Narrowing the Options: Power and Glory in the Late Modern Religious Imagination

Abstract

Under the conditions of late modernity, when a secular worldview has diminished the plausibility of affirmations of a transcendent truth or reality governing human affairs, the world’s major religious traditions have spawned religious subcultures driven by narrowly political theologies. The result has been a constriction of conceptions of divine glory and majesty; these aggressive fundamentalist and religious-nationalist movements idolize the near-absolute power of the secular modern state. This elimination of options within the religious community, including the option of separatism or withdrawal from worldly political calculations, robs the religious imagination of a vital pluralism and reduces “power” to ideology.