Political Theology Research Articles

Kody W. Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer: The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xii, 238.)

Kody W. Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer: The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xii, 238.)

Police ethnography, abolition, Rancière and political theology

Police ethnography, abolition, Rancière and political theology

Political theology: how God’s law is applied in the context of Indonesian democracy based on Pancasila

Political theology: how God’s law is applied in the context of Indonesian democracy based on Pancasila

Chronotopes of exile and loss in Philip O'Sullivan Beare's Zoilomastix (c. 1626)☆

AbstractThis essay explores the relationship between an early modern exile and his native environment, as depicted in Philip O'Sullivan Beare's unfinished natural history Zoilomastix. Writing by turns in Latin, Spanish and Gaelic from the safety of the Habsburg court, O'Sullivan Beare marshalled Ciceronian rhetoric and Plinian wonder to argue for the conservation of interwoven natural and cultural environments. One of the earliest examples of national historiographies written from exile by erudite Irish figures, Zoilomastix has most often been read in terms of its political theology. Though understandable, such readings obscure O'Sullivan Beare's idiosyncratic treatments of self, state and nature. Additionally, such readings only partially consider the author's attempts to engage with the debates on ethnicity, natural law and resource capture which directed the actions of the English state. Adopting the dialogic framework of Mikhail Bakhtin's chronotope, this essay therefore explores the extent to which the genre of natural history was utilized to inform and influence contested narratives. It argues that O'Sullivan Beare's autobiographical account, and its relevance to the forthcoming ‘loss’ of his Gaelic world, has much to tell us in a time of ecological crisis.

Anarchy and the Kingdom of God. From Eschatology to Orthodox Political Theology and Back, written by Davor Džalto

Anarchy and the Kingdom of God. From Eschatology to Orthodox Political Theology and Back, written by Davor Džalto

Book Review: A Political Theology of Vulnerability by Sturla J. Stålsett

Book Review: <i>A Political Theology of Vulnerability</i> by Sturla J. Stålsett

Matthew Mauger, William Blake and the Visionary Law: Prophecy, Legislation and Constitution

It is perhaps a bit disconcerting to find “antinomianism” resurfacing in the mid-2020s. Matthew Mauger’s William Blake and the Visionary Law: Prophecy, Legislation and Constitution presents the thesis that “sustained interest in the antinomian resonances of Blake’s corpus effectively distracts us from his consistent aspiration for the law as a framework which affords protection for Humanity against incoherence, dissolution, and despair” (8). This modification signals his point of departure from Jon Mee’s Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s (1992), Saree Makdisi’s William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s (2003), and G. A. Rosso’s The Religion of Empire: Political Theology in Blake’s Prophetic Symbolism (2016), the leading exponents of tracing antinomian ideologies in Blake.

“Politics and the Pulpit are Terms that Have Little Agreement”: Edmund Burke’s Critique of the Political Theologian

ABSTRACT Burke was possibly the first person to use the term “political theologian” in English. He used it as a term of opprobrium against dissenting preacher Richard Price and his enthusiasm for the French Revolution. This article seeks to explicate the meaning of the term “political theologians” in Burke’s Reflections, and why Burke regarded the conjunction of politics and theology as a pejorative. The article further seeks to explain how Burke could see such an integral and positive role for Christianity in relation to the English state, while using the term “political theologian” as a slur. It concludes that it was partisan politics in the pulpit that Burke opposed, something he regarded as a violation of the distinct characters and functions of politics and church in society. Finally, the article seeks to locate Burke within the genealogy of the terms “political theology” and “political theologian.”

Beyond political theology: Marx’s materialist theorization of democracy and constituent power

ABSTRACT This article recovers and develops Marx’s highly original materialist theorization of democracy and constituent power in Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of State. Through close textual analysis and theoretical recontextualization, I reconstruct Marx’s development and deployment of these concepts as a central part of his critique of political theology, that is, the idea of the state as a sovereign subject transcending and exercising absolute power over society. Marx conceptualized democracy as the social basis of all constitutional forms of the state, which simultaneously revealed the inherent possibility of overthrowing it and capitalism in order to institute a continuous and collective non-sovereign form of self-determination described as ‘true democracy.’

Asymmetrische Gegenbegriffe in Laktanz’ ‚Politischer Theologie‘

Abstract Lactantius’ theology is a ‚political theology‘ containing numerous asymmetrical counter-concepts. These are used to establish contradictory group constellations in whose negative part the negative others – the ‚out-group‘ – cannot necessarily recognise themselves. Among these counter-concepts, the moral-anthropological opposition of ‚the good‘ (boni) and ‚the evil‘ (mali) is of particular importance. Lactantius’ counter-concepts are politicised because they convey extremely polarised determinations of the degree of association and dissociation of human beings. These counter-concepts are also religious, because they are related to aspects of salvation history, natural law, soteriology, and eschatology. Due to their references to salvation history, Lactantius’ political group terminologies fit into the history of the radicalisation of asymmetrical counter-concepts, which stretches from antiquity to modernity and was identified by Reinhart Koselleck. Lactantius’ ‘political theology’, however, plays a special role in this history of radicalisation and violence, because, on the one hand, it marks the point at which distinctive political semantics became theologically charged. On the other hand, Lactantius did not unchain the potential for violence that was inherent in the counter-concepts. Therefore, his ‘political theology’ did not contain any praxeology or justification of violence from the Christian side.

The Political Theology of Calvinism and the Decline of American Exceptionalism

The Political Theology of Calvinism and the Decline of American Exceptionalism

The origins of political theology and the theological argumentation of Peter Skarga

The origins of political theology and the theological argumentation of Peter Skarga

Contesting Power as Political Theology: Traditionalist Islamic Preaching and Post-Secularism in the West

Traditionalist Islamic preaching in the West is not limited to the normative aspects of theology, law, and ethics. In addition, it addresses the most pressing social and political issues that Muslims are currently confronting in the West; it also challenges Western modernity in general and secularism in particular. Two critical sermons of secularism delivered by two of the most well-known traditionalist Muslim preachers in their respective countries—Hamza Yusuf in the USA and Hani Ramadan in Switzerland—are analyzed in this study. First, I shall examine the arguments put up by these preachers against secularism and in support of post-secular society. Next, I will study the rhetorical strategies used in these two sermons. Finally, I will discuss the relevance of these two sermons to the contemporary debates in the West on contesting secularism and multiple secularisms. It is argued here that traditionalist Muslim preachers see secularism as an encroaching power that poses a danger to the figures of authority and norms that control gender, knowledge, and education within Muslim communities and societies.

Преодоление политико-теологической логики в анархизме Густава Ландауэра

Schmitt’s flagship project of political theology has recently become the subject of widespread discussion in political philosophy. One of the trends that has emerged in the interpretations of this project is associated with criticism of Carl Schmitt’s political-theological approach itself. An increasing number of authors see political theology as a serious challenge for modernity, considering it a tool for justifying and legitimizing state violence. Therefore, there is a need to overcome political-theological logic and turn to other strategies for thinking about the political. At the same time, the question of resources that could act as an alternative to Schmitt’s project is becoming more relevant. The article proves that anarchist theory can become such a resource. The author, however, does not mean its classical version, reflected in the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin. Having reconstructed Schmitt’s vision of anarchism, he shows that, although the German philosopher’s interpretation of anarchist theory was not completely correct, Schmitt was not entirely wrong when he called the classical anarchists of the 19th century anti-theological theologians and anti-dictatorship dictators, qualifying them as inverted counterparts to the theorists of state absolutism. However, anarchist thought is not confined to the attitudes of the followers of Bakunin and Proudhon. Thus, the author turns to the concept of Gustav Landauer, the German anarchist of the early 20th century, demonstrating that it is free from the inherent flaws of classical anarchism and presupposes a model of political thinking that is fundamentally different from Schmitt’s model, being located outside the political-theological frame. According to his conclusion, being free from political and theological assumptions, this model allows one to talk about politics and the social outside of the usual terms, such as state, power, domination, and subordination, moving rather towards the idea of autonomous communities, excluded from the current state order and at the same time coexisting with such order.

The end of law and other miracles

This article explores various attempts to critique law with reference to an authority or idea that is seen as transcending law in its existing forms. As heuristic tools, I use a distinction between prophetic and apocalyptic discourses, the former referring to discourses that remain sceptical to the possibility of suspending law in any absolute sense; the latter describing discourses that articulate a belief in or commitment to a radical break with the law, envisioning a coming law-free age. To give concreteness to my argument, I focus, in the first part, on the critical interaction between Daniel Bensaïd and Alain Badiou as a typical illustration of the tension between prophetic and apocalyptic discourses. In the subsequent parts, I take the analysis a step further by relating it to various historical discourses on divine law. Drawing on Christine Hayes’ claim that there are overlooked resources in the ancient rabbinic constructions of divine law, I suggest that some of these resources are reactivated – albeit unknowingly – in Bensaïd’s political thinking. Especially in his original conception of revolutionary temporality, Bensaïd provides tools for elaborating a different way of coping with the limits of law, thereby avoiding some of the shortcomings of apocalyptic political theologies.

Pastor Nevers Mumba’s Quest to Actualize the Declaration of Zambia as a Christian Nation through “Zambia Shall Be Saved” Campaign, 1993–2021

Abstract This article is grounded in the findings from qualitative and interpretivist research based on secondary and primary data. Two analytic frameworks have been used to make sense of the data. The first is Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar’s hypothesis that politics in sub-Saharan African societies cannot be fully understood without reference to religious ideas therein; and the second is the notion of African Political Theology which, according to Emmanuel Katongole, means going beyond addressing realities of violence, civil unrest, poverty, tribalism, and corruption, but deploying the story of salvation in Jesus as a concrete social, material, political, and economic reality in the African social imaginary for the construction of modern Africa. The article argues that through “Zambia Shall be Saved” orations from 1993 to date, Pastor Nevers Mumba has been calling for actualizing the declaration of Zambia as a Christian Nation (henceforth referred to as “Declaration”) made by President Frederick Chiluba in 1991. Katongole’s understanding of African Political Theology provides an invaluable lens for conceptualizing Mumba’s “Zambia Shall be Saved” discourse. The Declaration remains a topical issue among Zambian and international analysts and the significance of this particular article lies in the fact that it relates Mumba’s cry of “Zambia Shall be Saved” to the new conversation on “Actualizing the Declaration” coined by the government of the republic of Zambia in 2016. Overall, the article seeks to contribute to an ongoing discourse on Zambia’s Christian nationhood.

John Bale, Imperial Monarchy, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Ireland

Abstract The episcopal mission of Englishman John Bale to Ireland in 1553 provides historians with a unique window into the interconnected British and Irish histories of the early English Reformation. Scholarship on Bale has long explored his life and theology in all European theatres of the Reformation in which he was involved. Yet, key features of his mission and theology remain underappreciated. Building on recent work that has contextualized Bale’s Irish mission and ecclesiology within the imperial outlook of the Edwardian regime and Reformation, the article examines Bale’s mission against the worlds of English evangelical and continental Protestant political theology he inhabited, and the mingling of Henrician and Edwardian ‘reformist’ energies in Ireland with which it intersected and clashed. It argues that, under conditions of English colonial rule and empire in Ireland, Bale expressed a political theology that, imperial by circumstance and implication, turned his spiritual vocation modelled on Christ into a receptacle for divine and princely sovereignty that set rival conceptions of royal authority, idolatry, and Anglo-Irish constitutional relations against each other. Evangelical political theology thus acquired different hues on either side of the Irish Sea, with important implications for how we understand the early English Reformation across England and Ireland.

Проблема дара: теологический и онтологический контексты современной мысли

Introduction. At the very beginning, the problematic field of the article is outlined: we will not talk about the problem of the gift, but about why the gift becomes a problem. To do this, it is necessary to consider several contexts in which this problem arises. We propose to dwell on two of them: theological and ontological. Theoretical analysis. In a theological context, two currents of twentieth-century thought are examined in connection with their influence on the problem of the gift. Firstly, this is political theology, which agreed that in the era of secularization we inherit Christian meanings, and one of them is the phenomenon of a gift. Secondly, this is theoesthetics, which proposes to consider the position of the secularization of our era as a private and, in fact, already closed project. In the ontological context, it is pointed out that the gift becomes a problem where violence and exchange assert themselves as the norm for understanding being. Conclusion. As a result, the article draws conclusions and poses key questions for further research on the problem of the gift.

Unknowing (the End of) the World: Negative Eschatology and Political Theology

This article elucidates the significance of eschatology—particularly what may be called negative eschatology—for the task of political life. Through tracing some of the appeals to eschatological notions in recent political thinking and movements, we demonstrate some of the dangers of eschatology as a resource for political theology. The article then engages with the version of negative eschatology rendered by Vincent Lloyd, which holds out the possibility of experiencing a foretaste of the eschaton in moments of struggle against domination. The form of political activity in focus here is a struggle to dismantle that which does not belong to the eschatological order of justice—that is, struggling against what the eschaton is not. We bring this account of the relationship between the eschaton and the political into conversation with Emmanuel Levinas’s conception of infinity, and offer an account of negative eschatology as an invitation into living in relation to a fullness that is ever unfolding. Political activity undertaken in this light is oriented towards opening the conditions of possibility for the contingent transformation of injustice and led by those at the margins. We suggest, therefore, that in the dismantling of what eschatology is not, it is possible to glimpse what the eschaton might be.

Political Theology and Islam: From the Birth of Empire to the Modern State By Paul Heck

<i>Political Theology and Islam: From the Birth of Empire to the Modern State</i> By <scp>Paul Heck</scp>