lives are lived. In a country whose indices for what constitutes normality and acceptability are predicated on notions of 'Whiteness', Black people have always needed to possess an armoury of experiential and psycho-social tools in order to discern how to live as a potent symbol of 'otherness' within the body politic of the nation. This essay, which arises from engagement with a group of Black Methodists, seeks to demonstrate how the use of personal experience and the role the spirit in Black life can lead to ways of being able to discern ones positionality within the broader world of White dominated Britain. The essay brings together reflections on Black theology, Pneumatology and experiential learning in order to great a Practical/Participative Black theology for seeing and reinterpreting the reality of being Black in Britain."

Jonathan L. Walton (University of California, Riverside), "Black Theology and Birmingham: Revisiting a Conversation on Culture", Black Theology: An International Journal, 7 (3), 2009: pp. 259-81.

Abstract: "The purpose of this essay is to trace the development of the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies in order to suggest that it offers a viable option for black liberation theologians concerned with interpreting the intersections of theology and culture in general, and pop culture forms of religious expression such as televangelism in particular. This essay will reveal that the varying methods of cultural studies and black theology have, in many ways, mirrored one another since their respective inceptions. And over the course of the past decade leading black liberation theologians have appealed to the theories and methods of cultural studies in their work. Yet a review of Dwight Hopkins theological analysis of the intersections of black religion and popular culture will demonstrate that revisiting the Birmingham tradition can still prove beneficial, theoretically and methodologically, to the black liberation project. This is particular true in regards to finding the appropriate balance between creative cultural agency and interpretive freedom of the folk, on the one hand, and the ideological dimensions of mass mediated cultural expression such as black televangelism, on the other."

Young Bin Moon (Seoul Women's University), "God as a Communicative System Sui Generis: Beyond the Psychic, Social, Process Models of the Trinity", Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, 45 (1), March 2010: 105-26.

Abstract: "With an aim to develop a public theology for an age of information media (or media theology), this article proposes a new
God-concept: God is a communicative system sui generis that autopoietically processes meaning/information in the supratemporal realm via perfect divine media ad intra (Word/Spirit). For this task, Niklas Luhmann's systems theory is critically appropriated in dialogue with theology. First, my working postmetaphysical/epistemological stance is articulated as realistic operational constructivism and functionalism. Second, a series of arguments are advanced to substantiate the thesis: (1) God is an observing system sui generis; (2) self-referential communication is divine operation; (3) unsurpassable complexity is divine mystery; (4) supratemporal autopoiesis of meaning is divine processing; (5) agape is the symbolic medium of divine communication. Third, this communicative model of God is developed into a trinitarian theology, with a claim that this model offers a viable alternative beyond the standard (psychic, social, process) models. Finally, some implications of this model are explored for constructive theology (conceiving creation as divine mediatization) and for science-and-religion in terms of derivative models: (1) God as a living system sui generis and (2) God as a meaning system sui generis."

Matthew L. Becker (Valparaiso University), "What Good is Theology?", Daystar Journal, fall 2009: page numbers not given. Available here:

http://daystarnet.org/Jounal-spring-2010/What%20Good%20Is%20Theology.pdf

Excerpt: "How does good theology relate to the publics that are 'society' and 'the world'? In other words, is there a viable 'public theology' that can claim the adjective 'good?' While the constraints of this little essay preclude even a partially-developed understanding of public theology, a few key elements can be highlighted."

Recent articles on political theology, second installment

Here's a second installment of recent articles (this will be a recurrent feature from now on):

Wolfram Malte Fues (University of Basel), "The Foe. The Radical Evil. Political Theology in Immanuel Kant and Carl Schmitt", The Philosophical Forum, 41 (1-2), spring/summer 2010: pp. 181-204.

Excerpt: "'In a few weeks' time, I shall surprise you with a new work by Kant that will very much astound you,' Friedrich Schiller writes to his friend Christian Gottfried Körner on February 28, 1793, referring to Immanuel Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. 'One of the fundamental principles held in it, however, outrages my [...] feelings. For he [Kant, W.M.F.] asserts a propensity of the human heart to evil, which he calls the radical evil, and which under no circumstances must be confused with the stimuli of the sensuous nature. He places it above and beyond the sensuous, in man's spiritual nature, as the locus of freedom.' No sooner has self-enlightening reason drawn religion into its bounds, than it breaks with the old Manichaean-Christian dogma of evil as the sin of the flash against the spirit. Reason starts seeking evil within itself, within its principle of self-determination, and hence at the very 'locus of freedom.' A Janus-faced reason, which, entirely by its freedom of choice, conceals good behind evil, evil behind good? Whose 'progress in the consciousness of freedom' can lead us into paradise just as well as into utter catastrophe? It is not surprising that this radical evil fascinates Schiller as much as it outrages him. Let us investigate the causes for Schiller's conflicting sensations and their interconnection."

Geoffrey Waite (Cornell University), "Kant, Schmitt or Fues on Political Theology, Radical Evil and the Foe (pour une philosophie buissonière et parallactique)", The Philosophical Forum, 41 (1-2), spring/summer 2010: pp. 205-27.

No abstract or excerpt given.

R.R. Reno (Creighton University), "Lawe, loue and lewete: The Kenotic Vision of Traditional Christian Political Theology", in "Crisis, Call, and Leadership in the Abrahamic Tradition", eds. Peter Ochs and William Stacy Johnson (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2009): pp. 169-83.

www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=375019

Excerpt: "My purpose, then, is to show how [William Langland's late medieval poem] Piers Plowman and its allegorical dream sequences function as a scripturally reasoned response to the cry of the poor that gives spiritual transformation priority over social change. I begin with a brief account of the argument of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, and then I move to an exposition of the social analysis present in Langland's poem. In conclusion, I will gesture toward the question of how my interpretation of Piers Plowman might inform a postliberal effort to restore scriptural reasoning to a foundational role in forming our social consciences."

Jacob Schiff (University of Chicago), "From Anti-Liberal to Untimely Liberal: Leo Strauss' Two Critiques of Liberalism", Philosophy & Social Criticism, 36 (2), February 2010: pp. 157-81.

Abstract: "Leo Strauss' ubiquitous presence in recent US foreign policy debates demands a thorough analysis of his critique of liberalism. I identify and explain a previously unnoticed transformation in that critique. Strauss' Weimar critique of liberalism was philosophical and political; like Carl Schmitt, he sought philosophical grounds to replace liberalism with an authoritarian political system. However, post-emigration Strauss abandoned this political agenda, exclusively pursuing a philosophical critique that exposed modern liberalism's purported weaknesses in order to strengthen its core. I accentuate this change by reading Strauss' postwar lecture, 'The Three Waves of Modernity', as an implicit response to and reconstruction of Schmitt's 'Neutralizations and Depoliticizations' essay. Strauss' changing relationship to political theology and political philosophy was central to his transformation: while a philosophically grounded political theology undergirded his early disdain for liberalism, Strauss later abandoned political theology for a quasi-theological faith in political philosophy that motivated his more moderate, philosophical critique."

Govert J. Buijs (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), "The Souls of Europe", LIMES: Cultural Regionalistics, 2 (2), 2009: pp. 126-39.

Abstract: "How should Europe deal politically with its legacy as a so-called 'Christian civilization'? Should this imply an overt reference to God or to the Christian or Judeo-Christian tradition in European constitutional documents (as was debated when the so-called 'Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe' was tabled)? This debate raised the old 'politico-theological problem': does a political order need some kind of metaphysical or religious grounding, a 'soul', or can it present itself as a purely rational order, the result of a utilitarian calculus? In this article it is argued that the secular idea of the state as an inherent element in the 'Judeo-Christian tradition', for a 'divine state' usurps a place that is only God's. So, this religious tradition itself calls for a secular state, and this inherent relationship between religion and secularity has become a key element for the interpretation of European civilization, most notably in the idea of a separation of the church and the state. But the very fact that this is a religious idea does imply that the European political order cannot be seen as a purely rational political order without a soul. The idea of a 'plural soul' is proposed as a way out of the dilemma."

Shmuel Trigano (University Paris X Nanterre), "The Return of the Theological-Political in Democracy and the Rediscovery of Biblical Politics", Hebraic Political Studies, 4 (3), summer 2009: pp. 304-18. Available online:

www.hpstudies.org/20/admin/pdfs/07305e34-7d1c-437c-a8ce-f0fd3df92a25.pdf

Abstract: "The Spinozist moment was a turning point for democratic theory. It reduced the biblical heritage of political philosophy to mere theology and thus founded the 'autonomy of politics' so brilliantly theorized by Rousseau in his 'Social Contract.' Yet Spinoza and Rousseau could not found their system without reintroducing (an immanent or secularized) transcendence to politics, such that a kind of reenchantment, in the form of civil and political religions, has occurred in modern politics. These are crucial matters to consider today, as this transcendence so crucial to the foundations of democracy is collapsing. To confront this problem, one might consider that Spinoza theoretically founded democracy by expelling the biblical, and its rediscovery today might help us think through the present crisis."

Martín Plot, "The Democratico-Political: Social Flesh and Political Forms in Lefort and Merleau-Ponty", Theory & Event, 12 (4), 2009, no page numbers given.

Excerpt: "Modern democracy is an enigma. It is an enigma because, being born out of the split of the theological and the political, it places society face to face with its own institution. In theologico-political orders, societies take themselves for granted, they see themselves as a unity guaranteed by the objectifying gaze of God. Modern democracies, in contrast, confront the ambiguity proper of a being that becomes an entity before its own gaze – a two-dimensional, reversible being, a seer that is also a visible. No longer being a heteronomously constituted object, now the body politic becomes both a subject and an object, a flesh in the gaze of itself. In order to understand this mutation and the advent of the form of society that I will call democratico-political, one of my articulating strategies will be the uncovering of the implicit dimensions – and the exploration of the political potentialities – of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of flesh."

Paul W. Kahn (Yale Law School), "Torture and Democratic Violence", Ratio Juris, 22 (2), June 2009: pp. 244-59.

Abstract: "To understand the problem of torture in a democratic society, we have to take up a political-theological perspective. We must ask how violence creates political meaning. Torture is no more destructive and no more illiberal than other forms of political violence. The turn away from torture was not a turn away from violence, but a change in the locus of sacrifice: from scaffold to battlefield. Torture had been a ritual of mediation between sovereign and subject. Once sovereignty is located in the people, it no longer makes sense to speak of being sacrificed for the sovereign. Instead, sovereign presence is now realized in an act of self-sacrifice. The wars of modern nation-states have been acts of reciprocal self-sacrifice. Terror invokes torture in response because both speak a primitive language of political sacrifice, denying the enemy the privilege of self-sacrifice."

Gerard Mannion (Catholic University of Leuven), "A Brief Genealogy of Public Theology, Or Doing Theology when it Seems Nobody is Listening ...", Annali di Studi Religiosi, 10, November 2009: pp. 121-54.

Abstract: "This paper seeks to introduce the background to public theology, offering some reflections upon its origins, history, methodologies, as well as the recent state of public theology as a sub-discipline in its own right. After a brief discussion of the scope and definitions of public theology, the paper will offer a genealogical account of the origins and development of what is today termed 'public theology', throughout key periods of the history of the church. A discussion of the emergence of the sense of public theology as a sub-discipline in its own right in the later stages of the twentieth century will follow. Then, the paper will offer a tentative 'typology' of recent forms of public theology, before offering some suggestive conclusions concerning the most fruitful direction in which theological contributions to the wider public arena might progress."

Nimi Wariboko (Andover Newton Theological School), "Ethical Methodology: Between Public Theology and Public Policy", Journal of Religion and Business Ethics, 1 (1), 2009: article 4. Available online:

http://via.library.depaul.edu/jrbe/vol1/iss1/4/

Abstract: "That public theology is relevant to public policy debates and formulation should be self-evident. After all, public theologians aspire to develop ethical frameworks and discourses about how we should live together in plural civil societies. They offer public theology as a form of discourse. Unfortunately, they have largely failed to explicitly develop a procedural method of ethical analysis relevant to public policy decision-making. This paper proposes an ethical methodology as a form of public discourse, a meta-ethical model showing how themes, concerns, and insights of public theology can be systematically organized into practical policy arguments. It provides a robust 'mechanics' to aid public theologians prepare ethical analyses for public policies."

Nico N. Koopman (Stellenbosch University), "For God So Loved the World ... Some Contours for Public Theology in South Africa", Dutch Reformed Theological Journal/Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, 50 (3-4), December 2009: pp. 409-26.

Abstract: "After a brief autobiographical outline of the author's involvement in public theology, this article argues in favour of a critical and constructive public theology, which reflects upon the role of Christian faith in public life in the young South African democracy and in other democratic societies. It offers some crucial contours for the development of public theology. It firstly calls attention to different approaches to and emphases in public theology. With different emphases and methodologies the three central questions of public theology regarding the inherent public nature of God's love for the world, the public rationality of this love, and the public implications of God's love for the world, are addressed. Public theology is secondly described as an intra-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and transdisciplinary scholarly practice. In the formulation of a third contour the possibilities of what [p]ublic theology might become are discussed, namely a theological discipline, subdiscipline, research field, curriculum organiser, catalyst or a new contextual theology. In two final sections the publics of public theology and the contemporary agenda of public theology are discussed."

David Novak (University of Toronto), "The Theopolitics of Abraham Joshua Heschel", Modern Judaism, 29 (1), February 2009: pp. 106-16.

Excerpt: "My late revered teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, even today is probably best remembered by many for his political activism during the 1960s and the early 1970s. Whenever newsreels taken during that time are shown again, one will inevitably see Heschel alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in the march from Selma, Alabama, or one will frequently see Heschel marching in front of the White House protesting the war in Vietnam. Yet there is little in Heschel's earlier work, written or oral, to intimate that, let alone how, he would move into this kind of public role in the last years of his life".

Yaniv Belhassen (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) and Jonathan Ebel (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne), "Tourism, Faith and Politics in the Holy Land: An Ideological Analysis of Evangelical Pilgrimage", Current Issues in Tourism, 12 (4), July 2009: pp. 359-78.

Abstract: "This article aims to enhance the discussion of the role of ideology in the development of tourism practices through a closer examination of the case of Christian pilgrimage. The analysis focuses on the theo-political ideology of Christian Zionism and its roles and manifestations in the context of evangelical pilgrimages to Israel. Findings suggest that ideological dynamics within the development of these tours can be discussed by distinguishing between four tourism actors, namely, ideological organizations, tour organizers, Israeli officials, and the tourists. We suggest that these actors can be differentiated from each other in accordance with their ideological roles and orientations. Additionally, by demonstrating the similar utilization of pilgrimage by theo-political opponents of Christian Zionism, such as Sabeel and FOSNA, this article illustrates how pilgrimage to the Holy Land has become an arena for competition between these two rival ideologies within the Evangelical movement. The article concludes with a discussion on the role of pilgrimages to Israel as a platform through which theo-political ideologies are manifested, distributed, utilized, and consumed."

Benjamin H. Bratton (University of California, San Diego), "On Geoscapes and the Google Caliphate: Reflections on the Mumbai Attacks", Theory, Culture & Society, 26 (7-8), December 2009:
pp. 329-42.

Abstract: "When advanced technologies of globalization that are closely associated with secular cosmopolitics are opportunistically employed by fundamentalist politico-theologies for their own particular purposes, an essential irresolution of territory, jurisdiction and programmatic projection is revealed. Where some may wish to identify an ideal correspondence between a global political sphere into which multiple differences might be adjudicated and the visual, geographic representation of a single planetary space, this conjunction is dubious and highly conditional. Instead multiple territorial projections and competing claims on space are also generative of the very qualities of the spatial as a political medium altogether. For example, the well-publicized use of satellite-based mapping and telecommunications tools, such as Google Earth, by the terrorist group that attacked Mumbai in November 2008, raises several knotty and important questions about how contrary comprehensive images of the world can make use of one another in ways that undermine the 'unitotality' of global territory. It is not that Google and Jihad are 'equivalent' or even 'translatable', but rather because they are not, they are in practice interoperable. Instead links between urbanism, cosmography, and the socialization of planetary software networks demonstrate the centrality of design to the ongoing fashioning of the territory of territories, the geoscape."

Ana Belén Soage (University of Granada), "Introduction to Political Islam", Religion Compass, 3 (5), September 2009: pp. 887-96.

Abstract: "This paper explores how and why Islamism (i.e. political Islam) emerged in the last decades of the 19th century. It resorts to original sources to illustrate Muslim responses to the perceived threat of Westernisation and, notably, the development of Islamism as a reaction to the evolving socio-political conditions in the Middle East. In addition, it demonstrates that, despite claims to religious purity, Islamists have incorporated elements of the foreign ideologies they profess to oppose. The article ends by providing a tentative classification of modern-day Islamists."

CONF: RAKIA – Colloquium for Graduate Students

RAKIA – Colloquium for Graduate Students, at the newly-founded Hebraic Graduate School of Europe (HGSE) in Berlin, Germany,
14-18 February 2010

The western notion of modernity developed out of Enlightenment and secularization processes. This is one of the reasons, why the topic of modernity has become one of the central topoi in the present dialogue between cultures. Enlightenment and secularization are intimately interwoven with the way the different religious traditions that have shaped the face of Europe – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – have developed in the course of time.

Enlightenment and tradition are however not opposites in western thought. The emancipatory impulse of secularized Enlightenment is, in the form of Jewish monotheism and Greek rationalism, embedded in the fundamentals of western tradition on which Islam is also founded. In religion, philosophy, science, and art the peoples of Europe have interpreted the historical experiences of modernization. Besides this, there existed also a critique of modernity, a desire to preserve tradition, impulses, that have also left their imprint on the process of modernity.

The organizers want to explore the cultural, philosophical, social, and political aspects of the above problematic. Themes to be discussed include: "Secularization and Globalization" (Sunday, 7 pm); "Israel – Individual, People, and Nation in Western Tradition" (Monday, 9 am-
12 pm); "Nationalism, Zionism, and Messianism" (2-6 pm); "Europe between Athens and Jerusalem" (Tuesday, 9 am-12pm); "Political Theology and Political Theory" (2-6 pm); "Law and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam" (Wednesday, 9 am-12 pm); "Jews and Muslims in Post-Christian Europe" (2-6 pm); "The State of Israel in European and Arabic Context" (Thursday, 9 am-12 pm); "Towards a 'Cultural Magna Charta for Europe' – Summation" (2-6 pm)

Particular attention will be paid to the perspective of the Shoah, the crisis (and possible renewal) of the humanities in Israel and Europe, and the Jewish Heritage of Europe in the tension between "Israel in Europe – Europe in Israel". Against the background of the destruction of the Jewish heritage of Europe, the bridge between Israel and Europe can serve as a way for a renewal of a common ethos.

The proposed Magna Charta will bear witness to the mutual influences of the different traditions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Greek-Roman Antiquity – that have shaped the face of Europe. This is necessary to find ways and means reflecting the "principle of differences" as a basis for equality, aiming at a new definition of the "contrat social" for the member states of Western, Central and Eastern Europe, after the breakdown of the great structures of the 19th century and the ideologies of the 20th century in the age of globalization.

The Colloquium will be conducted as an interdisciplinary seminar. The various topics will be presented by short lectures and papers, given by professors, doctoral candidates, and students, in which also current work-in-progress and research projects can be introduced and discussed. The evening programme includes public lectures and discussions, films, music, and literary readings.

Post-doctoral and doctoral researchers and masters students from all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences such as Jewish Studies, Philosophy, Theology, Sociology, History, Political Science, Law, Economics, Cultural Studies, Literature, and Education, are cordially invited to participate.

Please send applications to Michelle Piccirillio (Hebraic Graduate School of Europe): piccirillo@hgse.eu

Journal articles on political theology 2009

Some articles on political theology published in 2009 in academic journals of all conceivable disciplines:

David Theo Goldberg (University of California, Irvine), "A Political Theology of Race: Articulating Racial Southafricanization", Cultural Studies, 23 (4), July 2009: pp. 513-37.

Abstract: "Over the past three decades Stuart Hall has provided many of the key terms for (re)thinking the social, the cultural, and the political. Largely absent from his work has been consideration of religion and, given more recent theoretical developments, of the theologico-political. I pose a series of questions to Stuart Hall by considering an analysis of race as political theology, exemplified by a focus on the history of South African apartheid and its afterlife."

Mika Luoma-aho (University of Lapland), "Political Theology, Anthropomorphism, and Person-hood of the State: The Religion of IR", International Political Sociology, 3 (3), September 2009: pp. 293-309.

Abstract: "In this article I identify international relations as a form of religion. My identification takes two epistemological paths. The first one has been cleared by political theologians such as Carl Schmitt, who teach that 'secular' political ideas not only have a divine origin, but also structural identity with Christian theology. I will clear the second path with help from a cognitive theory of religion that identifies anthropomorphism as a defining criterion of religion. International relations is a religion, because it is a system of thought that takes the metaphorical image of the personified, embodied state more seriously than other, more idiosyncratic forms of anthropomorphism. What we have in academic IR is, thus, a theology that works to generalize and systematize this religious image into a disciplinary form."

Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney), "Stasis: Beyond Political Theology?", Cultural Critique, 73, fall 2009, pp. 125-47.

From the preview: "Political theology refers to the impossibility of both to completely separate and to completely conflate politics and religion. [...] It remains a point of contention, however, what the repercussions of the trespassing of theological concepts into the political are. [...] Despite the differences between these thinkers, there is one abiding characteristic. There is a constitutive disjunction between politics and the political, between law and justice. As a result, political theology forecloses meaning in politics – that is, no political party or representative can be thought to represent the political ideal. More emphatically, there is no end of history. I will explore here whether it is possible to understand the foreclosure of meaning not as the conclusion, but rather as the condition of the possibility of the political. Can the meaningless or the irrational function as the basis of the intertwining and imbrication of the secular and the sacred?"

Nur Masalha (St Mary's University College), "Reading the Bible with the Eyes of the Canaanites: Neo-Zionism, Political Theology and the Land Traditions of the Bible (1967 to Gaza 2009)", Holy Land Studies, 8 (1), May 2009: pp. 55-108.

Abstract: "In modern times, a whole range of colonial enterprises have used the Bible. The book of Joshua and other biblical texts evoking the exploits of ancient Israelites have been deployed in support of secular Zionism and settler colonisation in Palestine. The mega narratives of the Bible, however, appeared to mandate the ethnic cleansing and even genocide of the indigenous population of Canaan. This article argues that, with the rise of messianic Zionism since 1967, a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the land traditions of the Bible, has emerged in Israel – a political theology that demanded the destruction of the so-called modern Canaanites; since 1967 fundamentalist rabbis have routinely compared the Palestinian people to the ancient Canaanites, Philistines and Amalekites, whose annihilation or expulsion by the ancient Israelites was predestined by a divine design. This article focuses on the politics of reading the Bible by neo-Zionists and examines the theology of the messianic current which embraces the paradigm of Jews as a divinely 'chosen people' and sees the indigenous Palestinians as no more than illegitimate squatters, and a threat to the process of messianic redemption; their human and civil rights are no match for the biblically ordained holy war of conquering and settling the 'Promised Land'."

Rutger Henneman (researcher and activist) and Alastair McIntosh (University of Strathclyde), "The Political Theology of Modern Scottish Land Reform", Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 3 (3), 2009: pp. 340-75.

Abstract: "This paper gathers evidence that modern Scottish land reform was influenced by applied liberation theology from both grassroot community activists and institutional churches. Scotland's land tenure was feudal to the late twentieth century. Plutocratic ownership impacted the economics and psychology of community wellbeing. The 1990s produced a land reform movement culminating in the new Scottish Parliament's Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. These created a conditional 'community right to buy' and affirmed freedom of 'right to roam'. Two percent of Scottish land is now in community ownership. Our research interviewed fifteen movers and shakers – both national theologians and local activists from the vanguard land trusts of Eigg, Assynt and Gigha. We conclude that spirituality and religion can be subtle drivers of community empowerment. By inspiring, informing and legitimising socio-political transformation, a 'Remnant' theology factored into Scottish legislation of international significance."

Erin Runions (Pomona College), "Detranscendentalizing Decisionism: Political Theology after Gayatri Spivak", Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 25 (2), fall 2009, pp. 67-85.

Abstract: "This essay uses the thought of Gayatri Spivak to reread one religious trope – the antichrist – commonly used in conservative political discourse to motivate a masculinist theopolitical decisionism. Runions draws a connection between Spivak's insistence on detranscendentalizing radical alterity – which is a deconstructive literary approach to religious narratives – and Spivak's larger concern with ethics. The project of detranscendentalizing is an important first step toward the impossible ethical encounter with the other; it thus charts a course for critiquing theopolitics and imagining new modes of political engagement, in ways that resist the usual conservative accusations of neutrality. To illustrate, the essay draws to the fore the ancient Near Eastern mythological filiations between Christ and antichrist; it reads the antichrist as a detranscendentalized figure that ironically disrupts the masculinist authority of decisions made in the name of Christ and makes room for the singular encounter with the political other."

Anthony O'Mahony (Heythrop College), "The Vatican and Europe: Political Theology and Ecclesiology in Papal Statements from Pius XII to Benedict XVI", International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 9 (3), August 2009, pp. 177-94.

Abstract: "The article examines the origins and evolution of the Vatican's political theology and ecclesiology for Europe from Pius XII (especially after the Second World War) and including the pontificates of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It seeks to examine the continuities of the 'Idea of Europe' in papal thought against a background of changing political context – the end of the Second World War, the Cold War, the fall of the communist state system, the emergence of a united but diverse Europe after 1989. The political structures of the continent now include within its geographic sweep Western and Eastern Christian churches which, divided by tradition and modern history, find their relationship a key marker in the contemporary religious identity of Europe. This reality is a significant framework for Vatican thinking on Europe especially for John Paul II and Benedict XVI."

Victoria Kahn (University of California at Berkeley), "Political Theology and Fiction in The King's Two Bodies", Representations, 106, spring 2009: pp. 77-101.

Abstract: "This essay argues that Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies is intended as a contribution to twentieth-century debates about political theology and that modern students of political theology can learn from Kantorowicz's association of political theology with legal fiction."

Jennifer R. Rust (Saint Louis University), "Political Theology and Shakespeare Studies", Literature Compass, 6 (1), January 2009: pp. 175-90.

Abstract: "The current focus on political theology in Shakespeare studies is largely devoted to tracing how Shakespeare's dramas illuminate the structural link between religious and political forms in both early modernity and modern liberal democracy. Critics concerned with addressing Shakespeare's engagement with political theology are also interested in how Shakespeare's portrayal of sovereign bodies in crisis constitute an early representation of 'biopolitics'. These critics draw on theorists ranging from Carl Schmitt to Giorgio Agamben to inform their analyses of the way Shakespeare dramatizes sovereignty in a 'state of emergency' in his histories and tragedies. Plays such as Richard II, Coriolanus, and Hamlet have drawn particular attention insofar as they vividly interrogate the nature of the sovereign exception and decision highlighted by theorists of political theology. While this line of criticism adds a new theoretical dimension to Shakespeare studies, it also offers the potential for remapping our understanding of the religious and political history of early modern England in its attention to the deforming pressure of religious schism on traditional structures of sovereignty."

Aaron Riches (University of Nottingham), "Political Theology and Pauline Law: Notes Toward a Sapiential Legality", Telos, 146, spring 2009, pp. 140-57.

Excerpt: "In 1979, on the thirty-ninth anniversary of the closing of the Franco-Spanish border at Port Bou and one day before the anniversary of the suicide of Walter Benjamin, Jacob Taubes and Carl Schmitt opened the Bible in the Sauerland. The two men sat down in Plettenburg to read St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chapters 9-11. As if in memory of Benjamin, they spoke 'under a priestly seal': Schmitt, the most important state law theorist of the twentieth century, a Roman Catholic and sometime member of the Nazi Party; Taubes, a Jewish philosopher of a Messianic and oddly left-wing disposition ..."

Mike Grimshaw (University of Canterbury), "Responding not Believing: Political Theology and Post-Secular Society", Political Theology, 10 (3), fall 2009: pp. 537-57.

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'?"

The same journal, "Political Theology", carried, on occasion of the 500th birthday of John Calvin, in issue 3 of its 10th volume (fall 2009) a symposium on "John Calvin and Political Theology":

www.politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/PT/issue/view/690

Articles include: "Editorial: Remembering Geneva's Calvin" by Marilynne Robinson (University of Iowa); "John Calvin and the Jews: A Problem in Political Theology" by David C. Steinmetz (Duke Divinity School); "Calvin and Natural Rights" by David Little (Harvard Divinity School); "Calvin's Legacy for Public Theology" by Richard J. Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary); and "What Reformed Theology in a Calvinist Key Brings to Conversations about Justice" by Douglas F. Ottati (Davidson College).

Aristide Tessitore (Furman University), "Political Theology and the Theological-Political Problem", Perspectives on Political Science, 38 (1), winter 2009: pp. 5-12.

Abstract: "This essay offers a critical appreciation of Mark Lilla's Stillborn God. To his credit, Lilla understands the primacy and enduring appeal of political theology, as well as the danger of intellectual complacency about the underlying principles of modern politics. Lilla maintains that modern politics is a relatively recent and radically novel experiment that aims at nothing less than displacing a primordial and perennial way of constituting politics with reference to the divine. My essay compares Lilla's analysis of the fundamental antagonism between political theology and modern liberal politics to Strauss's analysis of the theological-political problem. In doing so, I bring to light both the strengths and limits of Lilla's attempt to clarify the relationship between politics, biblical religion, and philosophic rationalism."

Sandrine Baume (University of Lausanne), "On Political Theology: A Controversy Between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt", History of European Ideas, 35 (3), September 2009: pp. 369-81.

Abstract: "This article pays special attention to the large number of references to political theology by Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, particularly in the interwar period, and seeks to interpret these references in a new way. While Schmitt's analogies between God and state are to be expected considering his strong Catholic roots, such comparisons are much more surprising for a positivist like Hans Kelsen, who always tried to relieve state and law from transcendental elements. The article concludes that, far from being marginal in the doctrinal dispute between Schmitt and Kelsen, references to political theology express and summarize their major controversy about the relation between state and law, as well as about the sources of the state's unity. The heart of the disputatio between the two jurists concerned the ability of the political power to emancipate itself from the juridical order. The 'legal miracle' – in this context meaning the occasional autonomization of the state from law – was for Schmitt the manifestation of sovereign power. However, for Kelsen it represented the negation of the state's essence, whose actions must be determined only by the legal order."

Anna Schmidt (University of Munich), "The Problem of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology", Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 36 (3), summer 2009: pp. 219-52.

No abstract available.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos (University of Coimbra, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Warwick), "If God Were a Human Rights Activist: Human Rights and the Challenge of Political Theologies", Law, Social Justice and Global Development Journal (LGD), 13, 2009 (1), March, refereed electronic journal, full text available online:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/2009_1/santos

Abstract: "Citing the inability of conventional human rights thinking to address the 'strong' questions raised by our times, this article pursues a twofold objective: to identify the major challenges that the rise of political theologies at the beginning of the twentieth-first [sic] century posed to human rights; and second, to select within a broad landscape of theological analysis the types of reflections and practices that might contribute to expand and deepen the canon of human rights politics. In order to achieve this double goal the article uses complexity as its main analytical guideline making distinctions from which significant consequences were drawn: on one side, distinctions among different types of political theologies (pluralist versus revelationist, traditionalist versus progressive); and, on the other, between two contrasting discourses and practices of human rights politics (hegemonic versus counter-hegemonic). Depending on the circumstances, even conventional or hegemonic human rights struggles may be a progressive tool against social practices and norms derived from traditionalist and revelationist theologies. Pluralist and progressive theologies, in turn, may be a source of radical energy toward more ambitious, counter-hegemonic human rights struggles."

Please let me know if I missed any important articles.

Book: The Political Theology of Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh

Paul Eidelberg (former Professor of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University) has written a book seeking to compare Jewish political theology and the political theology of the American Founding Fathers: "Toward a Renaissance of Israel and America: The Political Theology of Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh" (Lightcatcher Books, November 2009).

www.lightcatcherbooks.com/products_books_Renaissance.shtml

From the publisher's description: "The American people know hardly anything about the political theology of their Declaration of Independence, and are therefore ignorant of the political philosophy that inspired the Framers of the American Constitution. Similarly, most people in Israel are ignorant of the liberality and magnanimity of the Torah's constitution of government. Both nations are in dire need of Rabbi Benamozegh's teachings. Benamozegh's erudition, his knowledge of the wisdom of 'Jerusalem and Athens,' the cities that fructified Western civilization, can help us overcome the enemy of civilization, totalitarian Islam."

US-born Israeli Paul Eidelberg received his doctoral degree at the University of Chicago, where he studied under Leo Strauss. He is the founder and president of the Jerusalem-based Foundation for Constitutional Democracy.

Book: "Political Theologies in the Holy Land"

A number of books on political theology in Israel and Jewish political theology have been released recently or about to be released by authors and editors associated with the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and in particular with a former study group/research programme of the latter on political theology, which was discontinued about two years ago.

Among them, David Ohana (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) wrote a book on "Political Theologies in the Holy Land: Israeli Messianism and Its Critics" (Routledge, 15 October 2009):

www.routledge.com/books/Political-Theologies-in-the-Holy-Land-isbn9780415491686

Publisher's description: "This book examines the role of messianism in Zionist ideology, from the birth of the Zionist movement through to the present. Is shows how messianism is not just a religious or philosophical term but a very tangible political practice and theology which has shaped Israeli identity.

"The author explores key issues such as: the current presence of messianism in the Israeli public sphere and the debates with [J]ewish settlers in the occupied territories after the 1967 war; the difference between transcendental messianism and [P]romethean messianism; the disparity between the political ideology and political practice in the history of Israel; the evolution of the messianic idea in the actions of David Ben-Gurion; the debate between Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Isaiah Leibowitz, J.L. Talmon and other intellectual figures with Ben-Gurion; the implications of political theology and the presence of messianic ideas in Israeli politics.

"As the first book to examine the messianism in Israeli debate since the creation of the Israeli state, it will be particularly relevant for students and scholars of Political Science, modern intellectual history, Israel studies, Judaism and messianism."

Those able to read Hebrew may be equally interested in a recent book edited by Christoph Schmidt (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and co-edited by Eli Schonfeld (University of Tel Aviv and Hebrew University): "Ha-Elohim lo yealem dom: ha-moderna ha-yehudit ve-ha-teologia ha-politit" (God will not stand still: Jewish modernity and political theology; Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 2009).

www.vanleer.org.il/eng/content.asp?id=330

According to a review of this book in today's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, it appears to be on exactly the same subject matter as the book by Ohana, who is present with a chapter in Schmidt's collection.

The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad also just published "State of exception and state of emergency" (translation), edited by Yehouda Shenhav, Christoph Schmidt and Shimshon Zelniker. Presumably this book too is on political theology. Unfortunately, I don't have the original Hebrew title.