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."

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."