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Political Science of Religion: Theorising the Political Role of Religion
by Maciej PotzThis book introduces political science of religion – a coherent approach to the study of the political role of religion grounded in political science. In this framework, religion is viewed as a political ideology providing legitimation for power and motivating political attitudes and behaviors of the public. Religious organizations are political actors negotiating the political system in the pursuit of their faith-based objectives. Religion is thus interpreted as a power resource and religious groups as political players. The theoretical framework developed in the first part is applied to the study of theocracies and contemporary democracies, based on the case studies of Poland and the USA. The empirical analysis of resources, strategies and opportunities of religious actors demonstrates their ability to influence the politics of democracies and non-democracies alike. Using a multilevel approach, the book seeks to explain this tremendous political potential of religion.
Political Spirituality for a Century of Water Wars: The Angel of the Jordan Meets the Trickster of Detroit
by James W. PerkinsonThis book offers resources for re-imagining the biblical vision of water for a time quickly emerging as “the century of water wars.” It takes its urgency from the author’s 5-year activist engagement with a grass-roots-led social movement, pushing back on Detroit water shutoffs as global climate crises intensify. Concerned with both white supremacist “biopolitics” and continuing settler colonial reliance on the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, and beholden to an interreligious methodology of “crossing over and coming back,” the text creatively re-reads the biblical tradition under tutelage to the mythologies and practices of various indigenous cultures (Algonquian/Huron, Haitian/Vodouisant, and Celtic/Norman) whose embrace of water is animate and spiritual as well as political and communal. Not enough, today, merely to engage the political battle over water rights, however; indigenous wisdom and biblical prophecy alike insist that recovery of water spirituality is central to a sustainable future.
Political Spirituality for a Century of Water Wars: The Angel of the Jordan Meets the Trickster of Detroit
by James W. PerkinsonThis book offers resources for re-imagining the biblical vision of water for a time quickly emerging as “the century of water wars.” It takes its urgency from the author’s 5-year activist engagement with a grass-roots-led social movement, pushing back on Detroit water shutoffs as global climate crises intensify. Concerned with both white supremacist “biopolitics” and continuing settler colonial reliance on the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, and beholden to an interreligious methodology of “crossing over and coming back,” the text creatively re-reads the biblical tradition under tutelage to the mythologies and practices of various indigenous cultures (Algonquian/Huron, Haitian/Vodouisant, and Celtic/Norman) whose embrace of water is animate and spiritual as well as political and communal. Not enough, today, merely to engage the political battle over water rights, however; indigenous wisdom and biblical prophecy alike insist that recovery of water spirituality is central to a sustainable future.
Political Spirituality in an Age of Eco-Apocalypse
by James W. PerkinsonThis book 'hunts and gathers' across different historical epochs and situations, juxtaposing biblical materials and hip-hop, Christian colonialism and vodou, personal experience and racial politics, poetics and high theory. It is compelled by a desire to challenge the current crisis of sustainability from the point of view of indigenous communities and deep ancestry. Author James W. Perkinson ably synthesizes material from a diverse range of fields, including anarcho-primitivism, biblicalstudies, and history of religions in order to argue for a 'turn to indigeneity. ' The book's motive force is a deep concern for humanity's future in the face of eco-disasters like climate change and population overshoot as well as the compounding problems brought on by political economy calamities. Given the growing trend toward a turn away from institutionalized religious commitment and toward a more generalized and post-modern mix of practices and interests typically styled as 'spiritual,' the work proposes 'political spirituality' as a theme for investigation. Throughout the book, Perkinson raises the question: What does it really meant to be a human being? This query is posed not merely as a philosophical inquiry or existential musing, but as a personal and political conundrum arising from the overwhelming crises now engulfing our global reality. The book constitutes a poetic 'walk about' across quite different historical epochs and disparate contexts. Creatively foraging for indigenous memories and insurgent energies to help us live and cope in our modern state of unsustainability, the work aims to re-animate love of the wild and 'interspecies listening' for the sake of survival. The text articulates a deep suspicion toward our growing fascination with a kind of 'techno-messianism,' while nonetheless exploring some of the artistic innovations and meanings emerging from industrialization and digitalization.
Political Spirituality in the Face of Climate Collapse: Of Monsters, Megaliths, Mules, and Muck
by James W. PerkinsonThis book takes its motive force from our contemporary climate crisis. It seeks to reorient human (and especially Christian) understanding, towards a more ecologically-focused, indigenously-informed way-of-living. James W. Perkinson argues that our current eco-climatic and socio-political emergency is the culmination of a 5,000-year history of supremacist “settlement,” in which city-states first emergent in Mesopotamia and Egypt not only begin coercively organizing labor into surplus production and ecosystems into inordinate and destructive yields of “goods,” but in the process, also simultaneously “deform” the Spirit-World “haloing” of natural phenomenon into outsized service of imperial reach. Perkinson recognizes globalized humanity as an emerging monstrosity destroying both human culture and the world. How we re-envision and revalue, at our critical juncture, our inescapable interdependence with the more-than-human world as peer and teacher and even “elder,” is the central theme that throbs below the surface of the very disparate topics commanding attention in each chapter.
The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez
by Luis D. LeónThe Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders maps and challenges many of the mythologies that surround the late iconic labor leader. Focusing on Chavez's own writings, León argues that La Causa can be fruitfully understood as a quasi-religious movement based on Chavez's charismatic leadership, which he modeled after Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. Chavez recognized that spiritual prophecy, or political spirituality, was the key to disrupting centuries-old dehumanizing narratives that conflated religion with race. Chavez's body became emblematic for Chicano identity and enfleshed a living revolution. While there is much debate and truth-seeking around how he is remembered, through investigating the leader's construction of his own public memory, the author probes the meaning of the discrepancies. By refocusing Chavez's life and beliefs into three broad movements--mythology, prophecy, and religion--León brings us a moral and spiritual agent to match the political leader.
The Political Teachings of Jesus
by Tod LindbergLongtime political analyst and commentator Tod Lindberg goes beyond punditry to address how Jesus's words and teachings—once a radical set of ideas—have come to define our concept of government and our vision for society.
Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History)
by Paul KahnIn this strikingly original work, Paul W. Kahn rethinks the meaning of political theology. In a text innovative in both form and substance, he describes an American political theology as a secular inquiry into ultimate meanings sustaining our faith in the popular sovereign. Kahn works out his view through an engagement with Carl Schmitt's 1922 classic, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. He forces an engagement with Schmitt's four chapters, offering a new version of each that is responsive to the American political imaginary. The result is a contemporary political theology. As in Schmitt's work, sovereignty remains central, yet Kahn shows how popular sovereignty creates an ethos of sacrifice in the modern state. Turning to law, Kahn demonstrates how the line between exception and judicial decision is not as sharp as Schmitt led us to believe. He reminds readers that American political life begins with the revolutionary willingness to sacrifice and that both sacrifice and law continue to ground the American political imagination. Kahn offers a political theology that has at its center the practice of freedom realized in political decisions, legal judgments, and finally in philosophical inquiry itself.
Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty
by Carl SchmittWritten in the intense political and intellectual tumult of the early years of the Weimar Republic, Political Theology develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that made Carl Schmitt one of the most significant and controversial political theorists of the twentieth century. Focusing on the relationships among political leadership, the norms of the legal order, and the state of political emergency, Schmitt argues in Political Theology that legal order ultimately rests upon the decisions of the sovereign. According to Schmitt, only the sovereign can meet the needs of an "exceptional" time and transcend legal order so that order can then be reestablished. Convinced that the state is governed by the ever-present possibility of conflict, Schmitt theorizes that the state exists only to maintain its integrity in order to ensure order and stability. Suggesting that all concepts of modern political thought are secularized theological concepts, Schmitt concludes Political Theology with a critique of liberalism and its attempt to depoliticize political thought by avoiding fundamental political decisions.
Political Theology after Metaphysics (SUNY series in Theology and Continental Thought)
by Derek BrownIn Political Theology after Metaphysics, Derek Brown argues that theologians and religious believers should pursue a revolutionary political theology that can address racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression in practical ways, rather than following the sorts of metaphysical theologies that have dominated theological discourse since at least the scholastic period. Relying primarily on Marxist and deconstructive critiques of the ideological function of metaphysics, the book engages a wide range of classical and contemporary figures, including Karl Marx, Søren Kierkegaard, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Derrida, James Cone, Chantal Mouffe, Cornel West, Martin Hägglund, and Karl Ove Knausgård. These engagements are attentive not only to the ways in which these figures critique or defend metaphysics, but also to the ways in which they perform political theologies responsive to those critiques. While the so-called postmodern critique of metaphysics—which Brown problematizes as insufficiently critical of political ideology—is often read as a challenge to religion, Brown’s readings suggest that the deconstructive and Marxist critiques of metaphysics present an opportunity for the reemergence of a historical and politically engaged form of religion.
Political Theology and Law (Law and Politics)
by Geminello PreterossiThis book addresses two main questions. Can political theology be overcome? And, is what today – in referring to neoliberalism and its genealogy – many define as "economic theology" truly an alternative to political theology, as Foucault has claimed and as Agamben does today? As a first step, the book addresses and clarifies various misunderstandings about the notion of political theology, in its multiple and even opposite meanings. It then focuses on a conceptualisation inaugurated by Carl Schmitt, which sees political theology as the eloquent matrix of modern politics: insofar as the latter produces and continuously re-elaborates an "excess" that does not belong to it, its core remains theological-political, although secularised. The bulk of the book then pursues a reading of the analogic connection between juridico-political concepts and theological-metaphysical concepts; arguing that, although the ‘turn’ to economic theology is indeed another form of political theology, it is a deeply anti-political one, which forecloses modes of resistance. The book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and advanced students in the fields of modern political and legal philosophy and those researching the crisis of its legacy. In particular, it is addressed to those who study the relationship between theology (and its substitutes, such as hegemony and political myth) and politics, power and law, legitimacy and legality, in the perspective of secularization. In addition, the book offers a contribution to contemporary critical studies on the neoliberal state and the return of the "state of exception" in democracies, as well as a questioning of the moralization of law, which is an effect of globalist ideology and the "humanitarian turn" after 1989.
Political Theology and Pluralism: Renewing Public Dialogue
by Joseph RiveraReviving the ancient political wisdom of St. Augustine in combination with insights drawn from contemporary political theorist John Rawls, Joseph Rivera grapples with the polarizing nature of religion in the public square. Political theology, as a discipline, tends to argue that communitarianism remains the only viable political option for religious practitioners in a complex, pluralist society. Unsurprisingly, we are increasingly accustomed to think the religious voice is anti-secular and illiberal. On the contrary, Christian theology and political liberalism, Rivera argues, are not incompatible. Political Theology and Pluralism challenges the longstanding antithesis between theology and political liberalism by asking his readers to focus not on difference, but on our common humanity. Outlining real strategies for public dialogue in a liberal state, Rivera offers the opportunity to discover what it means to practice civic friendship in pluralist context.
Political Theology and the Conflicts of Democracy (New Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought)
by null Nicholas Norman-KrauseNicholas Norman-Krause argues, in this authoritative and sophisticated new treatment of conflict, that contestation is a basic - potentially regenerative - aspect of any flourishing democratic politics. In developing a distinctive 'agonistic theology,' and relating the political theory of agonism to social and democratic life, the author demonstrates that the conflicts of democracy may have a beneficial significance and depend at least in part on faith traditions and communities for their successful negotiation. In making his case, he deftly examines a rich range of religious and secular literatures, whether from the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, and Stanley Cavell or from less familiar voices such as early modern jurist and political thinker Johannes Althusius and twentieth-century Catholic social philosopher Yves Simon. Liberationists including Gustavo Gutiérrez and Martin Luther King, Jr. are similarly recruited for a theological account of conflict read not just as concomitant to, but also as constitutive of, democratic living.
Political Theology in Chinese Society (Transforming Political Theologies)
by Joshua MauldinThis book provides an itinerary for studying political theology in Chinese society, including mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. It explores the changing role of religion in Chinese history, from the rise of Buddhism alongside Confucianism and Daoism, through the arrival of Christianity and Islam, to the suppression of religion under communism. Since the reform and opening period beginning in 1978, China has experienced a resurgence of religiosity, with powerful societal implications. Governing authorities have sought to regulate religious practice in line with their governing system. Political theology in Chinese society is very much in flux and the chapters in this volume provide an array of windows through which to view the evolving reality. They include historical approaches and descriptive analyses, with an interdisciplinary and international range of perspectives by contributors based in and outside China. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of theology, religious studies, and contemporary China studies.
A Political Theology of Climate Change
by Michael S. NorthcottMuch current commentary on climate change, both secular and theological, focuses on the duties of individual citizens to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels. In A Political Theology of Climate Change, however, Michael Northcott discusses nations as key agents in the climate crisis.Against the anti-national trend of contemporary political theology, Northcott renarrates the origins of the nations in the divine ordering of history. In dialogue with Giambattista Vico, Carl Schmitt, Alasdair MacIntyre, and other writers, he argues that nations have legal and moral responsibilities to rule over limited terrains and to guard a just and fair distribution of the fruits of the earth within the ecological limits of those terrains.As part of his study, Northcott brilliantly reveals how the prevalent nature-culture divide in Western culture, including its notion of nature as "private property," has contributed to the global ecological crisis. While addressing real difficulties and global controversies surrounding climate change, Northcott presents substantial and persuasive fare in his Political Theology of Climate Change.
The Political Theology of Pope Francis: Understanding the Latin American Pope (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies)
by Ole Jakob LølandThis book explores the political dimension of Pope Francis’ theology from a variety of perspectives and makes a unique contribution to the ongoing historiography of his pontificate. It defines the concept of political theology when applied to Pope Francis’ discourse and reflects on the portrayal of him as the voice of Latin America, a great reformer and a revolutionary. The chapters offer a thorough investigation of core texts and key moments in Pope Francis’ papacy (2013-), focusing in particular on their relation to canon theory, liberation theology, the rise of populism, and gender issues. As well as documenting some of the continuities between the ideas of Pope Francis and his predecessor Benedict XVI, the author asks what the Argentinian pontiff has brought from Latin America and considers the Latin American dimension to what has become known as the ‘Francis effect’. Overall, the book demonstrates how the Pope’s words and actions constitute a powerful political theology disseminated from a unique religious and institutional position. It will be of interest to scholars of theology, religion and politics, particularly those with a focus on world Catholicism, political theology and church history.
Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)
by Catherine KellerAmid melting glaciers, rising waters, and spreading droughts, Earth has ceased to tolerate our pretense of mastery over it. But how can we confront climate change when political crises keep exploding in the present? Noted ecotheologian and feminist philosopher of religion Catherine Keller reads the feedback loop of political and ecological depredation as secularized apocalypse. Carl Schmitt’s political theology of the sovereign exception sheds light on present ideological warfare; racial, ethnic, economic, and sexual conflict; and hubristic anthropocentrism. If the politics of exceptionalism are theological in origin, she asks, should we not enlist the world’s religious communities as part of the resistance?Keller calls for dissolving the opposition between the religious and the secular in favor of a broad planetary movement for social and ecological justice. When we are confronted by populist, authoritarian right wings founded on white male Christian supremacism, we can counter with a messianically charged, often unspoken theology of the now-moment, calling for a complex new public. Such a political theology of the earth activates the world’s entangled populations, joined in solidarity and committed to revolutionary solutions to the entwined crises of the Anthropocene.
Political Theology on Edge: Ruptures of Justice and Belief in the Anthropocene (Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia)
by Clayton Crockett and Catherine KellerIn Political Theology on Edge, the discourse of political theology is seen as situated on an edge—that is, on the edge of a world that is grappling with global warming, a brutal form of neoliberal capitalism, protests against racism and police brutality, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This edge is also a form of eschatology that forces us to imagine new ways of being religious and political in our cohabitation of a fragile and shared planet. Each of the essays in this volume attends to how climate change and our ecological crises intersect and interact with more traditional themes of political theology.While the tradition of political theology is often associated with philosophical responses to the work of Carl Schmitt—and the critical attempts to disengage religion from his rightwing politics—the contributors to this volume are informed by Schmitt but not limited to his perspectives. They engage and transform political theology from the standpoint of climate change, the politics of race, and non-Christian political theologies including Islam and Sikhism. Important themes include the Anthropocene, ecology, capitalism, sovereignty, Black Lives Matter, affect theory, continental philosophy, destruction, and suicide. This book features world renowned scholars and emerging voices that together open up the tradition of political theology to new ideas and new ways of thinking.Contributors: Gil Anidjar, Balbinder Singh Bhogal, J. Kameron Carter, William E. Connolly, Kelly Brown Douglas, Seth Gaiters, Lisa Gasson-Gardner, Winfred Goodwin, Lawrence Hillis, Mehmet Karabela, Michael Northcott, Austin Roberts, Noëlle Vahanian, Larry L. Welborn
Political Thought in Contemporary Shi‘a Islam: Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din (Middle East Today)
by Farah W. KawtharaniThis book offers an intellectual history of one of the leading Shi’i thinkers and religious leaders of the 20th-century in Lebanon, Shaykh Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din. The author examines his role as the foremost figure of Shi’i intellectual life, a key associate of Musa al-Sadr, and president of the Islamic Shi‘i Supreme Council of Lebanon, having maintained the independence of this institution until his death from the domination of Shi‘i political parties. The core of the book consists of three interrelated main themes that constitute the major threads of Shams al-Din’s intellectual legacy: a discussion of Islamic government involving a critique of Khomeini’s theory of wilāyat al-faqīh, the role of Islam within civil government, and the necessity for political integration of the Shi‘a in their Arab nation-states to protect them from policies that raise doubts over their political allegiance to their respective countries. The project will appeal to scholars, students, academics, and researchers in Middle Eastern politics and history.
Political Trauma and Healing: Biblical Ethics for a Postcolonial World
by Mark G. BrettHow can Scripture address the crucial justice issues of our time? In this book Mark Brett offers a careful reading of biblical texts that speak to such pressing public issues as the legacies of colonialism, the demands of asylum seekers, the challenges of climate change, and the shaping of redemptive economies. Brett argues that the Hebrew Bible can be read as a series of reflections on political trauma and healing — the long saga of successive ancient empires violently asserting their sovereignty over Israel and of the Israelites forced to live out new pathways toward restoration. Brett retrieves the prophetic voice of Scripture and applies it to our contemporary world, addressing current justice issues in a relevant, constructive, compelling manner.
Political Trauma and Healing: Biblical Ethics for a Postcolonial World
by Mark G. BrettHow can Scripture address the crucial justice issues of our time? In this book Mark Brett offers a careful reading of biblical texts that speak to such pressing public issues as the legacies of colonialism, the demands of asylum seekers, the challenges of climate change, and the shaping of redemptive economies. Brett argues that the Hebrew Bible can be read as a series of reflections on political trauma and healing — the long saga of successive ancient empires violently asserting their sovereignty over Israel and of the Israelites forced to live out new pathways toward restoration. Brett retrieves the prophetic voice of Scripture and applies it to our contemporary world, addressing current justice issues in a relevant, constructive, compelling manner.
Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies
by David T. KoyzisWhat you believe about politics matters. The decades since the Cold War, with new alignments of post–9/11 global politics and the chaos of the late 2010s, are swirling with alternative visions of political life, ranging from ethnic nationalism to individualistic liberalism. Political ideologies are not merely a matter of governmental efficacy, but are intrinsically and inescapably religious: each carries certain assumptions about the nature of reality, individuals and society, as well as a particular vision for the common good. These fundamental beliefs transcend the political sphere, and the astute Christian observer can discern the ways—sometimes subtle, sometimes not—in which ideologies are rooted in idolatrous worldviews. In this freshly updated, comprehensive study, political scientist David Koyzis surveys the key political ideologies of our era, including liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, democracy, and socialism. Koyzis gives each philosophy careful analysis and fair critique, unpacking the worldview issues inherent to each and pointing out essential strengths and weaknesses, as well as revealing the "narrative structure" of each—the stories they tell to make sense of public life and the direction of history. Koyzis concludes by proposing alternative models that flow out of Christianity's historic engagement with the public square, retrieving approaches for both individuals and the global, institutional church that hold promise for the complex political realities of the twenty-first century. Writing with broad international perspective and keen analytical insight, Koyzis is a sane and sensible guide for Christians working in the public square, culture watchers, political pundits, and all students of modern political thought.
The Political Writings: "Selected Aphorisms" and Other Texts
by Charles E. Butterworth AlfarabiAlfarabi was among the first to explore the tensions between the philosophy of classical Greece and that of Islam, as well as of religion generally. His writings, extraordinary in their breadth and deep learning, have had a profound impact on Islamic and Jewish philosophy. This volume presents four of Alfarabi's most important texts, making his political thought available to classicists, medievalists, and scholars of religion and Byzantine and Middle Eastern studies. In a clear prose translation by Charles E. Butterworth, these treatises provide a valuable introduction to the teachings of Alfarabi and to the development of Islamic political philosophy. All of these texts are based on new Arabic editions. Two of the texts--Book of Religion and Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the Divine and Aristotle--appear in English for the first time. The translations of the other two works--Selected Aphorisms and chapter five of the Enumeration of the Sciences--differ markedly from those previously known to English-language readers. Butterworth situates each essay in its historical, literary, and philosophical context. His notes help the reader follow Alfarabi's text and identify persons, places, and events. English-Arabic and Arabic-English glossaries of terms further assist the reader.
The Political Writings of St. Augustine
by Saint Augustine Henry PaolucciThe political ideas of St. Augustine, no less than his ideas on sin, grace, and predestination, have long been an object of controversy.
The Political Writings, Volume II: "Political Regime" and "Summary of Plato's Laws"
by Charles E. Butterworth AlfarabiAlfarabi (ca. 870-950) founded the great tradition of Aristotelian/Platonic political philosophy in medieval Islamic and Arabic culture. In this second volume of political writings, Charles E. Butterworth presents translations of Alfarabi's Political Regime and Summary of Plato's "Laws" , accompanied by introductions that discuss the background for each work and explore its teaching. In addition, the texts are carefully annotated to aid the reader in following Alfarabi's argument. An Arabic-English/English-Arabic glossary allows interested readers to verify the way particular words are translated. Throughout, Butterworth's method is to translate consistently the same Arabic word by the same English word, rendering Alfarabi's style in an unusually faithful and yet approachable manner. Political Regime consists of two parts. One focuses on nature and natural existing things as well as the principles beyond nature that guide the existing things. In the second part, the exposition centers on human beings and their place in the larger cosmic whole as well as on how a proper organization of human life in political association provides the conditions whereby human beings might achieve their purpose. Summary of Plato's "Laws" gives an account of the first nine books of Plato's Laws. Alfarabi explains Plato's art of writing in general and the method he follows in writing the Laws in particular. Unlike Alfarabi's other works, which examine the place of legislation and laws in the broader context of political philosophy, the Summary is a more specialized study of the question of laws and how and why they are formulated, with a particular focus on the relevance of Plato's investigation concerning Greek divine laws for the study and understanding of all divine laws.