Sixth installment of recent articles on political theology:
Pini Ifergan (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), "Cutting to the Chase: Carl Schmitt and Hans Blumenberg on Political Theology and Secularization", New German Critique, 37 (3), fall 2010: pp. 149-71.
Abstract: "Is modernity a distinct historical epoch that can be radically distinguished from the one that preceded it? What are the implicit philosophical assumptions regarding our understanding of historical time that determine the sort of answer that we are inclined to give to this question? The debate between Carl Schmitt and Hans Blumenberg concerning the conceptual status of secularization as an explanatory category for the emergence of modernity provides us with a paradigmatic case that sheds light on those questions. With the recent publication of the correspondence between Schmitt and Blumenberg, I suggest in my article a reading of the debate that exposes how they use each other's argument to sharpen their distinctive evaluation of modernity and its relation to Christian theology. These two arguments and their unique dynamic transcend the common ways of either defending or criticizing modernity's claim to be a distinct and legitimate historical epoch. The suggested conceptual reconstructions of the Schmitt-Blumenberg debate point to a revaluation of the terms of the quarrel over modernity, Christian theology, and the relations between them."
Mary Alberi (Pace University), "'Like the Army of God's Camp': Political Theology and Apocalyptic Warfare at Charlemagne's Court", Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 41 (2), 2010: pp. 1-20.
Abstract: "The political theology of Charlemagne's court drew upon theological concepts to interpret contemporary events and fashion an identity for the populus christianus of the Frankish empire. The formulation of this political theology occurred against a background of political and military crises. A number of sources written by his ecclesiastical courtiers refer to the castra Dei, the militant ecclesia, or 'assembly of God's people,' commanded by Charlemagne, on pilgrimage through the dangerous last days of world history. These apocalyptic dangers called for enhanced royal authority to defend the castra Dei through a program of correction. Correction supported consensus among the king and his ecclesiastical and lay magnates, stabilizing the kingdom internally. Correction also established 'liturgical frontiers' separating the orderly and peaceful castra Dei from the world's chaotic paganism and heresy. This attempt to distinguish the castra Dei from its spiritual enemies gave Charlemagne's empire coherence in its political and military conflicts with enemies over contested frontier zones. The apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding references to the castra Dei was connected to political necessity, rather than expectation of an imminent apocalypse."
Scott M. Thomas (University of Bath), "Living Critically and 'Living Faithfully' in a Global Age: Justice, Emancipation and the Political Theology of International Relations", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39 (2), December 2010: pp. 505-24.
Abstract: "This article asks is there a place for religion and spirituality in a critical theory of international relations (IR)? The usual answer is 'no' because of critical theory's generally negative assessment of religion in domestic and international politics. However, while many of these criticisms can be acknowledged, a critical theory of IR still has to grapple with the more complex understanding of religion that already exists in critical theory, and the global resurgence of religion how [sic] Eurocentric its concept of religion actually is and how rooted it is in the European experience of modernisation. For the people of the global South – which comprises most of the people in the world – the struggle to 'live faithfully' amid the problems of world poverty, climate change, conflict and development can not be separated from their struggle for justice and emancipation. Therefore, a greater dialogue between critical theory and theology is necessary if critical theory is to more fully and creatively contribute to our understanding of some of the most important global issues in the study of IR in the 21st century."
Richard Lock-Pullan (University of Birmingham), "Challenging the Political Theology of America's 'War on Terror'", in "Just War on Terror? A Christian and Muslim Response", eds. David Fisher and Brian Wicker (Ashgate, July 2010): pp. 37-52.
www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=10155&edition_id=13263
Excerpt: "The events of 11 September 2001 and the response of the US to them have confronted many Christians with the question what is an appropriate Christian response to the challenges of living in an age of terror. In this context one can ask what insights Christian doctrine, as opposed to Christian ethics, has to contribute to understanding the present era and how these can then shape the nature of Christian engagement with the current issues [...]. This chapter will argue that one can generate a Christian perspective and subsequent ethics on the basis of seeing theology as an essentially interpretative task that mediates between Christian doctrine and political events. Using this approach President Bush's use of 'evil' is examined and shown to be a source of absolutist and self-righteous thinking, leading to a disastrous and unjust foreign policy. As an alternative, Reinhold Niebuhr's reinterpretation of the doctrine of sin will be shown to be an effective doctrinal lens to avoid these pitfalls, whilst itself generating a practice of Christian Realism that takes seriously the context of international affairs and Christian vision. The revisions of Niebuhr's theology are then used to develop a more liberal approach which gives the church a transformative role in addressing the 'war on terror', and concludes by examining how Obama's post-Niebuhrian liberal religious views shape current policy."
Jürgen Manemann (Hanover Institute of Philosophical Research), "New Orientations of the Political: On the Contemporary Challenge of Political Theology", in "Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology", eds. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere, and Stephan van Erp (Continuum, December 2010): pp. 67-81.
www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=136299
No abstract provided.
Julia Reinhard Lupton (University of California, Irvine), "Introduction to a Totem Meal: Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt and Political Theology", in "The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive", eds. Paul Cefalu and Bryan Reynolds (Palgrave Macmillan, February 2011): page numbers not known.
www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=371052
No abstract provided.
Graham Hammill (State University of New York at Buffalo), "The Marlovian Sublime: Imagination and the Problem of Political Theology", in "The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive", eds. Paul Cefalu and Bryan Reynolds (Palgrave Macmillan, February 2011): page numbers not known.
No abstract provided.
Ross Bender (independent researcher), "Changing the Calendar: Royal Political Theology and the Suppression of the Tachibana Naramaro Conspiracy of 757", Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 37 (2), 2010: pp. 223-45.
No abstract provided.
Namsoon Kang (Texas Christian University), "Towards a Cosmopolitan Theology: Constructing Public Theology from the Future", in "Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology", eds. Stephen D. Moore and Mayra Rivera (Fordham University Press, December 2010): pp. 258-280.
www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?id=9780823233267
Excerpt: "I believe cosmopolitanism can be an effective discourse with which to advocate a politics of trans-identity of overlapping interests and heterogeneous or hybrid subjects in order to challenge conventional notions of exclusive belonging, identity, and citizenship, and to envision a planetary love through an ethical singularity aimed at a more peaceful and just world. I regard cosmopolitanism as a 'stronger mobilizing discourse' that captures Spivak's call for a mind-changing love for the planet. This essay is an effort to illuminate cosmopolitanism as a discourse that calls simultaneously for a planetary love through ethical singularity, in accordance with Spivak's notion, and for a radical neighborly love, in accordance with the Christian notion. As such, it is also an effort to articulate a cosmopolitan theological discourse, which I believe can be a mobilizing discourse for a more just and egalitarian world regardless of who one is."
Wanda Deifelt (Luther College), "Advocacy, Political Participation, and Citizenship: Lutheran Contributions to Public Theology", Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 49 (2), summer 2010: pp. 108-14.
Abstract: "Martin Luther never developed a political theory, but his theology does inform the way Christians live in society, making it both public and political. Luther's 'two kingdom theory' often has been misinterpreted to justify passivity and obedience toward civil authorities. Under closer examination, however, his theology applies to the everyday practices of politics, economics, and religious affairs. In the context of nation-building, a Lutheran theology fosters citizenship not only as individual rights and responsibilities, but as active participation in civil society."
Robert Meister (University of California, Santa Cruz), "Athens, Jerusalem and Rome after Auschwitz: Still the Jewish Question?", Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology, 102 (1), August 2010: pp. 76-96.
Abstract: "This article treats post-Holocaust humanitarianism as a secular version of St Paul's 'Jewish Question': why are there still Jews now that the particularities of Jewish history have universal meaning? It considers Paul's Judaeo-Christianity, a distinctively Christian embrace of Jewish survival, as the prototype of today's secular project of conversion to human rights, and asks what it means within this project for Jews to regard themselves as the only Jews. The article concludes by defining an Islamic alternative to the imperial reach of today's human rights discourse, based on the recent publication of 1981 lectures by the late N.O. Brown, who presented Islam as an alternative to the Pauline synthesis of Athens-Jerusalem that would renew, rather than supersede, the prophetic tradition of Jewish monotheism. Following Brown, the article presents Muhammad as the anti-Paul, and considers the key differences between their respective political theologies on issues such as fidelity, cruelty and particularly the urgency of justice. Islam's insistence that there is no 'time between' the end of evil and the beginning of justice shows the limitations of today's human rights discourse as a religion of permanent transition that denies urgency to justice itself. The 'Jewish Question' that Paul formulated for Christians in a Roman world order thus illuminates issues posed by the Holocaust and Israel for professed humanitarians today."
Peniel Rajkumar (United Theological College, Bangalore), "'How' Does the Bible Mean? The Bible and Dalit Liberation in India", Political Theology, 11 (3), 2010: pp. 410-30.
Abstract: "This essay analyses the role of the Bible in Dalit liberation in a context where Dalit theology, despite being increasingly recognized as an academic theology, hasn't been effective practically in either sustaining the Dalits in their struggles for liberation or in challenging the perpetuation of caste discrimination within the Indian churches. In the light of the Dalits' own reception of the Bible as a potential source of Dalit liberation the essay critically revisits some of the defining biblical paradigms articulated by Dalit theologians, using as its epistemological tool the tensions between 'epic' and 'emic' forms of theological conceptualizations, in order to identify the reasons for the lacunae between Dalit theology and its practical viability for Dalit liberation. In the light of this analysis the essay explores and offers the synoptic healing stories as a viable biblical paradigm which can animate the Dalit struggles for liberation and thus enhance the practical efficacy of Dalit liberation."
David Grumett (University of Exeter), "Blondel, the Philosophy of Action and Liberation Theology", Political Theology, 11 (4), 2010: pp. 507-29.
Abstract: "Maurice Blondel's philosophy of action and concrete political theology provide foundations for modern theologies of action. By commencing with the reflective subject, Blondel compensates the deficiencies of collectivist Marxist social analysis. He did not live to complete his account of the social, political and economic implications of his philosophy, but they are realized in the work and witness of others: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Yves de Montcheuil, Henri de Lubac and John McNeill. Liberation theologians of diverse persuasions need especially to acknowledge their debt to Blondel in an era when, in Western societies, the fundamental context of action is no longer material but intellectual, spiritual and interpersonal. The abstract nature of his thought means that he frequently opens suggestive paths into further reflection rather than prescribing complete solutions to specific practical questions."
Vincent W. Lloyd (Georgia State University), "Review Essay: Political Theology of the Ordinary", Political Theology, 11 (4), 2010: pp. 607-18.
Abstract: "In her recent book, Emergency Politics, political theorist Bonnie Honig proposes a 'Jewish political theology' to support radical democratic theory. Instead of taking Carl Schmitt as the starting point for reflection on the political significance of religious concepts, Honig takes Franz Rosenzweig. This review essay enters Honig's work into conversations about political theology, and it explores the significance and novelty of her position. It suggests that Honig's argument repeatedly runs aground for the same reason: she relies on a background image of democracy as an ethos rather than as a tradition requiring faith."
Dominic O'Sullivan (Charles Sturt University), "Reconciliation: The Political Theological Nexus in Australasian Indigenous Public Policy", International Journal of Public Theology, 4 (4), 2010: pp. 426-45.
Abstract: "Reconciliation brings together Christological and anthropological dimensions of human thought to illustrate the nexus between religious principles and political means. For the state reconciliation is concerned with social cohesion and political stability. For the church, it extends the sacramental notion of reconciliation between God and penitent to public relationships. This article examines Roman Catholic contributions to secular reconciliation debates. It shows how religious precepts create moral imperatives to engagement with secular discourses as a necessary element of Christian mission. It also argues that the church's role in the disruption of indigenous societies creates an additional moral imperative to engage in reconciliation as mission and to articulate a Christian vision of indigenous rights."
Kalemba Mwambazambi (University of South Africa), "A missiological glance at South African Black Theology", Verbum et Ecclesia, 31 (1), 2010: without page numbers. Refereed electronic journal, full text available online:
www.ve.org.za/index.php/VE/article/view/53/412
Abstract: "Black South African theologians created South African Black theology during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a conscious and theological dimension of the liberation struggle against apartheid. They drew inspiration from African-American theology, biblical hermeneutics and the raw material of their own experiences and suffering, whilst simultaneously creating a new theological paradigm and political orientation to liberate Black South Africans from apartheid and European domination. Inevitably, South African Black theology was a liberation theology aimed at helping to eradicate the existing socio-political order. This article gave a missiological overview of Black theology and examined and assessed the relevance of this theology to contemporary post-apartheid South Africa. The critical-theological research method was used."
Showing posts with label public theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public theology. Show all posts
17 February 2011
31 January 2011
Book: An Intercultural Theory of Interpretation and Religion in the Public Sphere
Just published: Paul S. Chung, "The Cave and the Butterfly: An Intercultural Theory of Interpretation and Religion in the Public Sphere" (Wipf & Stock, January 2011):
http://wipfandstock.com/store/The_Cave_and_the_Butterfly_An_Intercultural_Theory_of_Interpretation_and_Religion_in_the_Public_Sphere
Publisher's description: "This study offers an intercultural theory of interpretation and religion. It does so by bringing Western and East Asian traditions into dialogue regarding the nature of interpretation. The result of this innovative study is a theory of interpretation which integrates the socially embodied dimension of human life with the study of hermeneutics and religion in post-foundational and cross-cultural perspective. Toward this end, Paul Chung offers a constructive theology of divine speech-acts in a manner more amenable to the social-public sphere than other proposals. In all of this he deeply considers intercultural horizon of interpretation between West and East [sic] and its implications for a theology of interpretation. The result is a truly theological theory of interpretation that takes seriously the issues of intercultural studies and their intersection with Christian doctrine."
Endorsements: "Public Theology has become an extraordinarily challenging task that few can attain today. Paul Chung, who already has demonstrated sensitive and comprehensive readings of theology and philosophy through a Barthian/Bonhoefferian proficiency contributes a compelling approach in this volume. The public of theology is no longer mono-centric but multi-centric and Chung masterfully links the Western and Asian polarities. The coherency of his account does the reader great dialogical benefit. This volume is indeed a real achievement of East/West theology as it masterfully maintains the centrality of revelation through Jesus Christ. Public culture is rife with conflict and as such is reflective of its all-too-human condition as the massa perditionis. Chung shows how this condition of the human can be redemptively transformed through taking the Word of God with utmost hermeneutical seriousness." (Kurt Anders Richardson, McMaster University)
"This book transcends hermeneutics in any conventional sense. In response to the crisis of modern technological existence and the contradictions of global capitalism, Chung guides the reader on an intercultural quest for authentic and responsible humanity. The wisdom of the East reorients us to our place in the natural world, and the truth of the incarnate Word sends us into the public sphere to encounter God in the face of the least (Minjung). We are invited to open ourselves to the way of embodied emancipatory praxis." (Craig L. Nessan, Wartburg Theological Seminary)
"Paul Chung [...] joins contemporaries of antiquity: Plato (the Greek from the Western world and his metaphor of the cave) and Laozi (the Chinese from the Eastern world and his metaphor of the butterfly), and interprets them through the eyes of each other." (H. Martin Rumscheidt, Atlantic School of Theology)
Paul S. Chung is Associate Professor of Mission and World Christianity at Luther Seminary.
http://wipfandstock.com/store/The_Cave_and_the_Butterfly_An_Intercultural_Theory_of_Interpretation_and_Religion_in_the_Public_Sphere
Publisher's description: "This study offers an intercultural theory of interpretation and religion. It does so by bringing Western and East Asian traditions into dialogue regarding the nature of interpretation. The result of this innovative study is a theory of interpretation which integrates the socially embodied dimension of human life with the study of hermeneutics and religion in post-foundational and cross-cultural perspective. Toward this end, Paul Chung offers a constructive theology of divine speech-acts in a manner more amenable to the social-public sphere than other proposals. In all of this he deeply considers intercultural horizon of interpretation between West and East [sic] and its implications for a theology of interpretation. The result is a truly theological theory of interpretation that takes seriously the issues of intercultural studies and their intersection with Christian doctrine."
Endorsements: "Public Theology has become an extraordinarily challenging task that few can attain today. Paul Chung, who already has demonstrated sensitive and comprehensive readings of theology and philosophy through a Barthian/Bonhoefferian proficiency contributes a compelling approach in this volume. The public of theology is no longer mono-centric but multi-centric and Chung masterfully links the Western and Asian polarities. The coherency of his account does the reader great dialogical benefit. This volume is indeed a real achievement of East/West theology as it masterfully maintains the centrality of revelation through Jesus Christ. Public culture is rife with conflict and as such is reflective of its all-too-human condition as the massa perditionis. Chung shows how this condition of the human can be redemptively transformed through taking the Word of God with utmost hermeneutical seriousness." (Kurt Anders Richardson, McMaster University)
"This book transcends hermeneutics in any conventional sense. In response to the crisis of modern technological existence and the contradictions of global capitalism, Chung guides the reader on an intercultural quest for authentic and responsible humanity. The wisdom of the East reorients us to our place in the natural world, and the truth of the incarnate Word sends us into the public sphere to encounter God in the face of the least (Minjung). We are invited to open ourselves to the way of embodied emancipatory praxis." (Craig L. Nessan, Wartburg Theological Seminary)
"Paul Chung [...] joins contemporaries of antiquity: Plato (the Greek from the Western world and his metaphor of the cave) and Laozi (the Chinese from the Eastern world and his metaphor of the butterfly), and interprets them through the eyes of each other." (H. Martin Rumscheidt, Atlantic School of Theology)
Paul S. Chung is Associate Professor of Mission and World Christianity at Luther Seminary.
10 December 2010
CFP: The Political in Bonhoeffer's Theology Reconsidered
XI. International Bonhoeffer Congress "A Spoke in the Wheel: The Political in Bonhoeffer's Theology Reconsidered", at the Sigtuna Foundation, Sigtuna, Sweden, 27 June-1 July 2012
Call for papers
Description: "On account of its Christology and ecclesiology, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology is intrinsically political. On the one hand, his theological convictions make possible opposition to government authority. Already early on in his critical engagement against the Nazi regime, in 'The Church and the Jewish Question' (1933), Bonhoeffer expected the church to oppose the state when the rights of those disdained by the state were violated. Ultimately, this stance resulted in Bonhoeffer's participation in the resistance and his violent death. On the other hand, however, Bonhoeffer advocated a conservative non-democratic political order for Germany after the war. How can one explain these seeming contradictions? How should we understand Bonhoeffer's political theology? The aim of the XI. International Bonhoeffer Congress is to encourage reflections on the continuing relevance of Bonhoeffer's political theology and ethics for the Christian church in a world that is characterized by an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Is the church once again expected to put up political resistance?"
Sigtuna is the historical place where Bonhoeffer during the war met Bishop George Bell in secret mission. The historical Sigtuna Foundation is located only 15 minutes from the international airport of Stockholm (Arlanda). President of the congress is Bishop Martin Lind (Linköping).
The planning committee of the congress invites paper proposals for the three working days of the conference, each of which will consist of main speakers in the morning and seminar sessions in the afternoon. The topics of the three days are: "Bonhoeffer's Political Resistance" (28 June, with the subtopics: Democracy; Nationalism; Politics and Oikoumene; Europe and the Refugees), "Bonhoeffer on Church, State and Civil Society" (29 June, subtopics: Human Rights; Public Theology; Lutheran Heritage), and "How Do We Live Responsibly?" (30 June, subtopics: Religion and Ethics; Migration and Refugee Studies; Global Economy; Climate Change). The subtopics should not be seen as binding for the proposals. The organizers welcome papers discussing other dimensions of the topic of the day than the ones mentioned.
The proposals, which should explain topic, main arguments, and conclusions of the paper, should have no more than 500 words. They can be written in German or English, and the presentations at the conference can be held in English or German. Younger scholars, e.g. PhD students, are especially invited to propose papers. Proposals are to be submitted to Kirsten Busch Nielsen (University of Copenhagen): bonhoeffer2012@teol.ku.dk
Deadline: 1 June 2011
The decision, taken by a small committee, as to which proposals are accepted will be communicated via e-mail by the end of August 2011. The afternoon on which the accepted papers will be placed is not necessarily connected to the topic of the day.
Registration for the congress will be possible from June/July 2011. Congress fees, including accommodation and meals at the venue, will be approximately 500 Euro. Information about reduced fees for students is to follow.
Call for papers
Description: "On account of its Christology and ecclesiology, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology is intrinsically political. On the one hand, his theological convictions make possible opposition to government authority. Already early on in his critical engagement against the Nazi regime, in 'The Church and the Jewish Question' (1933), Bonhoeffer expected the church to oppose the state when the rights of those disdained by the state were violated. Ultimately, this stance resulted in Bonhoeffer's participation in the resistance and his violent death. On the other hand, however, Bonhoeffer advocated a conservative non-democratic political order for Germany after the war. How can one explain these seeming contradictions? How should we understand Bonhoeffer's political theology? The aim of the XI. International Bonhoeffer Congress is to encourage reflections on the continuing relevance of Bonhoeffer's political theology and ethics for the Christian church in a world that is characterized by an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Is the church once again expected to put up political resistance?"
Sigtuna is the historical place where Bonhoeffer during the war met Bishop George Bell in secret mission. The historical Sigtuna Foundation is located only 15 minutes from the international airport of Stockholm (Arlanda). President of the congress is Bishop Martin Lind (Linköping).
The planning committee of the congress invites paper proposals for the three working days of the conference, each of which will consist of main speakers in the morning and seminar sessions in the afternoon. The topics of the three days are: "Bonhoeffer's Political Resistance" (28 June, with the subtopics: Democracy; Nationalism; Politics and Oikoumene; Europe and the Refugees), "Bonhoeffer on Church, State and Civil Society" (29 June, subtopics: Human Rights; Public Theology; Lutheran Heritage), and "How Do We Live Responsibly?" (30 June, subtopics: Religion and Ethics; Migration and Refugee Studies; Global Economy; Climate Change). The subtopics should not be seen as binding for the proposals. The organizers welcome papers discussing other dimensions of the topic of the day than the ones mentioned.
The proposals, which should explain topic, main arguments, and conclusions of the paper, should have no more than 500 words. They can be written in German or English, and the presentations at the conference can be held in English or German. Younger scholars, e.g. PhD students, are especially invited to propose papers. Proposals are to be submitted to Kirsten Busch Nielsen (University of Copenhagen): bonhoeffer2012@teol.ku.dk
Deadline: 1 June 2011
The decision, taken by a small committee, as to which proposals are accepted will be communicated via e-mail by the end of August 2011. The afternoon on which the accepted papers will be placed is not necessarily connected to the topic of the day.
Registration for the congress will be possible from June/July 2011. Congress fees, including accommodation and meals at the venue, will be approximately 500 Euro. Information about reduced fees for students is to follow.
27 September 2010
Political theology articles, fifth installment
A fifth installment of recent articles on political theology:
Christopher Craig Brittain (University of Aberdeen), "Political Theology at a Standstill: Adorno and Agamben on the Messianic", Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology, 102 (1), August 2010: pp. 39-56.
Abstract: "This essay explores the use of the concept of the messianic by Giorgio Agamben and Theodor Adorno. Throughout his work, Agamben consistently presents his reading of the messianic as an alternative to what he considers to be the 'pessimistic' negative dialectics of Adorno, which he argues 'is an absolutely non-messianic form of thought'. For Agamben, the messianic brings dialectics to a 'standstill'. This essay analyzes this deployment of the 'messianic' in his thought, and contrasts it with the perspective of Adorno. Agamben's interpretation of Walter Benjamin is challenged with reference to a debate between Adorno and Benjamin over theology, dialectics, and politics."
Clare Monagle (Monash University), "A Sovereign Act of Negation: Schmitt's Political Theology and its Ideal Medievalism", Culture, Theory and Critique, 51 (2), July 2010: pp. 115-27.
Abstract: "This article argues that Carl Schmitt's political theology is premised on an idealised and totalising vision of the Middle Ages. That is, he casts modern political concepts as debased and corrupt in comparison to the proper politics of the Medieval Church, as he sees it. Drawing on a historically contextualised reading of the Fourth Lateran Council, which took place in 1215, the article's author argues that Schmitt's medieval comparison is much more complicated than he suggests. Schmitt's historical vision is, thus, a wilful projection of unity onto a diverse and distant past."
Jürgen Fohrmann (University of Bonn) and Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney), "Enmity and Culture: The Rhetoric of Political Theology and the Exception in Carl Schmitt", Culture, Theory and Critique, 51 (2), July 2010: pp. 129-44.
Abstract: "This article compares Carl Schmitt's and Walter Benjamin's discussion of the figure of Hamlet. This comparison evaluates Schmitt's response in Hamlet or Hecuba to Benjamin's discussion of the 'exception' in Origins of the German Tragic Drama. 'Deciding upon the exception' is a defining characteristic of sovereignty, so that the comparison between Schmitt and Benjamin is also an evaluation of their respective theories of sovereignty. It will appear that the notion of the aesthetic is crucial in understanding this constellation of ideas."
Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney), "The Ends of Stasis: Spinoza as Reader of Agamben", Culture, Theory and Critique, 51 (2), July 2010: pp. 145-56.
Abstract: "Agamben contends that 'There is ... no such thing as a stasiology, a theory of stasis or civil war' in the western understanding of sovereignty. His own vision of a politics beyond biopolitics explicitly culminates in the end of stasis. How can we understand Agamben's political theology by investigating his use of stasis? Stasis is particularly suited to an inquiry into political theology. It is linked to politics, since its primary meaning is political change, revolution, or civil war, as well as to the theological, since it denotes immobility or immutability, which were attributes of God. Stasis, then, presents the simultaneous presence and absence that exemplifies the unassimilable relation of the sacred and the secular in political theology. The question is: Does Agamben remain true to this unassimilable relation? Or does he betray it the moment he calls for an end to biopolitics? Agamben's reading of Spinoza will provide useful clues in answering these questions."
Ben Quash (King's College London), "Radical Orthodoxy's Critique of Niebuhr", in "Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power", eds. Richard Harries and Stephen Platten (Oxford University Press, March 2010): pp. 58-71.
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199571833.do
Abstract: "Reinhold Niebuhr's 'Christian realism' was in significant part a rejection of the pacifism and optimism of the Social Gospel movement in the United States. Even though Niebuhr had initially been sympathetic to the movement, he came to dismiss its belief that the realization of the kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus, could be expected in the foreseeable future. He thought the movement's great confidence in human progress was naiïve [sic], and that its belief in education's power to foster a law of love (and thus to eradicate the sin of selfishness from individuals and institutions) lacked a proper understanding of original sin. Recognizing the force of Niebuhr's criticisms of the Social Gospel movement, this chapter sets out to ask whether Niebuhr's thought is as effective a riposte to another and much more recent strand of thought in Christian ethics: the ecclesially centered ethics of Radical Orthodoxy. Measuring Radical Orthodoxy's thought against Niebuhr's is given added interest by the fact that Radical Orthodox thinkers themselves – and especially John Milbank – have explicitly and critically engaged Niebuhr, and have described what they see as the 'poverty' of his idea of Christian realism for contemporary ethics."
Stephen Platten (Anglican Bishop of Wakefield), "Niebuhr, Liturgy, and Public Theology", in "Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power", eds. Richard Harries and Stephen Platten (Oxford University Press, March 2010): pp. 102-16.
Abstract: "This chapter argues that it is a mistake to understand liturgy as being enacted in a place of withdrawal from society. Liturgy is a public event with a relationship to public life. If this is understood it ought to be possible to have a much more integral relationship between the kind of political theology represented by Niebuhr and liturgy as performative and transformational for society as a whole."
Kevin Carnahan (Central Methodist University), "The Irony of American Evangelical Politics", in "Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power", eds. Richard Harries and Stephen Platten (Oxford University Press, March 2010): pp. 202-18.
Abstract: "American evangelical political theology is facing a crisis of self-identity. Many evangelicals have claimed that evangelical political theology has been taken captive by the Republican Party. In reaction, evangelical reformers have attempted to wrest their political theology from the grip of partisan political programs. God, they claim, is not a Republican or a Democrat. Despite agreement on this project, however, proposals in American evangelicalism have failed to provide a political theology that maintains a sense of evangelical public responsibility and a sense of God's transcendence over partisan political debates. This chapter argues that Niebuhrian Christian Realism offers a theological approach that could open new avenues for political thought which might carry evangelicals past their present conundrum."
Michael S. Hogue (Meadville Lombard Theological School), "After the Secular: Toward a Pragmatic Public Theology", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 78 (2), June 2010: pp. 346-74.
Abstract: "In a time after the secular and of rapid religious change, of increasing interreligious contacts and globally scaled, viscerally local moral challenges, questions of public theology have become central for scholars of religion in many fields, as well as for explicitly normative theological projects. In response to this, this article offers the initial contours of a pragmatic public theology that engages global moral challenges amidst the conditions of pluralism and an ethos of religious transformation. I illustrate this pragmatic public theology as an inter-traditional public theological mode that is methodologically fallibilized, doxologically rather than apologetically focused, strategically engaged in medias res between traditions and global and local moral challenges, and normatively committed to the nurturance of differentiated moral solidarities with and on behalf of the most vulnerable."
Heinrich Bedford-Strohm (University of Bamberg, Germany), "Public Theology and the Economy in a Globalizing World", Dutch Reformed Theological Journal/Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, 51 (1-2), March/June 2010: pp. 15-23.
Excerpt: "This paper was read at the Theological Day of the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University[,] on 25 January 2010. Speaking on 'Public Theology and the economy in a globalizing world' in 30 minutes is a real challenge. The themes of Public Theology, of basic assumptions of economics and of what we mean by the word 'globalization' would be each one a lecture of its own. And yet the connection of the three is exactly what needs to be discussed. The challenge of a globalizing world which has destructive effects on the natural environments and which still tolerates the poverty caused [sic] death of thousands of human beings every day is clearly on the table. I will leave describing these challenges of globalizations more closely to others today and focus on the theological grounding. After a reflection on the relationship of theology and economics in the reformation traditions, I will describe the place of a public theological model of economic ethics in the context of several other models. I will explain what it entails by distinguishing four dimensions of ethical reflection and conclude with exploring the task of the church in a globalizing world."
Guillermo Hansen (Luther Seminary), "Contours for a Public Lutheran Theology in the Face of Empire", Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 49 (2), summer 2010: pp. 96-107.
Abstract: "Three themes structure Lutheranism's interpretation of the biblical narrative as it intersects with the present challenges of Empire: justification by faith as a declaration of inclusiveness; God's threefold-multidimensional action creating and sustaining democratic practices (two kingdoms); and the cross as the critical 'weapon' against the 'glory' of Empire. This implies placing our theology within the present cultural and religious debate in a way consistent with the methodology of the cross: a theology done from the bowels of Empire, revealing its true face behind its alleged 'benevolent' mask."
Paul Hedges (University of Winchester), "Is John Milbank's Radical Orthodoxy a Form of Liberal Theology? A Rhetorical Counter", The Heythrop Journal, 51 (5), September 2010: pp. 795-818.
Excerpt: "The title of this work is intended to be deliberately provocative. In one sense the answer is very clear: no. With an insistence upon unquestioning Chalcedon Orthodoxy, a turn to the resources of the past (especially the fathers and medieval theology) and an avowed rejection of Kant's metaphysics, Milbank's work is the utter antithesis of much liberal theology. I will seek to show that Milbank's theology has features that are often said to be characteristic of liberal theologies, however, and that it has not escaped the shackles of the modernist/liberal worldview it seeks to repudiate. Moreover, I will ask important questions about the increasingly pejorative tag of 'liberal'; many scholars observe that the use of 'conservative' as a blanket term is highly problematic, yet they still deploy 'liberal' in a monolithic sense."
Robert S. Taylor (University of California, Davis), "Kant's Political Religion: The Transparency of Perpetual Peace and the Highest Good", The Review of Politics, 72 (1), winter 2010: pp. 1-24.
Abstract: "Scholars have long debated the relationship between Kant's doctrine of right and his doctrine of virtue (including his moral religion or ethico-theology), which are the two branches of his moral philosophy. This article will examine the intimate connection in his practical philosophy between perpetual peace and the highest good, between political and ethico-religious communities, and between the types of transparency peculiar to each. It will show how domestic and international right provides a framework for the development of ethical communities, including a kingdom of ends and even the noumenal ethical community of an afterlife, and how the transparency and trust achieved in these communities are anticipated in rightful political society by publicity and the mutual confidence among citizens that it engenders. Finally, it will explore the implications of this synthesis of Kant's political and religious philosophies for contemporary Kantian political theories, especially those of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls."
Stephan Rindlisbacher (University of Bern), "Radicalism as Political Religion? The Case of Vera Figner", Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 11 (1), March 2010: pp. 67-87.
Abstract: "Vera Figner was a leading member of the Russian terrorist group Narodnaia Volia [People's Will] in the late 1870s and early 1880s. In her biography one can trace what Eric Voegelin and Emilio Gentile called 'political religion'. They argue that such a political religion is a basic component of mass mobilisation and also plays an important role in the exerting of political violence in totalitarian states in the twentieth century. Vera Figner and her comrades shared a deep belief in the 'Russian people' as a sacralised secular entity. Because of their ascetic conduct of life within the group, they considered themselves as 'moral elite' (virtuosi), able to lead the 'people' to a better future. Within the 'political sect' of Narodnaia Volia the unconditional submission to the authority of the Executive Committee and the resultant political violence against the regime became means to the revolutionary end. Vera Figner continued uncompromisingly in her struggle against the tsarist regime, even after it became clear that there was obviously no chance of success. In her view she had either to prevail or perish for her 'faith'."
Peter Rohloff (Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston), "Liberation Theology and the Voice of the Indigenous Other in Guatemala", Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 54 (3), fall 2010: pp. 375-7.
Abstract: "The legacy of the liberation theology in Guatemala is complex. Although it mobilized progressive Catholic forces at times, it has not overcome reactionary and conservative church elements. Most importantly, it has not proven entirely capable of rising above elitism, nor has it moved beyond paternalism toward Maya culture."
Jacob L. Wright (Emory University), "The Commemoration of Defeat and the Formation of a Nation in the Hebrew Bible", Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, 29 (3), fall 2009: pp. 433-72.
Abstract: "This article argues that the emergence of a 'national' consciousness in Israel and Judah was originally fueled by many factors, such as a confined and remote core territory, a history of tribal allegiances, language, culture, law, cult, and ongoing military conflicts. But more important than these factors or any institution of statecraft was the anticipation of defeat and defeat itself. When life could not continue as usual, and the state armies had been conquered, one was forced to answer the question: Who are we? The biblical architects of Israel's memories responded to this question by (selectively) gathering fragments of their collective past and using this material to construct a narrative that depicts the origins of a people and the history leading up to the major catastrophe. Much of the historical narrative treats the period before the rise of the monarchy, and portrays Israel existing as a people long before it established a kingdom – or to use later European political terminology, it portrays Israel existing as a nation before it gained statehood. This 'national' consciousness represents the precondition for the writing of Israel's history and the maturation of its rich theological and political tradition. In demonstrating these points, the article critiques two trajectories of contemporary scholarship: one that follows Julius Wellhausen in viewing the community that emerged after the loss of statehood as a form of 'church,' and another that sees the great moments of state power as the primary context for the formation of the Hebrew Bible and the rich theological-political thought contained therein."
Hent de Vries (Johns Hopkins), "Fast Forward, or: The Theologico-Political Event in Quick Motion (Miracles, Media, and Multitudes in St. Augustine)", in "How the West Was Won: Essays on Literary Imagination, the Canon, and the Christian Middle Ages for Burcht Pranger", eds. Willemien Otten, Arjo Vanderjagt, and Hent de Vries (Brill, April 2010): pp. 255-80. Available online:
http://humctr.jhu.edu/bin/m/x/hent%20how%20west%20was%20won.pdf
Excerpt: "While suspicious of the abundant expressions of popular religion such as magic and exorcisms, healings and relics, Augustine entertains a complex relationship with the domain of what, traditionally, is conceived as the supernatural. It is this complicated relationship that I wish to bring out in a few broad strokes, mindful of the complexity of the matter and mostly concerned with three or four striking traits of his conception, namely the miracle belief's publicness and publicity, on the one hand, and the miracle's presumed acceleration and fastforwarding of natural processes and, hence, special effect on us, on the other. These are two motifs and motivations that, to my knowledge, have not yet found the attention they deserve. Moreover, Augustine's argument also relies, thirdly, on a conception of multitude and catholicity – indeed, universality or globality – that is not without implications for the philosophical and theologico-political work that his writings continue to inspire and that, anachronistically speaking, they seem to have anticipated all along, not least in their nuanced dealing with and theorization of miracles, their strategic and pragmatic use and momentum, their political but also more generally persuasive and perlocutionary aspect."
Christopher Craig Brittain (University of Aberdeen), "Political Theology at a Standstill: Adorno and Agamben on the Messianic", Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology, 102 (1), August 2010: pp. 39-56.
Abstract: "This essay explores the use of the concept of the messianic by Giorgio Agamben and Theodor Adorno. Throughout his work, Agamben consistently presents his reading of the messianic as an alternative to what he considers to be the 'pessimistic' negative dialectics of Adorno, which he argues 'is an absolutely non-messianic form of thought'. For Agamben, the messianic brings dialectics to a 'standstill'. This essay analyzes this deployment of the 'messianic' in his thought, and contrasts it with the perspective of Adorno. Agamben's interpretation of Walter Benjamin is challenged with reference to a debate between Adorno and Benjamin over theology, dialectics, and politics."
Clare Monagle (Monash University), "A Sovereign Act of Negation: Schmitt's Political Theology and its Ideal Medievalism", Culture, Theory and Critique, 51 (2), July 2010: pp. 115-27.
Abstract: "This article argues that Carl Schmitt's political theology is premised on an idealised and totalising vision of the Middle Ages. That is, he casts modern political concepts as debased and corrupt in comparison to the proper politics of the Medieval Church, as he sees it. Drawing on a historically contextualised reading of the Fourth Lateran Council, which took place in 1215, the article's author argues that Schmitt's medieval comparison is much more complicated than he suggests. Schmitt's historical vision is, thus, a wilful projection of unity onto a diverse and distant past."
Jürgen Fohrmann (University of Bonn) and Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney), "Enmity and Culture: The Rhetoric of Political Theology and the Exception in Carl Schmitt", Culture, Theory and Critique, 51 (2), July 2010: pp. 129-44.
Abstract: "This article compares Carl Schmitt's and Walter Benjamin's discussion of the figure of Hamlet. This comparison evaluates Schmitt's response in Hamlet or Hecuba to Benjamin's discussion of the 'exception' in Origins of the German Tragic Drama. 'Deciding upon the exception' is a defining characteristic of sovereignty, so that the comparison between Schmitt and Benjamin is also an evaluation of their respective theories of sovereignty. It will appear that the notion of the aesthetic is crucial in understanding this constellation of ideas."
Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney), "The Ends of Stasis: Spinoza as Reader of Agamben", Culture, Theory and Critique, 51 (2), July 2010: pp. 145-56.
Abstract: "Agamben contends that 'There is ... no such thing as a stasiology, a theory of stasis or civil war' in the western understanding of sovereignty. His own vision of a politics beyond biopolitics explicitly culminates in the end of stasis. How can we understand Agamben's political theology by investigating his use of stasis? Stasis is particularly suited to an inquiry into political theology. It is linked to politics, since its primary meaning is political change, revolution, or civil war, as well as to the theological, since it denotes immobility or immutability, which were attributes of God. Stasis, then, presents the simultaneous presence and absence that exemplifies the unassimilable relation of the sacred and the secular in political theology. The question is: Does Agamben remain true to this unassimilable relation? Or does he betray it the moment he calls for an end to biopolitics? Agamben's reading of Spinoza will provide useful clues in answering these questions."
Ben Quash (King's College London), "Radical Orthodoxy's Critique of Niebuhr", in "Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power", eds. Richard Harries and Stephen Platten (Oxford University Press, March 2010): pp. 58-71.
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199571833.do
Abstract: "Reinhold Niebuhr's 'Christian realism' was in significant part a rejection of the pacifism and optimism of the Social Gospel movement in the United States. Even though Niebuhr had initially been sympathetic to the movement, he came to dismiss its belief that the realization of the kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus, could be expected in the foreseeable future. He thought the movement's great confidence in human progress was naiïve [sic], and that its belief in education's power to foster a law of love (and thus to eradicate the sin of selfishness from individuals and institutions) lacked a proper understanding of original sin. Recognizing the force of Niebuhr's criticisms of the Social Gospel movement, this chapter sets out to ask whether Niebuhr's thought is as effective a riposte to another and much more recent strand of thought in Christian ethics: the ecclesially centered ethics of Radical Orthodoxy. Measuring Radical Orthodoxy's thought against Niebuhr's is given added interest by the fact that Radical Orthodox thinkers themselves – and especially John Milbank – have explicitly and critically engaged Niebuhr, and have described what they see as the 'poverty' of his idea of Christian realism for contemporary ethics."
Stephen Platten (Anglican Bishop of Wakefield), "Niebuhr, Liturgy, and Public Theology", in "Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power", eds. Richard Harries and Stephen Platten (Oxford University Press, March 2010): pp. 102-16.
Abstract: "This chapter argues that it is a mistake to understand liturgy as being enacted in a place of withdrawal from society. Liturgy is a public event with a relationship to public life. If this is understood it ought to be possible to have a much more integral relationship between the kind of political theology represented by Niebuhr and liturgy as performative and transformational for society as a whole."
Kevin Carnahan (Central Methodist University), "The Irony of American Evangelical Politics", in "Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power", eds. Richard Harries and Stephen Platten (Oxford University Press, March 2010): pp. 202-18.
Abstract: "American evangelical political theology is facing a crisis of self-identity. Many evangelicals have claimed that evangelical political theology has been taken captive by the Republican Party. In reaction, evangelical reformers have attempted to wrest their political theology from the grip of partisan political programs. God, they claim, is not a Republican or a Democrat. Despite agreement on this project, however, proposals in American evangelicalism have failed to provide a political theology that maintains a sense of evangelical public responsibility and a sense of God's transcendence over partisan political debates. This chapter argues that Niebuhrian Christian Realism offers a theological approach that could open new avenues for political thought which might carry evangelicals past their present conundrum."
Michael S. Hogue (Meadville Lombard Theological School), "After the Secular: Toward a Pragmatic Public Theology", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 78 (2), June 2010: pp. 346-74.
Abstract: "In a time after the secular and of rapid religious change, of increasing interreligious contacts and globally scaled, viscerally local moral challenges, questions of public theology have become central for scholars of religion in many fields, as well as for explicitly normative theological projects. In response to this, this article offers the initial contours of a pragmatic public theology that engages global moral challenges amidst the conditions of pluralism and an ethos of religious transformation. I illustrate this pragmatic public theology as an inter-traditional public theological mode that is methodologically fallibilized, doxologically rather than apologetically focused, strategically engaged in medias res between traditions and global and local moral challenges, and normatively committed to the nurturance of differentiated moral solidarities with and on behalf of the most vulnerable."
Heinrich Bedford-Strohm (University of Bamberg, Germany), "Public Theology and the Economy in a Globalizing World", Dutch Reformed Theological Journal/Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, 51 (1-2), March/June 2010: pp. 15-23.
Excerpt: "This paper was read at the Theological Day of the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University[,] on 25 January 2010. Speaking on 'Public Theology and the economy in a globalizing world' in 30 minutes is a real challenge. The themes of Public Theology, of basic assumptions of economics and of what we mean by the word 'globalization' would be each one a lecture of its own. And yet the connection of the three is exactly what needs to be discussed. The challenge of a globalizing world which has destructive effects on the natural environments and which still tolerates the poverty caused [sic] death of thousands of human beings every day is clearly on the table. I will leave describing these challenges of globalizations more closely to others today and focus on the theological grounding. After a reflection on the relationship of theology and economics in the reformation traditions, I will describe the place of a public theological model of economic ethics in the context of several other models. I will explain what it entails by distinguishing four dimensions of ethical reflection and conclude with exploring the task of the church in a globalizing world."
Guillermo Hansen (Luther Seminary), "Contours for a Public Lutheran Theology in the Face of Empire", Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 49 (2), summer 2010: pp. 96-107.
Abstract: "Three themes structure Lutheranism's interpretation of the biblical narrative as it intersects with the present challenges of Empire: justification by faith as a declaration of inclusiveness; God's threefold-multidimensional action creating and sustaining democratic practices (two kingdoms); and the cross as the critical 'weapon' against the 'glory' of Empire. This implies placing our theology within the present cultural and religious debate in a way consistent with the methodology of the cross: a theology done from the bowels of Empire, revealing its true face behind its alleged 'benevolent' mask."
Paul Hedges (University of Winchester), "Is John Milbank's Radical Orthodoxy a Form of Liberal Theology? A Rhetorical Counter", The Heythrop Journal, 51 (5), September 2010: pp. 795-818.
Excerpt: "The title of this work is intended to be deliberately provocative. In one sense the answer is very clear: no. With an insistence upon unquestioning Chalcedon Orthodoxy, a turn to the resources of the past (especially the fathers and medieval theology) and an avowed rejection of Kant's metaphysics, Milbank's work is the utter antithesis of much liberal theology. I will seek to show that Milbank's theology has features that are often said to be characteristic of liberal theologies, however, and that it has not escaped the shackles of the modernist/liberal worldview it seeks to repudiate. Moreover, I will ask important questions about the increasingly pejorative tag of 'liberal'; many scholars observe that the use of 'conservative' as a blanket term is highly problematic, yet they still deploy 'liberal' in a monolithic sense."
Robert S. Taylor (University of California, Davis), "Kant's Political Religion: The Transparency of Perpetual Peace and the Highest Good", The Review of Politics, 72 (1), winter 2010: pp. 1-24.
Abstract: "Scholars have long debated the relationship between Kant's doctrine of right and his doctrine of virtue (including his moral religion or ethico-theology), which are the two branches of his moral philosophy. This article will examine the intimate connection in his practical philosophy between perpetual peace and the highest good, between political and ethico-religious communities, and between the types of transparency peculiar to each. It will show how domestic and international right provides a framework for the development of ethical communities, including a kingdom of ends and even the noumenal ethical community of an afterlife, and how the transparency and trust achieved in these communities are anticipated in rightful political society by publicity and the mutual confidence among citizens that it engenders. Finally, it will explore the implications of this synthesis of Kant's political and religious philosophies for contemporary Kantian political theories, especially those of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls."
Stephan Rindlisbacher (University of Bern), "Radicalism as Political Religion? The Case of Vera Figner", Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 11 (1), March 2010: pp. 67-87.
Abstract: "Vera Figner was a leading member of the Russian terrorist group Narodnaia Volia [People's Will] in the late 1870s and early 1880s. In her biography one can trace what Eric Voegelin and Emilio Gentile called 'political religion'. They argue that such a political religion is a basic component of mass mobilisation and also plays an important role in the exerting of political violence in totalitarian states in the twentieth century. Vera Figner and her comrades shared a deep belief in the 'Russian people' as a sacralised secular entity. Because of their ascetic conduct of life within the group, they considered themselves as 'moral elite' (virtuosi), able to lead the 'people' to a better future. Within the 'political sect' of Narodnaia Volia the unconditional submission to the authority of the Executive Committee and the resultant political violence against the regime became means to the revolutionary end. Vera Figner continued uncompromisingly in her struggle against the tsarist regime, even after it became clear that there was obviously no chance of success. In her view she had either to prevail or perish for her 'faith'."
Peter Rohloff (Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston), "Liberation Theology and the Voice of the Indigenous Other in Guatemala", Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 54 (3), fall 2010: pp. 375-7.
Abstract: "The legacy of the liberation theology in Guatemala is complex. Although it mobilized progressive Catholic forces at times, it has not overcome reactionary and conservative church elements. Most importantly, it has not proven entirely capable of rising above elitism, nor has it moved beyond paternalism toward Maya culture."
Jacob L. Wright (Emory University), "The Commemoration of Defeat and the Formation of a Nation in the Hebrew Bible", Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, 29 (3), fall 2009: pp. 433-72.
Abstract: "This article argues that the emergence of a 'national' consciousness in Israel and Judah was originally fueled by many factors, such as a confined and remote core territory, a history of tribal allegiances, language, culture, law, cult, and ongoing military conflicts. But more important than these factors or any institution of statecraft was the anticipation of defeat and defeat itself. When life could not continue as usual, and the state armies had been conquered, one was forced to answer the question: Who are we? The biblical architects of Israel's memories responded to this question by (selectively) gathering fragments of their collective past and using this material to construct a narrative that depicts the origins of a people and the history leading up to the major catastrophe. Much of the historical narrative treats the period before the rise of the monarchy, and portrays Israel existing as a people long before it established a kingdom – or to use later European political terminology, it portrays Israel existing as a nation before it gained statehood. This 'national' consciousness represents the precondition for the writing of Israel's history and the maturation of its rich theological and political tradition. In demonstrating these points, the article critiques two trajectories of contemporary scholarship: one that follows Julius Wellhausen in viewing the community that emerged after the loss of statehood as a form of 'church,' and another that sees the great moments of state power as the primary context for the formation of the Hebrew Bible and the rich theological-political thought contained therein."
Hent de Vries (Johns Hopkins), "Fast Forward, or: The Theologico-Political Event in Quick Motion (Miracles, Media, and Multitudes in St. Augustine)", in "How the West Was Won: Essays on Literary Imagination, the Canon, and the Christian Middle Ages for Burcht Pranger", eds. Willemien Otten, Arjo Vanderjagt, and Hent de Vries (Brill, April 2010): pp. 255-80. Available online:
http://humctr.jhu.edu/bin/m/x/hent%20how%20west%20was%20won.pdf
Excerpt: "While suspicious of the abundant expressions of popular religion such as magic and exorcisms, healings and relics, Augustine entertains a complex relationship with the domain of what, traditionally, is conceived as the supernatural. It is this complicated relationship that I wish to bring out in a few broad strokes, mindful of the complexity of the matter and mostly concerned with three or four striking traits of his conception, namely the miracle belief's publicness and publicity, on the one hand, and the miracle's presumed acceleration and fastforwarding of natural processes and, hence, special effect on us, on the other. These are two motifs and motivations that, to my knowledge, have not yet found the attention they deserve. Moreover, Augustine's argument also relies, thirdly, on a conception of multitude and catholicity – indeed, universality or globality – that is not without implications for the philosophical and theologico-political work that his writings continue to inspire and that, anachronistically speaking, they seem to have anticipated all along, not least in their nuanced dealing with and theorization of miracles, their strategic and pragmatic use and momentum, their political but also more generally persuasive and perlocutionary aspect."
20 June 2010
Book: Forrester on Christian Ethics and Practical Theology
Just published (at a price): Duncan B. Forrester, "Forrester on Christian Ethics and Practical Theology: Collected Writings on Christianity, India, and the Social Order" (Ashgate, June 2010):
www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=8515&edition_id=11167
Publisher's description: "Bringing together articles and chapters from his considerable work in theological ethics, India, and the social order, Duncan Forrester incorporates new writing and introductions to each thematic section to guide readers through this invaluable resource. This book offers stimulating studies in three related areas – Indian Christianity with particular attention to the caste system, contemporary Christian theological ethics, and the distinctive and challenging theological approach that Duncan Forrester has developed in relation to public issues such as prisons and punishment, welfare provision, social justice, and poverty."
From the contents: Part IV Political Theology: Introduction; The political teaching of Luther (1483-1546) and Calvin (1509-1564); The political teaching of Richard Hooker (1553-1600); The problem of natural law in theology and social science; The attack on Christendom in Marx and Kierkegaard; Mystique and politique; The theological task; The promise of liberation theology; The Church, theology and the poor; Can liberation theology survive 1989?; Violence and non-violence in conflict resolution: some theological reflections; Social justice in Protestant thought. Part V Public Theology: Introduction; The scope of public theology: what is public theology?; Punishment and prisons in a morally fragmented society; Ethics and salvation; Education and moral values: who educates?; Welfare and conviction politics; Epilogue: public theology in an age of terror
Duncan B. Forrester is Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh.
www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=8515&edition_id=11167
Publisher's description: "Bringing together articles and chapters from his considerable work in theological ethics, India, and the social order, Duncan Forrester incorporates new writing and introductions to each thematic section to guide readers through this invaluable resource. This book offers stimulating studies in three related areas – Indian Christianity with particular attention to the caste system, contemporary Christian theological ethics, and the distinctive and challenging theological approach that Duncan Forrester has developed in relation to public issues such as prisons and punishment, welfare provision, social justice, and poverty."
From the contents: Part IV Political Theology: Introduction; The political teaching of Luther (1483-1546) and Calvin (1509-1564); The political teaching of Richard Hooker (1553-1600); The problem of natural law in theology and social science; The attack on Christendom in Marx and Kierkegaard; Mystique and politique; The theological task; The promise of liberation theology; The Church, theology and the poor; Can liberation theology survive 1989?; Violence and non-violence in conflict resolution: some theological reflections; Social justice in Protestant thought. Part V Public Theology: Introduction; The scope of public theology: what is public theology?; Punishment and prisons in a morally fragmented society; Ethics and salvation; Education and moral values: who educates?; Welfare and conviction politics; Epilogue: public theology in an age of terror
Duncan B. Forrester is Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh.
19 June 2010
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."
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."
16 June 2010
JOB: Director Mission and Justice
Anglicare Canberra and Goulburn, Australia, is seeking to appoint a mature Christian leader as the Director Mission and Justice. They are seeking a strongly committed person who is experienced in mission within disadvantaged communities and has the capacity to undertake public theology.
This role forms part of the Anglicare Executive and reports to the Chief Executive Officer with particular responsibility for: Shaping and contextualizing the mission and work of Anglicare; Theological reflection, research and teaching; Coordinating chaplaincy services; Engaging with parishes and supporting the development of fresh expressions of the Anglican Church.
A theological degree appropriate for license as a priest or deacon in the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn is required.
To obtain a position description, please contact Tina Mills: tina.mills@anglicarecg.org.au
To apply, forward a comprehensive resume and covering letter to Peter Sandeman (Chief Executive): peter.sandeman@anglicarecg.org.au
Deadline: 12 July 2010
This role forms part of the Anglicare Executive and reports to the Chief Executive Officer with particular responsibility for: Shaping and contextualizing the mission and work of Anglicare; Theological reflection, research and teaching; Coordinating chaplaincy services; Engaging with parishes and supporting the development of fresh expressions of the Anglican Church.
A theological degree appropriate for license as a priest or deacon in the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn is required.
To obtain a position description, please contact Tina Mills: tina.mills@anglicarecg.org.au
To apply, forward a comprehensive resume and covering letter to Peter Sandeman (Chief Executive): peter.sandeman@anglicarecg.org.au
Deadline: 12 July 2010
30 April 2010
JOB: Public Theology Administrative Assistant (full-time, temporary)
The Evangelical Alliance, Whitefield House, 186 Kennington Park Road, London, SE11 4BT, England, is looking for a
Public Theology Administrative Assistant (full-time, temporary)
This role involves providing administrative and secretarial assistance to the Public Theology Team, responding to enquiries, arranging and facilitating meetings, assisting in the production and distribution of Public Theology publications, and providing support (including co-ordinating logistics) as the Alliance conducts a large-scale research project at festivals, conferences, and member churches this summer. Candidates would benefit from an interest in politics and/or theology. The successful candidate will have: proven administrative or secretarial skills; the ability to use initiative and take responsibility for tasks; excellent communication and relational skills; positive team-working attitude. All applicants must be committed to the aims and ethos of the Evangelical Alliance.
Salary: ca. £20,000 p.a., plus benefits
A detailed job description, person specification, terms and conditions, applicants guidance notes, etc. are to be found here:
www.eauk.org/vacancies
Please apply online or download an application form from the site and e-mail it to the Evangelical Alliance HR Department: hr@eauk.org
CVs will not be accepted.
Closing date: 14 May 2010
Interviews: 20 May 2010
Public Theology Administrative Assistant (full-time, temporary)
This role involves providing administrative and secretarial assistance to the Public Theology Team, responding to enquiries, arranging and facilitating meetings, assisting in the production and distribution of Public Theology publications, and providing support (including co-ordinating logistics) as the Alliance conducts a large-scale research project at festivals, conferences, and member churches this summer. Candidates would benefit from an interest in politics and/or theology. The successful candidate will have: proven administrative or secretarial skills; the ability to use initiative and take responsibility for tasks; excellent communication and relational skills; positive team-working attitude. All applicants must be committed to the aims and ethos of the Evangelical Alliance.
Salary: ca. £20,000 p.a., plus benefits
A detailed job description, person specification, terms and conditions, applicants guidance notes, etc. are to be found here:
www.eauk.org/vacancies
Please apply online or download an application form from the site and e-mail it to the Evangelical Alliance HR Department: hr@eauk.org
CVs will not be accepted.
Closing date: 14 May 2010
Interviews: 20 May 2010
28 April 2010
Book: Public Theology in an Age of World Christianity: God's Mission as Word-Event
Just published: Paul S. Chung, "Public Theology in an Age of World Christianity: God's Mission as Word-Event" (Palgrave Macmillan, April 2010):
http://us.macmillan.com/publictheologyinanageofworldchristianity
Publisher's description: "This book aims to rearticulate and reinterpret a Christian concept of God's mission and evangelization in light of the universal, irregular, and transversal horizon of God's narrative as it pertains to the realities of public sphere. Paul Chung maintains that mission serves the Word of God which is revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit for all. It is salient to develop a theology of Trinitarian mission through the perspective of God's living 'word-event' in a hermeneutical, intercultural fashion. Here, a Trinitarian concept of missio Dei is deepened and refurbished in light of God as the Subject of speaking: through Israel, the church, and the face of innocent victims and religious outsiders. This perspective contextualizes and widens the mission of God's narrative and deepens its universality in light of the word event."
Paul S. Chung is Associate Professor of Mission and World Christianity at Luther Seminary.
http://us.macmillan.com/publictheologyinanageofworldchristianity
Publisher's description: "This book aims to rearticulate and reinterpret a Christian concept of God's mission and evangelization in light of the universal, irregular, and transversal horizon of God's narrative as it pertains to the realities of public sphere. Paul Chung maintains that mission serves the Word of God which is revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit for all. It is salient to develop a theology of Trinitarian mission through the perspective of God's living 'word-event' in a hermeneutical, intercultural fashion. Here, a Trinitarian concept of missio Dei is deepened and refurbished in light of God as the Subject of speaking: through Israel, the church, and the face of innocent victims and religious outsiders. This perspective contextualizes and widens the mission of God's narrative and deepens its universality in light of the word event."
Paul S. Chung is Associate Professor of Mission and World Christianity at Luther Seminary.
17 April 2010
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."
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."
01 April 2010
CONF: Canadian Theological Society annual meeting
Annual Meeting of the Canadian Theological Society (CTS), at Concordia University, Molson School of Business, 1450 Rue Guy, Montréal, Canada, 31 May-2 June 2010
http://cts-stc.ca/previous-conferences/2010_annual_program/
Two one-hour slots in the parallel sessions at this small conference are reserved for papers on political theology:
Andrew Atkinson (Wilfred Laurier University), "Carl Schmitt and the Political Theology of HBO: John Adams and Rome as Sites of Discourse on De-differentiated Secularism and the Relationship between Violence and Law" (1 June, 9.15-10.10 am, MB 3-430)
From the abstract: "Since Six Feet Under began airing in 2001, HBO has consistently marketed programming that integrates left wing ideals with various religious traditions. [...] The star-studded miniseries, John Adams, and the raucous reinvention of the sword and sandal genre, Rome, are both productions that complicate HBO's ideological stance and aesthetic. These two shows delve head-long into theo-political concepts that are usually monopolized by conservatives, such as the friend-enemy distinction, the small and powerful state, and the exceptions permitted to the sovereign. These concepts find a common focus in the writings of Carl Schmitt [...]. Interest in Schmitt's concepts on TV has clearly been influenced by what Simon Critchley calls the 'Crypto-Schmittianism' of the Bush-Cheney years [...]. However, while Critchley uses this term derisively there are a great number on the left who actively endorse Schmitt's concepts even though they are grounded in his right-wing Catholic Christology [...]. This paper will seek to argue that the left-right commonality on violence and law is intimately associated with theological understandings the political [sic] [...]."
Kornel Zathureczky (University of Sudbury), "Critical Political Theology in an Apocalyptic Key: A Reception of the Work of Jacob Taubes"
(1 June, 1.45-2.40 pm, MB 3-435)
Abstract: "Jacob Taubes' last lecture on 'The Political Theology of Paul' offered a significant opening to help to reconsider – as a phenomenon imbued with the tensions that exists before a an [sic] ultimate separation – the central figure of Christian history from the perspective of the tradition of Jewish messianism. Taubes' other recently translated works, 'Occidental Eschatology' and 'From Cult to Culture,' generated an added impetus to revisit this hidden core of Christianity. Essential in this enterprise is a reconsideration of the enduring significance of comic [sic] Gnostic dualism for a better understanding of what is at stake with the, often suppressed and marginalised, apocalyptic dimension of Christianity and how by [sic] retrieving this dimension may serve to construe a critical political theology in what many, including Taubes, consider as a post-Christian stage in history, an epoch that corresponds to Joachim of Fiore's 'ecclesia spiritualis.' The paper's purpose is thus two-fold: First, it offers a critical reception of the thought of Taubes, one that evaluates his contribution to the genealogy of political theologies. Second, it proposes to draw up the outlines of a contemporary political theology in an apocalyptic key. Here, the recent work of Žižek and Milbank on the apocalyptic substrate of God's kenosis in Christ serves as a vital conversation partner to further the development of a new political theology in a post-political global bio-polis."
Also of interest: Timothy Harvie (St. Mary's University College), "Public Hope in Dialogue: The Debate Between Moltmann and Ratzinger as a Means to Public Theology" (1 June, 10.15-11.10 am, MB 3-435)
From the abstract: "In 2008, eminent theologian of hope, Jürgen Moltmann, published a critical response to Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Spe salvi. This paper will analyze the main contours of Moltmann's argument in light of a summary of the theological contents of the relevant papal encyclical and highlight the ongoing debate between Moltmann's public theology and Joseph Ratzinger. [...] By outlining Moltmann's eshcatological [sic] and ethical theology of hope this paper will analyze the ad hoc engagement with Catholic theologians which Moltmann employs throughout his writings. The paper will call several of these readings into question utilizing encyclicals from the Catholic social tradition and documents from the Second Vatican Council complimented by the doctrine of hope outlined by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae (IIaIIae.17-22). This intersection between Moltmann and the Roman Catholic Church on the ethical relevance of theological doctrines raises pertinent issues regarding the potential for an eschatologically informed public theology to be a potential avenue of viable theological dialogue between traditions through a coherent and ecclesiologically informed public ethic."
Further information (including how to register) is to be found on the above website.
The CTS annual meeting is part of the 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, an annual event in Canada that brings together thousands of scholars under the aegis of more than seventy associations from various disciplines.
http://cts-stc.ca/previous-conferences/2010_annual_program/
Two one-hour slots in the parallel sessions at this small conference are reserved for papers on political theology:
Andrew Atkinson (Wilfred Laurier University), "Carl Schmitt and the Political Theology of HBO: John Adams and Rome as Sites of Discourse on De-differentiated Secularism and the Relationship between Violence and Law" (1 June, 9.15-10.10 am, MB 3-430)
From the abstract: "Since Six Feet Under began airing in 2001, HBO has consistently marketed programming that integrates left wing ideals with various religious traditions. [...] The star-studded miniseries, John Adams, and the raucous reinvention of the sword and sandal genre, Rome, are both productions that complicate HBO's ideological stance and aesthetic. These two shows delve head-long into theo-political concepts that are usually monopolized by conservatives, such as the friend-enemy distinction, the small and powerful state, and the exceptions permitted to the sovereign. These concepts find a common focus in the writings of Carl Schmitt [...]. Interest in Schmitt's concepts on TV has clearly been influenced by what Simon Critchley calls the 'Crypto-Schmittianism' of the Bush-Cheney years [...]. However, while Critchley uses this term derisively there are a great number on the left who actively endorse Schmitt's concepts even though they are grounded in his right-wing Catholic Christology [...]. This paper will seek to argue that the left-right commonality on violence and law is intimately associated with theological understandings the political [sic] [...]."
Kornel Zathureczky (University of Sudbury), "Critical Political Theology in an Apocalyptic Key: A Reception of the Work of Jacob Taubes"
(1 June, 1.45-2.40 pm, MB 3-435)
Abstract: "Jacob Taubes' last lecture on 'The Political Theology of Paul' offered a significant opening to help to reconsider – as a phenomenon imbued with the tensions that exists before a an [sic] ultimate separation – the central figure of Christian history from the perspective of the tradition of Jewish messianism. Taubes' other recently translated works, 'Occidental Eschatology' and 'From Cult to Culture,' generated an added impetus to revisit this hidden core of Christianity. Essential in this enterprise is a reconsideration of the enduring significance of comic [sic] Gnostic dualism for a better understanding of what is at stake with the, often suppressed and marginalised, apocalyptic dimension of Christianity and how by [sic] retrieving this dimension may serve to construe a critical political theology in what many, including Taubes, consider as a post-Christian stage in history, an epoch that corresponds to Joachim of Fiore's 'ecclesia spiritualis.' The paper's purpose is thus two-fold: First, it offers a critical reception of the thought of Taubes, one that evaluates his contribution to the genealogy of political theologies. Second, it proposes to draw up the outlines of a contemporary political theology in an apocalyptic key. Here, the recent work of Žižek and Milbank on the apocalyptic substrate of God's kenosis in Christ serves as a vital conversation partner to further the development of a new political theology in a post-political global bio-polis."
Also of interest: Timothy Harvie (St. Mary's University College), "Public Hope in Dialogue: The Debate Between Moltmann and Ratzinger as a Means to Public Theology" (1 June, 10.15-11.10 am, MB 3-435)
From the abstract: "In 2008, eminent theologian of hope, Jürgen Moltmann, published a critical response to Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Spe salvi. This paper will analyze the main contours of Moltmann's argument in light of a summary of the theological contents of the relevant papal encyclical and highlight the ongoing debate between Moltmann's public theology and Joseph Ratzinger. [...] By outlining Moltmann's eshcatological [sic] and ethical theology of hope this paper will analyze the ad hoc engagement with Catholic theologians which Moltmann employs throughout his writings. The paper will call several of these readings into question utilizing encyclicals from the Catholic social tradition and documents from the Second Vatican Council complimented by the doctrine of hope outlined by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae (IIaIIae.17-22). This intersection between Moltmann and the Roman Catholic Church on the ethical relevance of theological doctrines raises pertinent issues regarding the potential for an eschatologically informed public theology to be a potential avenue of viable theological dialogue between traditions through a coherent and ecclesiologically informed public ethic."
Further information (including how to register) is to be found on the above website.
The CTS annual meeting is part of the 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, an annual event in Canada that brings together thousands of scholars under the aegis of more than seventy associations from various disciplines.
03 March 2010
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."
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."
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