A Very Brief Political Theology

2008

he religion of politics," wrote the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz, "was born from the ruins of Christianity." The political, "or more precisely, Revolution-co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society." It "was the construction of a universal church." 1 From the standpoint of both world and Western history, the present day secular liberal dogma in the West of the necessary dissociativity of the religious from the political is the most curious of eccentricities. The principle derives, as does the American doctrine of the "separation of church and state," from a radicalization over time of Enlightenment anti-clericism and the deep suspicion among eighteenth century philosophes about the overreach of political sovereigns, whether democratic or autocratic, especially whenever the power of God might be invoked to abridge the free exercise of human reason and the freedom of the citizenry. The radicalization gathered momentum only in the twentieth century-in America the "non-establishment of religion" did not morph into "strict separationism" until an infamous 1948 Supreme Court decision-as positivist science threw religion as a whole on a broad cultural defensive and the secular utopianisms of socialism, communism, fascism, and Deweyan "democratism" routed all otherworldly hopes as legitimate expressions of collective human longing. Militant secularism can, if we pursue Paz's dictum, be regarded as the "universal church" of right reason and techno-scientific hegemony. Just about a generation ago this universal church seemed as secure for the long term as the Roman Catholic Church during the high middle ages. But the world has changed drastically in the last forty years. In the same way as unexpected and untoward historical events-the Black Death, the Great Schism, devastating dynastic wars over two centuries, and finally the printing press-brought down the Medieval Church and its once unquestionable dominion, the great cultural upheavals of

Over the last decades, the question of political theology has reemerged as a lens to interpret and understand the current global order, structures of governance, the moral question of normativity and theology's or religion's role in the public sphere. Several contributors to the debate presuppose an understanding of God or the Divine that many theologians would consider to be uncritical, if not ideological. In the current discourse, the Divine serves as the "ultimate" authority regarding normative claims, legitimacy of (political or biopolitical) power, 1 and divine power over history.

Politics and the Church, 2023

This short chapter outlines some basic political theory relevant to theological discourse in the church. It also covers the nature of power in a way I believe has not been done well in political philosophy (as far as I've read).

Journal of Church and State, 1997

Journal of Law and Religion

Faith and the political in the post secular age: explorations in practical theology, 2018

Even after two millennia of churches relating to political cultures that surround them, we're still not entirely clear what to do. This statement is not offered in despair, or to counsel other-worldly withdrawal. 'What to do' in relation to the political cultures that surround us-a question of Christian political ethics-can never be straightforwardly settled in advance by some theory of church and state. All ethical deliberation and action upholds enduring norms, but does so within the flux of a thousand variables and considerations that can only be known by those actors in this context in that place. In this chapter, I will appropriate some core insights in current Christian theological ethics to help us navigate the shoals and currents of your or my particular local polity. I seek for a way to think about politics that is less committed to grand theory and disputes about it, and more able to move practically into the world-albeit well-informed by political theology, by our faith gone public, and by canny awareness of the shifting canons in our 'secular' (or increasingly 'post-secular') culture. I will construct a 'typology' of sorts, framed by two basic axes of response. One axis concerns the kinds of moral response we take on this or that issue. Then, the ways we think of our church relating to our local political culture are plotted on the other axis. It turns out that we might locate ourselves differently on each axis depending on the specific political question before us.

One of the central theological challenges facing Erik Peterson was to help the mid-twentieth century Catholic Church define its relationship with the wider world. He responded by advancing a distinctive understanding of the 'polis.' In this essay, I critically analyze Peterson's central and perhaps best known proposal about how the Church ought to negotiate the modern world — encapsulated in his expression, the 'liquidation of political theology.' I contend that Peterson's proposal is not congruent with a right understanding of patristic trinitarian monarchy, although a view that stands in sharp contrast to that of Carl Schmitt. Notwithstanding the effectiveness of Peterson's critique of Schmitt's political theology, I argue that Peterson nonetheless fails in his exposition of the thought of Gregory of Nazianzus and therefore in his interpretation of the role of the Church in what we have learned to call the 'political' and the 'social.' I conclude by outlining several ways that the Church today might take up the challenge of regaining a truly political thought, a new ekklesioteia, nourished by the monarchy of the triune God.

2019

2015

In this essay, I examine Michel Foucault's political contrast between the theological domains of the pastoral and the mystical, in order to note his focus on how necessity and providence are founding and legitimizing concepts of the State. Through this process I develop an analysis of how Foucault, in his critique of the historical uses of theology as a tool of pastoral power, actually points toward another form of political theology than Carl Schmitt's. My contention is that we begin to see another "type" of political theology appear in the writings of Giorgio Agamben, who follows Christian traditions much more closely than Foucault. The re-formulation of political theology within Agamben's work, I argue, has tremendous significance for the field as a whole and is much in need of further elaboration, a task toward which this essay only points.