Biennial Conference of the Reformation Studies Colloquium, University of St Andrews, Scotland, 7-9 September 2010
www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rsc2010/
This conference features a panel on "Political Theology Reformed? The Influence of the Reformation on Early Modern Political Languages in England, Germany and Poland" (Session 2/Panel 15, 8 September, 11.00 am-12.30 pm, location: Divinity Lecture 2) with the following papers: Maciej Ptaszyński (University of Warsaw), "Language of Resistance: Political, Philosophical and Theological Arguments for Disobedience in Sixteenth-Century Poland"; Philip Hahn (Goethe University Frankfurt), "The Political Language of Lutheran Preachers in Saxonia and Thuringia, ca. 1550-1675: Continuity and Adaptation of a Reformation Heritage"; Ulrich Niggemann (University of Marburg), "Divine Right, 'Courtly Reformation' or Contractarianism? Political and Theological Languages in the Funeral Sermons on King William III"; chair: Natalia Nowakowska (Oxford).
No abstracts provided by the organizers.
Further information (full programme, how to register, etc.) is to be found on the above website.
05 September 2010
03 September 2010
Public lecture: From Political Theology to Vernacular Prophecy
University of Virginia, Miller Center of Public Affairs, Forum Room, 2201 Old Ivy Road, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 3 December 2010, 12.30-2.15 pm
Colloquium with George Shulman: "From Political Theology to Vernacular Prophecy: Rethinking Redemption and Politics"
http://millercenter.org/academic/gage/colloquia/detail/5802
No abstract provided by the organizers.
George Shulman is Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University. His interests lie in the fields of political thought and American studies.
The colloquium is free and open to the general public. Lunch will be served starting at 12.30 pm, and the paper presentation and discussion will run from 12.45 pm to 2.15 pm.
The paper will be posted online one week prior to the colloquium.
RSVP required: gage@virginia.edu
Colloquium with George Shulman: "From Political Theology to Vernacular Prophecy: Rethinking Redemption and Politics"
http://millercenter.org/academic/gage/colloquia/detail/5802
No abstract provided by the organizers.
George Shulman is Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University. His interests lie in the fields of political thought and American studies.
The colloquium is free and open to the general public. Lunch will be served starting at 12.30 pm, and the paper presentation and discussion will run from 12.45 pm to 2.15 pm.
The paper will be posted online one week prior to the colloquium.
RSVP required: gage@virginia.edu
02 September 2010
Book: Political Theology and Theology of the Cross (in German)
Just published in German: Christian Johannes Neddens, "Politische Theologie und Theologie des Kreuzes: Werner Elert und Hans Joachim Iwand" (Political Theology and Theology of the Cross: Werner Elert and Hans Joachim Iwand; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, August 2010):
www.v-r.de/de/titel/1001004601/
From the publisher's description: "With Werner Elert and Hans Joachim Iwand two Lutheran theologians are looked at who substantially shaped the theological and political way of the Evangelical Church in Germany from the 30s through the 50s of the last century. Christian Neddens highlights the origins and the development of their theological positions. The focus of his study lies on the respective characteristic and momentous interrelation of the political theology or political ethics of a Christology of the cross that refers back to the theology of Martin Luther." (my translation)
Christian Neddens is a parish priest of the Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche (SELK; Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church; my translation) in Brunsbrock, Germany. This book is based on his 2008 doctoral dissertation in Systematic Theology at the University of Greifswald.
www.v-r.de/de/titel/1001004601/
From the publisher's description: "With Werner Elert and Hans Joachim Iwand two Lutheran theologians are looked at who substantially shaped the theological and political way of the Evangelical Church in Germany from the 30s through the 50s of the last century. Christian Neddens highlights the origins and the development of their theological positions. The focus of his study lies on the respective characteristic and momentous interrelation of the political theology or political ethics of a Christology of the cross that refers back to the theology of Martin Luther." (my translation)
Christian Neddens is a parish priest of the Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche (SELK; Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church; my translation) in Brunsbrock, Germany. This book is based on his 2008 doctoral dissertation in Systematic Theology at the University of Greifswald.
Book: Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion
Just published: Rudolf Siebert's "Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness and the Rescue of the Hopeless" in three unaffordable volumes (Brill, August 2010):
www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=30475
Publisher's description: "The Manifesto develops further the Critical Theory of Religion intrinsic to the Critical Theory of Society of the Frankfurt School into a new paradigm of the Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy and Theology of Religion. Its central theme is the theodicy problem. The Manifesto approaches this theme in the framework of comparative religion and critical political theology in a narrative and discursive fashion. In search of a solution to the theodicy problem, the Manifesto explores, [sic] trends in civil society toward Alternative Future I (the Totally Administered Society), Alternative Future II (the Militarized Society), and Alternative Future III (the Reconciled Society) in the horizon of the longing for the Wholly Other as perfect justice and unconditional love. Toward that goal it relies on both the critical theory of society as developed by Max Horkheimer, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and others, and on the new political theology of Johannes B. Metz, Helmut Peukert, and Edmund Arens."
German-born Rudolf Siebert is Professor of Religion and Society at Western Michigan University.
www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=30475
Publisher's description: "The Manifesto develops further the Critical Theory of Religion intrinsic to the Critical Theory of Society of the Frankfurt School into a new paradigm of the Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy and Theology of Religion. Its central theme is the theodicy problem. The Manifesto approaches this theme in the framework of comparative religion and critical political theology in a narrative and discursive fashion. In search of a solution to the theodicy problem, the Manifesto explores, [sic] trends in civil society toward Alternative Future I (the Totally Administered Society), Alternative Future II (the Militarized Society), and Alternative Future III (the Reconciled Society) in the horizon of the longing for the Wholly Other as perfect justice and unconditional love. Toward that goal it relies on both the critical theory of society as developed by Max Horkheimer, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and others, and on the new political theology of Johannes B. Metz, Helmut Peukert, and Edmund Arens."
German-born Rudolf Siebert is Professor of Religion and Society at Western Michigan University.
Book: Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt
Just published: Michael Marder, "Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt" (Continuum, July 2010):
www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=133275
Publisher's description: "Groundless Existence discusses the implicit phenomenological and existential foundations of Schmitt's political philosophy. The book's unique contribution lies in its claim that Schmitt decisively breaks with the metaphysical tradition and predicates the political on the 'groundless' categories of existence, including risk, decision, and agonism. This argument is substantiated by both tacit and explicit existentialist and phenomenological underpinnings of Schmitt's work, discussed here for the first time in book form. The book provides an insight into the implications of Schmitt's thought reconceptualized in the light of contemporary political developments. An essential text for anyone interested in the political theory of Carl Schmitt, it offers a new reading of Schmitt's work against the double background of phenomenology and existentialism."
The book contains a section on "Political Theology as a Hermeneutic Endeavor".
Endorsement: "No one has written more lucidly or insightfully on Schmitt's philosophical standing and on the fundamental problems of the political. Groundless Existence is the new gold standard in Schmitt scholarship and an indispensable point of reference in political philosophy." (Russell Berman, Stanford)
Michael Marder is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne University, USA, and a Research Fellow in the Centre of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=133275
Publisher's description: "Groundless Existence discusses the implicit phenomenological and existential foundations of Schmitt's political philosophy. The book's unique contribution lies in its claim that Schmitt decisively breaks with the metaphysical tradition and predicates the political on the 'groundless' categories of existence, including risk, decision, and agonism. This argument is substantiated by both tacit and explicit existentialist and phenomenological underpinnings of Schmitt's work, discussed here for the first time in book form. The book provides an insight into the implications of Schmitt's thought reconceptualized in the light of contemporary political developments. An essential text for anyone interested in the political theory of Carl Schmitt, it offers a new reading of Schmitt's work against the double background of phenomenology and existentialism."
The book contains a section on "Political Theology as a Hermeneutic Endeavor".
Endorsement: "No one has written more lucidly or insightfully on Schmitt's philosophical standing and on the fundamental problems of the political. Groundless Existence is the new gold standard in Schmitt scholarship and an indispensable point of reference in political philosophy." (Russell Berman, Stanford)
Michael Marder is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne University, USA, and a Research Fellow in the Centre of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
01 September 2010
Book: Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity
Just published: "Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity: 200 Years and No Apology", edited by Anthony G. Reddie (Ashgate, August 2010):
www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9106&edition_id=11894
Publisher's description: "Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity explores the legacy of slavery in Black theological terms. Challenging the dominant approaches to the history and legacy of slavery in the British Empire, the contributors show that although the 1807 act abolished the slave trade, it did not end racism, notions of White supremacy, or the demonization of Blackness, Black people and Africa. This interdisciplinary study draws on biblical studies, history, missiology and Black theological reflection, exploring the strengths and limitations of faith as the framework for abolitionist rhetoric and action. This Black theological approach to the phenomenon of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery draws on contributions from Africa, the Caribbean, North America and Europe."
Endorsements: "An important interpretation of black liberation theology." (James H. Cone, Union Theological Seminary)
"This is the first intellectually formidable book on the Atlantic slave phenomenon from the perspective of Black Theology. The interdisciplinary scholarship and the cast of scholars and practitioner contributors to this text are unprecedented." (Dwight N. Hopkins, University of Chicago)
"Not always easy or comfortable, the essays force the reader to confront vital moral and theological problems, not merely of the historical past, but of the contemporary world. They tease out the anomalies (of Christianity's role both in supporting, and then in ending slavery) and the challenges faced by Christians when studying the painful story of enslavement in the Atlantic world." (Jim Walvin, University of York)
Anthony G. Reddie is a Research Fellow at the Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham.
www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9106&edition_id=11894
Publisher's description: "Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity explores the legacy of slavery in Black theological terms. Challenging the dominant approaches to the history and legacy of slavery in the British Empire, the contributors show that although the 1807 act abolished the slave trade, it did not end racism, notions of White supremacy, or the demonization of Blackness, Black people and Africa. This interdisciplinary study draws on biblical studies, history, missiology and Black theological reflection, exploring the strengths and limitations of faith as the framework for abolitionist rhetoric and action. This Black theological approach to the phenomenon of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery draws on contributions from Africa, the Caribbean, North America and Europe."
Endorsements: "An important interpretation of black liberation theology." (James H. Cone, Union Theological Seminary)
"This is the first intellectually formidable book on the Atlantic slave phenomenon from the perspective of Black Theology. The interdisciplinary scholarship and the cast of scholars and practitioner contributors to this text are unprecedented." (Dwight N. Hopkins, University of Chicago)
"Not always easy or comfortable, the essays force the reader to confront vital moral and theological problems, not merely of the historical past, but of the contemporary world. They tease out the anomalies (of Christianity's role both in supporting, and then in ending slavery) and the challenges faced by Christians when studying the painful story of enslavement in the Atlantic world." (Jim Walvin, University of York)
Anthony G. Reddie is a Research Fellow at the Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham.
Book: Changing the Script: An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21st Century
Just published: Daniel Schultz, "Changing the Script: An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21st Century" (Ig Publishing, August 2010):
www.igpub.com/changingthescript.html
Publisher's description: "In recent years, and in particular since the election of Barack Obama, the religious conversation in America has been dominated by calls for progressives to move beyond 'partisanship' by reaching out to evangelicals in order to create a 'big tent' on social issues such as abortion and marriage equality, despite the lack of evidence that such a strategy can or ever did work. This misguided notion that we can build a shared political and religious center has for the most part shut out true progressive voices, allowing a small conservative minority to control the political and religious debate in this country, with only the most tepid of moral criticism from the religious centrists who claim to desire bipartisan consensus.
"In Changing the Script, Daniel Schultz, one of the leading progressive religious voices in America today, builds upon the insights of Old Testament scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann to identify five 'scripts' that exercise unseen power in our society: the therapeutic, technological, consumerist, militarist, and conformist. Confronting each of these scripts and the actions of both the Right and the Left that have allowed them to take root in our culture, Schultz voices a perspective that shows what an authentically progressive and authentically faithful religious ideal would truly look like."
Daniel Schultz is a pastor in the United Church of Christ and PhD student in Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago.
www.igpub.com/changingthescript.html
Publisher's description: "In recent years, and in particular since the election of Barack Obama, the religious conversation in America has been dominated by calls for progressives to move beyond 'partisanship' by reaching out to evangelicals in order to create a 'big tent' on social issues such as abortion and marriage equality, despite the lack of evidence that such a strategy can or ever did work. This misguided notion that we can build a shared political and religious center has for the most part shut out true progressive voices, allowing a small conservative minority to control the political and religious debate in this country, with only the most tepid of moral criticism from the religious centrists who claim to desire bipartisan consensus.
"In Changing the Script, Daniel Schultz, one of the leading progressive religious voices in America today, builds upon the insights of Old Testament scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann to identify five 'scripts' that exercise unseen power in our society: the therapeutic, technological, consumerist, militarist, and conformist. Confronting each of these scripts and the actions of both the Right and the Left that have allowed them to take root in our culture, Schultz voices a perspective that shows what an authentically progressive and authentically faithful religious ideal would truly look like."
Daniel Schultz is a pastor in the United Church of Christ and PhD student in Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago.
21 August 2010
Book: Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History
Just published: C.C. Pecknold, "Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History" (Cascade Books, August 2010):
http://wipfandstock.com/store/Christianity_and_Politics_A_Brief_Guide_to_the_History
Publisher's description: "It is not simply for rhetorical flourish that politicians so regularly invoke God's blessings on the country. It is because the relatively new form of power we call the nation-state arose out of a Western political imagination steeped in Christianity. In this brief guide to the history of Christianity and politics, Pecknold shows how early Christianity reshaped the Western political imagination with its new theological claims about eschatological time, participation, and communion with God and neighbor. The ancient view of the Church as the 'mystical body of Christ' is singled out in particular as the author traces shifts in its use and meaning throughout the early, medieval, and modern periods – shifts in how we understand the nature of the person, community and the moral conscience that would give birth to a new relationship between Christianity and politics. While we have many accounts of this narrative from either political or ecclesiastical history, we have few that avoid the artificial separation of the two. This book fills that gap and presents a readable, concise, and thought-provoking introduction to what is at stake in the contentious relationship between Christianity and politics."
Endorsements: "Political theology – thinking theologically about politics and understanding all political thought as first-and-last theological – is a lively field that until now has lacked a lucid and elegantly brief introduction. Pecknold's book fills that gap, and more: it makes a real theoretical contribution of its own, most notably in its treatment of the migration of the treatment of conscience from church to state, and the effects of that migration on the understanding of freedom, political and otherwise." (Paul J. Griffiths, Duke University)
"Modern life and thought has a centripetal force, separating into discrete units what should be held together: politics, economics, theology, metaphysics, liturgy, and history. This division of labor creates specialists who can see the units but lack focus for a larger vision [...]. This comprehensive work shows connections that only someone of [Pecknold's] breadth of knowledge could see. The result is a first-rate work that sets the bar for political theology." (D. Stephen Long, Marquette University)
Chad C. Pecknold is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the Catholic University of America.
http://wipfandstock.com/store/Christianity_and_Politics_A_Brief_Guide_to_the_History
Publisher's description: "It is not simply for rhetorical flourish that politicians so regularly invoke God's blessings on the country. It is because the relatively new form of power we call the nation-state arose out of a Western political imagination steeped in Christianity. In this brief guide to the history of Christianity and politics, Pecknold shows how early Christianity reshaped the Western political imagination with its new theological claims about eschatological time, participation, and communion with God and neighbor. The ancient view of the Church as the 'mystical body of Christ' is singled out in particular as the author traces shifts in its use and meaning throughout the early, medieval, and modern periods – shifts in how we understand the nature of the person, community and the moral conscience that would give birth to a new relationship between Christianity and politics. While we have many accounts of this narrative from either political or ecclesiastical history, we have few that avoid the artificial separation of the two. This book fills that gap and presents a readable, concise, and thought-provoking introduction to what is at stake in the contentious relationship between Christianity and politics."
Endorsements: "Political theology – thinking theologically about politics and understanding all political thought as first-and-last theological – is a lively field that until now has lacked a lucid and elegantly brief introduction. Pecknold's book fills that gap, and more: it makes a real theoretical contribution of its own, most notably in its treatment of the migration of the treatment of conscience from church to state, and the effects of that migration on the understanding of freedom, political and otherwise." (Paul J. Griffiths, Duke University)
"Modern life and thought has a centripetal force, separating into discrete units what should be held together: politics, economics, theology, metaphysics, liturgy, and history. This division of labor creates specialists who can see the units but lack focus for a larger vision [...]. This comprehensive work shows connections that only someone of [Pecknold's] breadth of knowledge could see. The result is a first-rate work that sets the bar for political theology." (D. Stephen Long, Marquette University)
Chad C. Pecknold is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the Catholic University of America.
20 August 2010
Report on the Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010: Political theology goes East and South
The first event held by the Geneva-based Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) in conjunction with its "Political Theology Agenda" blog, the Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010, was a full success.
It took place on 18 and 19 August 2010 at the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Château de Bossey, near Geneva, Switzerland. Bossey doubles as an institute of the University of Geneva since all degrees awarded there (Masters and PhD degrees in Ecumenical Studies) are granted by the University of Geneva.
Keynote speakers were Professor Aliakbar Alikhani, Head of the Institute for Social and Cultural Studies at the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Tehran, Iran, and Professor Galip Veliu from the Department of Philosophy at the State University of Tetovo in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010 attracted seventeen papers submitted by participants from institutions such as University College London, the University of Birmingham (both UK), the University of Helsinki (Finland), the University of Quebec at Montreal (Canada), the University of Tehran (Iran), the University of the Punjab (Pakistan), the University of South Africa, the University of Zimbabwe, the National University of Malaysia, Universitas Nasional at Jakarta (Indonesia), and San Beda College in Manila (the Philippines). Other countries represented include Macedonia, Romania, Lithuania, Switzerland, and Nigeria.
Speakers – from doctoral candidates to full professors – came from the disciplines of Political Science, Philosophy, Political Theory, Theology, Church History, and Islamic Studies, giving theoretical as well as empirical presentations on subjects including secularization and religious pluralism, political theology, black theology, liberation theology, and radical Islam.
After Pisa, Italy, in 2007 and Paris, France, in 2008, this was the third symposium on political theology organized by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society and, once more, it opened up new frontiers for political theology. It was by far the most international event we ever organized (and quite possibly the most international event on political theology to take place anywhere as yet) with five participants from Iran alone and scores of submissions (not all accepted) from the Middle East and East Asia as well as Africa. Taken together with a high number of submissions from (South-)Eastern Europe, there is a significant trend to be observed: after gaining momentum in the Anglophone countries over the past few years, the study of political theology now goes East and South, spreading to Asia and Africa.
The Political Theology Agenda blog and the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society will continue to be at the forefront of these developments.
(On the downside, all prospective American and Israeli participants withdrew, one by one, from the symposium once they knew that there would be Iranians present. Way to encourage dialogue.)
It took place on 18 and 19 August 2010 at the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Château de Bossey, near Geneva, Switzerland. Bossey doubles as an institute of the University of Geneva since all degrees awarded there (Masters and PhD degrees in Ecumenical Studies) are granted by the University of Geneva.
Keynote speakers were Professor Aliakbar Alikhani, Head of the Institute for Social and Cultural Studies at the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Tehran, Iran, and Professor Galip Veliu from the Department of Philosophy at the State University of Tetovo in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010 attracted seventeen papers submitted by participants from institutions such as University College London, the University of Birmingham (both UK), the University of Helsinki (Finland), the University of Quebec at Montreal (Canada), the University of Tehran (Iran), the University of the Punjab (Pakistan), the University of South Africa, the University of Zimbabwe, the National University of Malaysia, Universitas Nasional at Jakarta (Indonesia), and San Beda College in Manila (the Philippines). Other countries represented include Macedonia, Romania, Lithuania, Switzerland, and Nigeria.
Speakers – from doctoral candidates to full professors – came from the disciplines of Political Science, Philosophy, Political Theory, Theology, Church History, and Islamic Studies, giving theoretical as well as empirical presentations on subjects including secularization and religious pluralism, political theology, black theology, liberation theology, and radical Islam.
After Pisa, Italy, in 2007 and Paris, France, in 2008, this was the third symposium on political theology organized by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society and, once more, it opened up new frontiers for political theology. It was by far the most international event we ever organized (and quite possibly the most international event on political theology to take place anywhere as yet) with five participants from Iran alone and scores of submissions (not all accepted) from the Middle East and East Asia as well as Africa. Taken together with a high number of submissions from (South-)Eastern Europe, there is a significant trend to be observed: after gaining momentum in the Anglophone countries over the past few years, the study of political theology now goes East and South, spreading to Asia and Africa.
The Political Theology Agenda blog and the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society will continue to be at the forefront of these developments.
(On the downside, all prospective American and Israeli participants withdrew, one by one, from the symposium once they knew that there would be Iranians present. Way to encourage dialogue.)
17 July 2010
CFP: Libertinism and Baroque Performativity in the 17th Century
International one-day symposium "Libertinism and Baroque Performativity in the 17th Century", organized by the IDeA research group at RITS school for audiovisual and performing arts of Erasmushogeschool Brussel (EHB) in collaboration with Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUI) and the HAR research group at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense, at EHB, Brussels, Belgium,
16 November 2010
Papers on "the political-theological body" in baroque performativity are explicitly invited.
Description: "In Sodom or the Quintessence of Debauchery, a Restoration closet drama attributed to John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) and posthumously published in 1684, Bolloxian, King of Sodom, prescribes sodomy as the sole acceptable sexual practice. This simple and straightforward pornographic joke serves as the starting point of a burlesque and satirical parable in which Rochester reveals the libidinous nature state reigning at the court of Charles II, while at the same time radically and unequivocally appealing to the reader's imagination. Sodom is only one of many early modern examples in which intellectual criticism and free-thinking go hand in hand with an erotic and sometimes pornographically grotesque universe in which, through its baroque extravaganza, the distinction between the real and the fictional, between the private and the public disintegrates.
"This symposium focuses on the 17th-century libertine (sub)culture that seeks to combine the critique of everything public and political with a visual regime that lavishly indulges in the sensuous experience of baroque theatricality. Libertinism is both a means of intellectual
(self-)criticism and an utterly performative practice, it is both political reflexion and wilful transgression. It is a locus of self-fashioning, on a sexual level (experimentation with possible sexual roles and identities) and on a political level (as Jeremy Webster explains in Performing Libertinism, the debate itself is an integral part of the available political discourse), as much as it is playful make-believe, joyfully investigating the limits of representation itself. Within this complex bias of seemingly conflicting interests the physical body takes up a central role.
"Exactly this libertine body will be at the heart of this symposium, which takes a double goal as its starting point. It will address and question the culture of libertinism in terms of baroque performativity in which notions such as immersion and transgression are key-points of investigation. In other words: how does libertine discourse produce the effects it names (and shows)? And, secondly, this symposium seeks to investigate the role and the place of the baroque body in all its performative aspects (the burlesque body, the political-theological body, the satirical body, the pornographic body). We welcome any contributions addressing one or both of these questions through the presentation of concrete case studies that might be related to early modern libertine life in Europe, particularly in France and England." (bold removed)
Keynote speakers: Jeremy W. Webster (Ohio University) and Christian Biet (Paris West University Nanterre La Défense)
Please send your abstract (250 words) and a short biographical notice to Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Erasmushogeschool Brussel): karel.vanhaesebrouck@ehb.be
Deadline: 1 September 2010
The definitive programme will be published on 20 September.
The symposium will be preceded by a graduate seminar for MA- and PhD-students on 15 November 2010.
16 November 2010
Papers on "the political-theological body" in baroque performativity are explicitly invited.
Description: "In Sodom or the Quintessence of Debauchery, a Restoration closet drama attributed to John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) and posthumously published in 1684, Bolloxian, King of Sodom, prescribes sodomy as the sole acceptable sexual practice. This simple and straightforward pornographic joke serves as the starting point of a burlesque and satirical parable in which Rochester reveals the libidinous nature state reigning at the court of Charles II, while at the same time radically and unequivocally appealing to the reader's imagination. Sodom is only one of many early modern examples in which intellectual criticism and free-thinking go hand in hand with an erotic and sometimes pornographically grotesque universe in which, through its baroque extravaganza, the distinction between the real and the fictional, between the private and the public disintegrates.
"This symposium focuses on the 17th-century libertine (sub)culture that seeks to combine the critique of everything public and political with a visual regime that lavishly indulges in the sensuous experience of baroque theatricality. Libertinism is both a means of intellectual
(self-)criticism and an utterly performative practice, it is both political reflexion and wilful transgression. It is a locus of self-fashioning, on a sexual level (experimentation with possible sexual roles and identities) and on a political level (as Jeremy Webster explains in Performing Libertinism, the debate itself is an integral part of the available political discourse), as much as it is playful make-believe, joyfully investigating the limits of representation itself. Within this complex bias of seemingly conflicting interests the physical body takes up a central role.
"Exactly this libertine body will be at the heart of this symposium, which takes a double goal as its starting point. It will address and question the culture of libertinism in terms of baroque performativity in which notions such as immersion and transgression are key-points of investigation. In other words: how does libertine discourse produce the effects it names (and shows)? And, secondly, this symposium seeks to investigate the role and the place of the baroque body in all its performative aspects (the burlesque body, the political-theological body, the satirical body, the pornographic body). We welcome any contributions addressing one or both of these questions through the presentation of concrete case studies that might be related to early modern libertine life in Europe, particularly in France and England." (bold removed)
Keynote speakers: Jeremy W. Webster (Ohio University) and Christian Biet (Paris West University Nanterre La Défense)
Please send your abstract (250 words) and a short biographical notice to Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Erasmushogeschool Brussel): karel.vanhaesebrouck@ehb.be
Deadline: 1 September 2010
The definitive programme will be published on 20 September.
The symposium will be preceded by a graduate seminar for MA- and PhD-students on 15 November 2010.
12 July 2010
Public lecture and panel discussion/web cast: The Impact and Future of Black Theology
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful, 2121 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois, USA, 15 September 2010, 11.00 am (public lecture) and 3.00-5.00 pm (panel discussion)
James H. Cone (Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York), one of the world's most prominent black liberation theologians, will deliver the convocation address at Garrett-Evangelical's annual convocation: "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen: The Cross and the Lynching Tree in the Black Experience"
www.garrett.edu/index.php/academic-convocation-2010
After lunch, three other theologians will join Cone in a panel discussion on "The Impact and Future of Black Theology": Andrea C. White (Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture, Emory University), Rothney S. Tshaka (Professor of Systematic Theology, University of South Africa), and William Ackah (Lecturer in Community and Voluntary Sector Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London).
Both events are open to the public.
They can also be seen via live web cast at:
www.garrett.edu/convocation
Internet viewers will need to download and install Apple's free QuickTime Player. Viewers may tune in 15 minutes before both events.
James H. Cone (Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York), one of the world's most prominent black liberation theologians, will deliver the convocation address at Garrett-Evangelical's annual convocation: "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen: The Cross and the Lynching Tree in the Black Experience"
www.garrett.edu/index.php/academic-convocation-2010
After lunch, three other theologians will join Cone in a panel discussion on "The Impact and Future of Black Theology": Andrea C. White (Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture, Emory University), Rothney S. Tshaka (Professor of Systematic Theology, University of South Africa), and William Ackah (Lecturer in Community and Voluntary Sector Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London).
Both events are open to the public.
They can also be seen via live web cast at:
www.garrett.edu/convocation
Internet viewers will need to download and install Apple's free QuickTime Player. Viewers may tune in 15 minutes before both events.
07 July 2010
CONF: "Politics and Religion" in the Early Church
Sixth International Triennial Conference "Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church: Politics and Religion" of the Centre for Early Christian Studies of the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and the Asia-Pacific Early Christian Studies Society, ACU Melbourne campus, 7-10 July 2010
http://prayerspirit.com.au/
This conference features a panel on "Political Theology" (Session 3 C, 9 July, 11.00 am-12.45 pm) with the following papers:
Satoshi Toda (Hitotsubashi University), "'Political Theology' of Eusebius of Caesarea: A Reappraisal"
Abstract: "It seems that the so-called 'political theology' of Eusebius, a subject of much dispute, has greatly contributed to distort the image of this bishop-scholar. I discussed the matter in some detail at the annual APECSS conference held in Sendai last September, but in view of the ever-increasing scholarly literature on the subject (especially works related to the period of Constantine the Great), more discussion seems necessary. Briefly summarising the discussion made in my previous paper, I will try to show that Eusebius has nothing to do with the so-called 'political theology', and how we should understand Eusebius' position in the church history of the time. Furthermore I will discuss some materials which were not properly covered in my previous paper."
Shigeki Tsuchihashi (Chuo University), "The Trinity and Political Metaphor in Gregory Nazianzen's Theological Oration 29.2"
Abstract: "His Theological Oration 29.2 [sic], Gregory Nazianzen classifies opinions about the deity into three groups, using political metaphor: atheism-anarchy, polytheism-polyarchy, monotheism-monarchy. What he values among them is monarchy, not defined as the sovereignty of a single person but the single rule produced by equality of nature. In that case, however, how could we understand the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity without self-discordance (stasis). In this paper I will pursue that problem focusing attention on Gregory's emphasis upon the economy of salvation (oikonomia)."
Naoki Kamimura (Tokyo Gakugei University), "The exercitatio animi of Augustine in the City of God"
Abstract: "In his most comprehensive work, the City of God (413-427), Augustine expounds the destined beginning, progress, and end of the 'two cities' into which all humanity is divided: one is the earthly and the other the heavenly. In the first part of the work, he attempts to refute the 'false teaching' of pagan religious practices and ideas, and enters into a discussion of the philosophers proclaiming the usefulness of the cult of the gods (Books 8-10). It seems noteworthy that not only does he admire the 'entire effort of philosophy' made first by Socrates as the 'correction and regulation of morals' (City of God 8.3) but also emphasises the spiritual exercises (exercitatio animi) as overcoming the limits of Platonists' philosophical reflections. In this paper, I shall consider these seemingly similar types of training and discipline, thereby examining the significance of his critical assessment of pagan thought from the viewpoint of the division of all humanity in the City of God."
Further information (full programme, how to register, etc.) is to be found on the above website.
http://prayerspirit.com.au/
This conference features a panel on "Political Theology" (Session 3 C, 9 July, 11.00 am-12.45 pm) with the following papers:
Satoshi Toda (Hitotsubashi University), "'Political Theology' of Eusebius of Caesarea: A Reappraisal"
Abstract: "It seems that the so-called 'political theology' of Eusebius, a subject of much dispute, has greatly contributed to distort the image of this bishop-scholar. I discussed the matter in some detail at the annual APECSS conference held in Sendai last September, but in view of the ever-increasing scholarly literature on the subject (especially works related to the period of Constantine the Great), more discussion seems necessary. Briefly summarising the discussion made in my previous paper, I will try to show that Eusebius has nothing to do with the so-called 'political theology', and how we should understand Eusebius' position in the church history of the time. Furthermore I will discuss some materials which were not properly covered in my previous paper."
Shigeki Tsuchihashi (Chuo University), "The Trinity and Political Metaphor in Gregory Nazianzen's Theological Oration 29.2"
Abstract: "His Theological Oration 29.2 [sic], Gregory Nazianzen classifies opinions about the deity into three groups, using political metaphor: atheism-anarchy, polytheism-polyarchy, monotheism-monarchy. What he values among them is monarchy, not defined as the sovereignty of a single person but the single rule produced by equality of nature. In that case, however, how could we understand the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity without self-discordance (stasis). In this paper I will pursue that problem focusing attention on Gregory's emphasis upon the economy of salvation (oikonomia)."
Naoki Kamimura (Tokyo Gakugei University), "The exercitatio animi of Augustine in the City of God"
Abstract: "In his most comprehensive work, the City of God (413-427), Augustine expounds the destined beginning, progress, and end of the 'two cities' into which all humanity is divided: one is the earthly and the other the heavenly. In the first part of the work, he attempts to refute the 'false teaching' of pagan religious practices and ideas, and enters into a discussion of the philosophers proclaiming the usefulness of the cult of the gods (Books 8-10). It seems noteworthy that not only does he admire the 'entire effort of philosophy' made first by Socrates as the 'correction and regulation of morals' (City of God 8.3) but also emphasises the spiritual exercises (exercitatio animi) as overcoming the limits of Platonists' philosophical reflections. In this paper, I shall consider these seemingly similar types of training and discipline, thereby examining the significance of his critical assessment of pagan thought from the viewpoint of the division of all humanity in the City of God."
Further information (full programme, how to register, etc.) is to be found on the above website.
Book: The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation
Just published: "The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation", edited by Chris K. Huebner and Tripp York, with a foreword by John Milbank (CMU Press, July 2010):
www.cmu.ca/news/july5giftofdiff.html
Publisher's description (in a press release): "The Gift of Difference is a collection of essays in which theologians such as Craig Hovey, Harry J. Huebner, and D. Stephen Long consider the strengths and weaknesses of Radical Orthodoxy in dialogue with the Radical Reformation tradition. Writers in this volume engage topics such as ecclesiology, martyrdom, worship, oath-taking, peace and violence. In recent years, Radical Orthodoxy has become an important and influential movement in contemporary theology and philosophy. [...] Radical Orthodoxy enlists the resources of classical theology to engage the current strongholds of secular and religious thought. Proponents of Radical Orthodoxy argue that the Enlightenment project to remove reason, ethics, politics and economics from a theological framework culminates in the nihilism of postmodern discourse. They suggest that much contemporary theology is idolatrous in nature because it takes the isolation of such disciplines for granted.
"In the Foreword, John Milbank writes that '[modern Mennonites] see the Church itself as the true polity and (unlike most of the magisterial Reformation) they see the possibility of "living beyond the law" in terms of a new sort of social and political practice.' What might this concrete expression of Christian discipleship have to suggest to a movement like Radical Orthodoxy? What gifts does Radical Orthodoxy offer academics, ministers and laypeople from Radical Reformation tradition? 'This book explores both common and divergent themes between Anabaptist/Mennonite theologians and their counterparts in the Radical Orthodoxy movement,' says co-editor Chris K. Huebner. 'For example, while they jointly reject as false the dualisms characteristic of modernity, the manner in which questions of peace and justice get framed remains an ongoing debate.'"
Endorsements: "What hath the Radical Reformation to do with Anglo-Catholics – especially Anglicans who have a lingering penchant for Christendom? The answer from this book: a lot more than you might expect! Huebner and York have staged a mutually critical interaction between Radical Orthodoxy and Mennonite theology, illuminating both as a result." (James K.A. Smith, Calvin College)
"This book is a breath of fresh air. Retrieving central themes of classical theology, it is both faithful to tradition and innovative, offering a third way between liberalism and conservatism, one which sees theology as critical for public life without privatizing Christianity, on the one hand, or slipping into Constantinianism, on the other." (A. James Reimer, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo)
Chris K. Huebner is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Canadian Mennonite University (CMU).
Tripp York is an Adjunct Instructor of Religious Studies at Western Kentucky University.
www.cmu.ca/news/july5giftofdiff.html
Publisher's description (in a press release): "The Gift of Difference is a collection of essays in which theologians such as Craig Hovey, Harry J. Huebner, and D. Stephen Long consider the strengths and weaknesses of Radical Orthodoxy in dialogue with the Radical Reformation tradition. Writers in this volume engage topics such as ecclesiology, martyrdom, worship, oath-taking, peace and violence. In recent years, Radical Orthodoxy has become an important and influential movement in contemporary theology and philosophy. [...] Radical Orthodoxy enlists the resources of classical theology to engage the current strongholds of secular and religious thought. Proponents of Radical Orthodoxy argue that the Enlightenment project to remove reason, ethics, politics and economics from a theological framework culminates in the nihilism of postmodern discourse. They suggest that much contemporary theology is idolatrous in nature because it takes the isolation of such disciplines for granted.
"In the Foreword, John Milbank writes that '[modern Mennonites] see the Church itself as the true polity and (unlike most of the magisterial Reformation) they see the possibility of "living beyond the law" in terms of a new sort of social and political practice.' What might this concrete expression of Christian discipleship have to suggest to a movement like Radical Orthodoxy? What gifts does Radical Orthodoxy offer academics, ministers and laypeople from Radical Reformation tradition? 'This book explores both common and divergent themes between Anabaptist/Mennonite theologians and their counterparts in the Radical Orthodoxy movement,' says co-editor Chris K. Huebner. 'For example, while they jointly reject as false the dualisms characteristic of modernity, the manner in which questions of peace and justice get framed remains an ongoing debate.'"
Endorsements: "What hath the Radical Reformation to do with Anglo-Catholics – especially Anglicans who have a lingering penchant for Christendom? The answer from this book: a lot more than you might expect! Huebner and York have staged a mutually critical interaction between Radical Orthodoxy and Mennonite theology, illuminating both as a result." (James K.A. Smith, Calvin College)
"This book is a breath of fresh air. Retrieving central themes of classical theology, it is both faithful to tradition and innovative, offering a third way between liberalism and conservatism, one which sees theology as critical for public life without privatizing Christianity, on the one hand, or slipping into Constantinianism, on the other." (A. James Reimer, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo)
Chris K. Huebner is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Canadian Mennonite University (CMU).
Tripp York is an Adjunct Instructor of Religious Studies at Western Kentucky University.
02 July 2010
Book: Theology and the Boundary Discourse of Human Rights
Ethna Regan, "Theology and the Boundary Discourse of Human Rights" (Georgetown University Press, April 2010):
http://press.georgetown.edu/detail.html?id=9781589016422
Publisher's description: "What are human rights? Can theology acknowledge human rights discourse? Is theological engagement with human rights justified? What place should this discourse occupy within ethics? Ethna Regan seeks to answer these questions about human rights, Christian theology, and philosophical ethics. The main purpose of this book is to justify and explore theological engagement with human rights. Regan illustrates how that engagement is both ecumenical and diverse, citing the emerging engagement with human rights discourse by evangelical theologians in response to the War on Terror. The book examines where the themes and concerns of key modern theologians – Karl Rahner, J. B. Metz, Jon Sobrino, and Ignacio Ellacuría – converge with the themes and concerns of those committed to the advancement of human rights. Regan also critically engages with the 'disdain' for rights discourse that is found in the postliberal critiques of John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas. This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of systematic theology, theological ethics, human rights, religion and politics, and political theory."
The book includes sections on both political theology and liberation theology.
Ethna Regan is a Lecturer in the School of Theology at the Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin City University.
http://press.georgetown.edu/detail.html?id=9781589016422
Publisher's description: "What are human rights? Can theology acknowledge human rights discourse? Is theological engagement with human rights justified? What place should this discourse occupy within ethics? Ethna Regan seeks to answer these questions about human rights, Christian theology, and philosophical ethics. The main purpose of this book is to justify and explore theological engagement with human rights. Regan illustrates how that engagement is both ecumenical and diverse, citing the emerging engagement with human rights discourse by evangelical theologians in response to the War on Terror. The book examines where the themes and concerns of key modern theologians – Karl Rahner, J. B. Metz, Jon Sobrino, and Ignacio Ellacuría – converge with the themes and concerns of those committed to the advancement of human rights. Regan also critically engages with the 'disdain' for rights discourse that is found in the postliberal critiques of John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas. This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of systematic theology, theological ethics, human rights, religion and politics, and political theory."
The book includes sections on both political theology and liberation theology.
Ethna Regan is a Lecturer in the School of Theology at the Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin City University.
24 June 2010
Book: Christians as Political Animals: Taking the Measure of Modernity and Modern Democracy
Just published: Marc D. Guerra, "Christians as Political Animals: Taking the Measure of Modernity and Modern Democracy" (ISI Books, June 2010):
www.isi.org/books/bookdetail.aspx?id=db0c0099-2584-4473-bd25-29da15c82fd8
Publisher's description: "While it is common for today's secularists to push organized religion to the margins of politics, it is equally common for Christians to believe that modern democracy is the only type of regime compatible with their faith. But in fact, this belief cannot be squared with the long and rich tradition of Christian political thought, as Marc D. Guerra makes clear in Christians as Political Animals. Guerra shows that a problematic shift occurred when Christian thinkers began to argue that their religion received its best political articulation in democracy. Calling on thinkers ranging from Augustine and Aquinas to twentieth-century theologians and political philosophers, Guerra argues that while modern democracy and its various attendant goods should be affirmed, Christian thought must recognize the limited scope of the political realm and maintain the proper critical distance. Christians as Political Animals reminds modern democracy of a truth it is prone to forget: civil society relies on extrapolitical goods such as love, friendship, morality, and faith for its health and survival." (bold removed)
Endorsement: "This lucid and wonderfully thoughtful book challenges two regnant orthodoxies of the day: that democracy is the political correlate of Christianity and that Christianity is reducible to a humanitarian moral message. Christians as Political Animals is a most welcome guide for confronting the theological-political problem in a democratic age." (Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College)
Marc D. Guerra is Assistant Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University.
www.isi.org/books/bookdetail.aspx?id=db0c0099-2584-4473-bd25-29da15c82fd8
Publisher's description: "While it is common for today's secularists to push organized religion to the margins of politics, it is equally common for Christians to believe that modern democracy is the only type of regime compatible with their faith. But in fact, this belief cannot be squared with the long and rich tradition of Christian political thought, as Marc D. Guerra makes clear in Christians as Political Animals. Guerra shows that a problematic shift occurred when Christian thinkers began to argue that their religion received its best political articulation in democracy. Calling on thinkers ranging from Augustine and Aquinas to twentieth-century theologians and political philosophers, Guerra argues that while modern democracy and its various attendant goods should be affirmed, Christian thought must recognize the limited scope of the political realm and maintain the proper critical distance. Christians as Political Animals reminds modern democracy of a truth it is prone to forget: civil society relies on extrapolitical goods such as love, friendship, morality, and faith for its health and survival." (bold removed)
Endorsement: "This lucid and wonderfully thoughtful book challenges two regnant orthodoxies of the day: that democracy is the political correlate of Christianity and that Christianity is reducible to a humanitarian moral message. Christians as Political Animals is a most welcome guide for confronting the theological-political problem in a democratic age." (Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College)
Marc D. Guerra is Assistant Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University.
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.
Book: Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology
Just published: Glenn A. Moots, "Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology" (University of Missouri Press, June 2010):
http://press.umsystem.edu/spring2010/moots.htm
Publisher's description: "Many studies have considered the Bible's relationship to politics, but almost all have ignored the heart of its narrative and theology: the covenant. In this book, Glenn Moots explores the political meaning of covenants past and present by focusing on the theory and application of covenantal politics from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Moots demands that we revisit political theology because it served as the most important school of politics in early modern Europe and America. He describes the strengths of the covenant tradition while also presenting its limitations and dangers. Contemporary political scientists such as Eric Voegelin, Daniel Elazar, and David Novak are called on to provide insight into both the covenant's history and its relevance today.
"Moots's work chronicles and critiques the covenant tradition while warning against both political ideology and religious enthusiasm. It provides an inclusive and objective outline of covenantal politics by considering the variations of Reformed theology and their respective consequences for political practice. This includes a careful account of how covenant theology took root on the European continent in the sixteenth century and then inspired ecclesiastical and civil politics in England, Scotland, and America. Moots goes beyond the usual categories of Calvinism or Puritanism to consider the larger movement of which both were a part. By integrating philosophy, theology, and history, Moots also invites investigation of broader political traditions such as natural law and natural right. Politics Reformed demonstrates how the application of political theology over three centuries has important lessons for our own dilemmas about church and state. It makes a provocative contribution to understanding foundational questions in an era of rising fundamentalism and emboldened secularism, inspiring readers to rethink the importance of religion in political theory and practice, and the role of the covenant tradition in particular."
Endorsements: "This remarkable overview of history and opinion regarding the political theory of the covenant will undoubtedly become a standard resource on the history of this topic." (Thomas S. Kidd, Baylor University)
"Politics Reformed provides a clear and readable study of the idea of covenant in the Anglo-American setting. A particular contribution is its analysis of the place of the natural law tradition in Reformed political theology – a tradition missed by many even within Reformed circles." (Jeffry H. Morrison, Regent University)
Glenn A. Moots is Associate Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Northwood University, Michigan campus.
http://press.umsystem.edu/spring2010/moots.htm
Publisher's description: "Many studies have considered the Bible's relationship to politics, but almost all have ignored the heart of its narrative and theology: the covenant. In this book, Glenn Moots explores the political meaning of covenants past and present by focusing on the theory and application of covenantal politics from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Moots demands that we revisit political theology because it served as the most important school of politics in early modern Europe and America. He describes the strengths of the covenant tradition while also presenting its limitations and dangers. Contemporary political scientists such as Eric Voegelin, Daniel Elazar, and David Novak are called on to provide insight into both the covenant's history and its relevance today.
"Moots's work chronicles and critiques the covenant tradition while warning against both political ideology and religious enthusiasm. It provides an inclusive and objective outline of covenantal politics by considering the variations of Reformed theology and their respective consequences for political practice. This includes a careful account of how covenant theology took root on the European continent in the sixteenth century and then inspired ecclesiastical and civil politics in England, Scotland, and America. Moots goes beyond the usual categories of Calvinism or Puritanism to consider the larger movement of which both were a part. By integrating philosophy, theology, and history, Moots also invites investigation of broader political traditions such as natural law and natural right. Politics Reformed demonstrates how the application of political theology over three centuries has important lessons for our own dilemmas about church and state. It makes a provocative contribution to understanding foundational questions in an era of rising fundamentalism and emboldened secularism, inspiring readers to rethink the importance of religion in political theory and practice, and the role of the covenant tradition in particular."
Endorsements: "This remarkable overview of history and opinion regarding the political theory of the covenant will undoubtedly become a standard resource on the history of this topic." (Thomas S. Kidd, Baylor University)
"Politics Reformed provides a clear and readable study of the idea of covenant in the Anglo-American setting. A particular contribution is its analysis of the place of the natural law tradition in Reformed political theology – a tradition missed by many even within Reformed circles." (Jeffry H. Morrison, Regent University)
Glenn A. Moots is Associate Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Northwood University, Michigan campus.
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."
CFP: Between Rawls and Religion: Liberalism in a Postsecular World
International conference "Between Rawls and Religion: Liberalism in a Postsecular World" of the International Research Network on Religion and Democracy (IRNRD), LUISS Guido Carli University, and John Cabot University, Rome, Italy, 16-18 December 2010
Call for papers
The conference will bring together scholars in philosophy, sociology, political theory, legal theory, religious studies, and theology to discuss the problematic relationship between religion and politics in contemporary public life. It will focus particularly on John Rawls' influential treatment of liberalism in pluralist societies and on the challenges posed to such a treatment by the re-emergence of religions in public life and the development of what some have called a postsecular world.
The conference will thus consider such topics as: Religion in Rawls; Political liberalism in a postsecular world; Religious doctrines and the idea of public reason; Religions and overlapping consensus; Liberalism and political theology; The philosophical and political foundations of postsecular pluralism; Redefining the relations and boundaries between religion and public life; Accommodating religious identities in liberal societies
Speakers include: Alessandro Ferrara (University of Rome "Tor Vergata"); Andrew March (Yale, tbc); David Rasmussen (Boston College); Johannes van der Ven (Radboud University); Maeve Cooke (University College Dublin); Paul Weithman (University of Notre Dame); Peter Jonkers (Tilburg University); Samuele Sangalli (Gregoriana); Sebastiano Maffettone (LUISS Guido Carli University); Stephen Macedo (Princeton); Tariq Modood (University of Bristol, tbc); Theo de Wit (Tilburg University)
Scholars and graduate students wishing to present papers on these or related topics are invited to submit abstracts to the organizing committee. A paper suitable for presentation in 20 minutes and a 500-word abstract, both prepared for blind review, should be sent to: infophd@luiss.it
Deadline: 1 October 2010
Notice of acceptance will be provided by 15 October 2010. Selected papers will be considered for publication.
Registration fee (includes conference dinner, lunches, and refreshments): Faculty €100, Students €50.
Call for papers
The conference will bring together scholars in philosophy, sociology, political theory, legal theory, religious studies, and theology to discuss the problematic relationship between religion and politics in contemporary public life. It will focus particularly on John Rawls' influential treatment of liberalism in pluralist societies and on the challenges posed to such a treatment by the re-emergence of religions in public life and the development of what some have called a postsecular world.
The conference will thus consider such topics as: Religion in Rawls; Political liberalism in a postsecular world; Religious doctrines and the idea of public reason; Religions and overlapping consensus; Liberalism and political theology; The philosophical and political foundations of postsecular pluralism; Redefining the relations and boundaries between religion and public life; Accommodating religious identities in liberal societies
Speakers include: Alessandro Ferrara (University of Rome "Tor Vergata"); Andrew March (Yale, tbc); David Rasmussen (Boston College); Johannes van der Ven (Radboud University); Maeve Cooke (University College Dublin); Paul Weithman (University of Notre Dame); Peter Jonkers (Tilburg University); Samuele Sangalli (Gregoriana); Sebastiano Maffettone (LUISS Guido Carli University); Stephen Macedo (Princeton); Tariq Modood (University of Bristol, tbc); Theo de Wit (Tilburg University)
Scholars and graduate students wishing to present papers on these or related topics are invited to submit abstracts to the organizing committee. A paper suitable for presentation in 20 minutes and a 500-word abstract, both prepared for blind review, should be sent to: infophd@luiss.it
Deadline: 1 October 2010
Notice of acceptance will be provided by 15 October 2010. Selected papers will be considered for publication.
Registration fee (includes conference dinner, lunches, and refreshments): Faculty €100, Students €50.
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
13 June 2010
CFP: The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion
Postmodernism, Culture and Religion 4 (biennial conference series) "The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion", Syracuse University, New York State, USA, 7-9 April 2011
http://pcr.syr.edu/
Call for papers
Description: "Paper submissions are invited on the topic 'The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion,' its past and present, its history and its prospects, in the widest possible terms, addressing the whole range of it simplications – politics, feminism, constructive theology, philosophy, history, literature, interfaith dialogue, and the hermeneutics of sacred texts. In the past, these conferences, which have provided a forum for the most influential philosophers, theologians, and cultural theorists to interact, have consisted solely of several keynote speakers. This conference will be different. It will feature three plenary speakers and offer multiple concurrent sessions devoted to papers submitted on a diversity of issues relating to the primary theme. This call for papers is deliberately open, befitting the conference's animating concern with the future.
"Papers are invited that address questions like (but not limited to) the following. What now, or what comes next – specifically, after the death, if not of God, at least of the generation consisting of Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Levinas, etc.? This question concerns not only the future after those significant theorists, but also the future after-life of these eminent minds who have left such a deep impact on Continental philosophy of religion. What is the future of Kant and German Idealism, of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in Continental philosophy of religion? What remains for the future of phenomenology? Of the 'theological turn' in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion and others? Of Gadamer, Ricoeur and philosophical hermeneutics? Of apophatic or mystical theology? What is the future of feminism and Continental philosophy of religion? What are the status and future of the new trinity of Agamben, Badiou and Zizek? What relevance do the political interpretations of Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and the more recent Continental philosophers such as François Laruelle and Catherine Malabou have to philosophy of religion and political theology?
"What about the future of sovereignty, of money and capitalism, as in the work of Philip Goodchild? What is the future of the movements of Radical Orthodoxy and of radical death of God theology, whether in their original or contemporary manifestations? What about the new sciences of information and complexity in thinkers like Mark C. Taylor and Michel Serres? What about Continental philosophy of religion and our 'companion species' in Donna Haraway? What about 'Post-Humanism'? What is the future of Continental [p]hilosophy of religion and Judaism? And Islam? Or world religions generally? What is the relationship between postmodernism, religion and postcolonialism? What role can Continental philosophy play in the future of religion in the USA? In the professional study of religion in the USA? How does Continental philosophical theology relate to the ethnological and empirical-scientific study of religion? How does Continental philosophy of religion differ from traditional philosophy of religion? Or from analytic philosophy of religion? What is continental philosophy of religion anyway?"
Plenary Speakers: John D. Caputo (Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities, Syracuse University); Philip Goodchild (Professor of Religion and Philosophy, University of Nottingham); Catherine Malabou (Professor of Philosophy, Paris West University Nanterre La Défense)
Instructions: Submit electronic copies of completed papers (up to 3000 words). Abstracts cannot be considered. Papers will be subject to a double blind review by a selection committee. Include your name, paper title, and contact information on a separate page. Include the paper title but not your name on a header or footer on each numbered page of the paper itself. The papers must be previously unpublished in any format. The conference reserves the right of first refusal of the submitted paper for inclusion in a projected volume to be based upon the conference.
Deadline: 15 December 2010
Acceptances will be made by 15 February 2011.
Contact for further information and paper submissions: pcrconf@syr.edu
Coordinator: John D. Caputo
http://pcr.syr.edu/
Call for papers
Description: "Paper submissions are invited on the topic 'The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion,' its past and present, its history and its prospects, in the widest possible terms, addressing the whole range of it simplications – politics, feminism, constructive theology, philosophy, history, literature, interfaith dialogue, and the hermeneutics of sacred texts. In the past, these conferences, which have provided a forum for the most influential philosophers, theologians, and cultural theorists to interact, have consisted solely of several keynote speakers. This conference will be different. It will feature three plenary speakers and offer multiple concurrent sessions devoted to papers submitted on a diversity of issues relating to the primary theme. This call for papers is deliberately open, befitting the conference's animating concern with the future.
"Papers are invited that address questions like (but not limited to) the following. What now, or what comes next – specifically, after the death, if not of God, at least of the generation consisting of Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Levinas, etc.? This question concerns not only the future after those significant theorists, but also the future after-life of these eminent minds who have left such a deep impact on Continental philosophy of religion. What is the future of Kant and German Idealism, of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in Continental philosophy of religion? What remains for the future of phenomenology? Of the 'theological turn' in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion and others? Of Gadamer, Ricoeur and philosophical hermeneutics? Of apophatic or mystical theology? What is the future of feminism and Continental philosophy of religion? What are the status and future of the new trinity of Agamben, Badiou and Zizek? What relevance do the political interpretations of Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and the more recent Continental philosophers such as François Laruelle and Catherine Malabou have to philosophy of religion and political theology?
"What about the future of sovereignty, of money and capitalism, as in the work of Philip Goodchild? What is the future of the movements of Radical Orthodoxy and of radical death of God theology, whether in their original or contemporary manifestations? What about the new sciences of information and complexity in thinkers like Mark C. Taylor and Michel Serres? What about Continental philosophy of religion and our 'companion species' in Donna Haraway? What about 'Post-Humanism'? What is the future of Continental [p]hilosophy of religion and Judaism? And Islam? Or world religions generally? What is the relationship between postmodernism, religion and postcolonialism? What role can Continental philosophy play in the future of religion in the USA? In the professional study of religion in the USA? How does Continental philosophical theology relate to the ethnological and empirical-scientific study of religion? How does Continental philosophy of religion differ from traditional philosophy of religion? Or from analytic philosophy of religion? What is continental philosophy of religion anyway?"
Plenary Speakers: John D. Caputo (Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities, Syracuse University); Philip Goodchild (Professor of Religion and Philosophy, University of Nottingham); Catherine Malabou (Professor of Philosophy, Paris West University Nanterre La Défense)
Instructions: Submit electronic copies of completed papers (up to 3000 words). Abstracts cannot be considered. Papers will be subject to a double blind review by a selection committee. Include your name, paper title, and contact information on a separate page. Include the paper title but not your name on a header or footer on each numbered page of the paper itself. The papers must be previously unpublished in any format. The conference reserves the right of first refusal of the submitted paper for inclusion in a projected volume to be based upon the conference.
Deadline: 15 December 2010
Acceptances will be made by 15 February 2011.
Contact for further information and paper submissions: pcrconf@syr.edu
Coordinator: John D. Caputo
10 June 2010
CONF: American Political Science Association annual meeting 2010
106th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Washington, DC, USA, 2-5 September 2010
http://apsanet.org/content_65547.cfm?navID=193
The programme of this year's APSA meeting features a panel on "God and Political Representation: Is a Democratic Political Theology Possible?", organized by APSA's "Foundations of Political Theory" and "Religion and Politics" sections (2 September, 2.00 pm).
Speakers: James R. Martel (San Francisco State University), "Benjamin and Derrida on the Theology of Immanence"; Miguel E. Vatter (Universidad Diego Portales), "Political Theology without Sovereignty: Some 20th Century Examples (Voegelin, Maritain, Badiou)"; Kathleen Roberts Skerrett (Grinnell College), "Sovereign Power and Theological Themes of Plenitude and Plurality"; Eric Gregory (Princeton), "Augustine, Augustinianism, and Democracy"
Also: The panel "Crossing Boundaries: Religious and Political Voices", organized by the "Religion and Politics" section, includes a paper by Melissa Marie Matthes (Yale Divinity School), "Mourning JFK and the Hard Times of 1963: The Political Theology of the Sermons of the Crisis" (2 September, 8.00 am), and "Poster Session 9: Related Fields" includes a poster by Jenna Silber Storey (University of Chicago), "Schmitt's Nationalism and its Relation to his Political Theology" (4 September, 2.00 pm).
Further information and the full programme are to be found on APSA's website.
http://apsanet.org/content_65547.cfm?navID=193
The programme of this year's APSA meeting features a panel on "God and Political Representation: Is a Democratic Political Theology Possible?", organized by APSA's "Foundations of Political Theory" and "Religion and Politics" sections (2 September, 2.00 pm).
Speakers: James R. Martel (San Francisco State University), "Benjamin and Derrida on the Theology of Immanence"; Miguel E. Vatter (Universidad Diego Portales), "Political Theology without Sovereignty: Some 20th Century Examples (Voegelin, Maritain, Badiou)"; Kathleen Roberts Skerrett (Grinnell College), "Sovereign Power and Theological Themes of Plenitude and Plurality"; Eric Gregory (Princeton), "Augustine, Augustinianism, and Democracy"
Also: The panel "Crossing Boundaries: Religious and Political Voices", organized by the "Religion and Politics" section, includes a paper by Melissa Marie Matthes (Yale Divinity School), "Mourning JFK and the Hard Times of 1963: The Political Theology of the Sermons of the Crisis" (2 September, 8.00 am), and "Poster Session 9: Related Fields" includes a poster by Jenna Silber Storey (University of Chicago), "Schmitt's Nationalism and its Relation to his Political Theology" (4 September, 2.00 pm).
Further information and the full programme are to be found on APSA's website.
07 June 2010
CONF: Political Theology as the Problem
International conference "Political Theology as the Problem" of the Institute of Political Science and International Relations of the Jagiellonian University and the Institute of Political Science of the Jesuit University of Philosophy and Education "Ignatianum", at the Ignatianum, ul. Kopernika 26, Krakow, Poland, 16-17 September 2010
www.ignatianum.edu.pl/ptheology/
Description: "Political theology is the problem that a modern science of politics should be apt to confront. For that kind of theology means primarily an intellectual as well as moral (with 'moral' coming first) attitude towards the very foundation of a political community that ought to be connected with divine command rather than purely human invention. The political theologian deals with the issues of order, authority, subordination to the Law of God or His will. Indeed, what is at stake is the most basic question of the best way of life men can lead; the life that now appears to be lived according to the command from above. And what is the relation between such a command and the workings of unassisted human reason? Is the possibility of political theology in its current guise not deeply pervaded by a growing distrust of philosophy and science? Is it not a kind of mere abreaction against the world of disenchantment and secularization provided by modern political philosophy? Yet the attitude characteristic of a political theologian may also bear witness to the fact that modern philosophy or science has never truly resolved the tension between what is rational and what is political, between the reason and passion of a citizen. Hence some tradition that preceded anti-traditional modernity must be seriously taken into consideration.
"The problem of political theology refers to a large number of highly differentiated domains of theoretical research. It also has its counterpart on the side of political practice insofar as a continual struggle between various political-theological attitudes can be found within each of the societies of the West. We can perceive, too, some menacing political-theological pressure born in societies that evidently do not share the prevalent Western position, i.e. a conviction that the core of religious matters must be situated in the private sphere. To have our present situation plausibly explained a broad undertaking in the whole field of the history of ideas must be launched. The present conference marks an attempt towards such an undertaking. We want to discuss the problem of political theology as well as some of its sources rooted in ancient and medieval traditions of thought. Thus the problem of political theology may be connected with the problem of modern political atheism in light of some obvious limitations of the modern solution regarding the relations between Reason and Revelation we now face. Last but not least, this is an opportunity to confront some prevalent views on political-theological issues as they appear in the different contexts of the different countries the participants come from."
Speakers include: Victoria Kahn (Berkeley), "Political Theology and Modern Culture: Strauss, Schmitt, Spinoza, and Arendt"; Daniel Tanguay (University of Ottawa), "Democracy as Negative Political Theology: Marcel Gauchet's Theory of Democracy"; David Janssens (Tilburg University), "Violent Grace: The Theologico-Political Problem in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy"; Herfried Münkler (Humboldt University of Berlin), "Politische Mythen als eine Form der politischen Religion" ("Political Myths as a Form of Political Religion"; organizers' translation); Ryszard Legutko (Jagiellonian University), "Problem ciągłości kulturowej narodu w kontekście teologiczno-politycznym" ("Cultural Continuity of a Nation as a Theologico-Political Problem"; organizers' translation); Leora Batnitzky (Princeton), "Law and Belief: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theologico-Political Predicament of Modernity"; Till Kinzel (Braunschweig University of Technology), "Political Theology, Hermeneutics and Bible Criticism: English Thinkers on Reason and Revelation between 'libertas philosophandi' and 'conservatio tranquillitatis' in the 17th and 18th Century"; Emmanuel Patard (University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne), "The Theologico-Political Problem and the Strauss-Voegelin Debate"; Marek A. Cichocki (University of Warsaw), "Carl Schmitt's Political Theology"; John McCormick (University of Chicago), "Post-Enlightenment Sources of Political Authority: Biblical Atheism, Political Theology, and the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange"; Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (Jagiellonian University), "The Problem of the Closure of any Political Theology: Remarks on the Controversy between Erik Peterson, Carl Schmitt, and Hans Blumenberg"
The registration section of the website does not yet provide any information.
People interested in participating may therefore want to contact: tpolityczna@ignatianum.edu.pl
Coordinators: Paweł Armada, Krzysztof Matuszek (both Ignatianum), Mateusz Filary, Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (both Jagiellonian University)
www.ignatianum.edu.pl/ptheology/
Description: "Political theology is the problem that a modern science of politics should be apt to confront. For that kind of theology means primarily an intellectual as well as moral (with 'moral' coming first) attitude towards the very foundation of a political community that ought to be connected with divine command rather than purely human invention. The political theologian deals with the issues of order, authority, subordination to the Law of God or His will. Indeed, what is at stake is the most basic question of the best way of life men can lead; the life that now appears to be lived according to the command from above. And what is the relation between such a command and the workings of unassisted human reason? Is the possibility of political theology in its current guise not deeply pervaded by a growing distrust of philosophy and science? Is it not a kind of mere abreaction against the world of disenchantment and secularization provided by modern political philosophy? Yet the attitude characteristic of a political theologian may also bear witness to the fact that modern philosophy or science has never truly resolved the tension between what is rational and what is political, between the reason and passion of a citizen. Hence some tradition that preceded anti-traditional modernity must be seriously taken into consideration.
"The problem of political theology refers to a large number of highly differentiated domains of theoretical research. It also has its counterpart on the side of political practice insofar as a continual struggle between various political-theological attitudes can be found within each of the societies of the West. We can perceive, too, some menacing political-theological pressure born in societies that evidently do not share the prevalent Western position, i.e. a conviction that the core of religious matters must be situated in the private sphere. To have our present situation plausibly explained a broad undertaking in the whole field of the history of ideas must be launched. The present conference marks an attempt towards such an undertaking. We want to discuss the problem of political theology as well as some of its sources rooted in ancient and medieval traditions of thought. Thus the problem of political theology may be connected with the problem of modern political atheism in light of some obvious limitations of the modern solution regarding the relations between Reason and Revelation we now face. Last but not least, this is an opportunity to confront some prevalent views on political-theological issues as they appear in the different contexts of the different countries the participants come from."
Speakers include: Victoria Kahn (Berkeley), "Political Theology and Modern Culture: Strauss, Schmitt, Spinoza, and Arendt"; Daniel Tanguay (University of Ottawa), "Democracy as Negative Political Theology: Marcel Gauchet's Theory of Democracy"; David Janssens (Tilburg University), "Violent Grace: The Theologico-Political Problem in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy"; Herfried Münkler (Humboldt University of Berlin), "Politische Mythen als eine Form der politischen Religion" ("Political Myths as a Form of Political Religion"; organizers' translation); Ryszard Legutko (Jagiellonian University), "Problem ciągłości kulturowej narodu w kontekście teologiczno-politycznym" ("Cultural Continuity of a Nation as a Theologico-Political Problem"; organizers' translation); Leora Batnitzky (Princeton), "Law and Belief: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theologico-Political Predicament of Modernity"; Till Kinzel (Braunschweig University of Technology), "Political Theology, Hermeneutics and Bible Criticism: English Thinkers on Reason and Revelation between 'libertas philosophandi' and 'conservatio tranquillitatis' in the 17th and 18th Century"; Emmanuel Patard (University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne), "The Theologico-Political Problem and the Strauss-Voegelin Debate"; Marek A. Cichocki (University of Warsaw), "Carl Schmitt's Political Theology"; John McCormick (University of Chicago), "Post-Enlightenment Sources of Political Authority: Biblical Atheism, Political Theology, and the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange"; Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (Jagiellonian University), "The Problem of the Closure of any Political Theology: Remarks on the Controversy between Erik Peterson, Carl Schmitt, and Hans Blumenberg"
The registration section of the website does not yet provide any information.
People interested in participating may therefore want to contact: tpolityczna@ignatianum.edu.pl
Coordinators: Paweł Armada, Krzysztof Matuszek (both Ignatianum), Mateusz Filary, Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (both Jagiellonian University)
Journal "Teologia Polityczna" on Poland's "Lost Identity" (in Polish)
The Polish journal "Teologia Polityczna" ("Political Theology") has been published five times since 2003. The fifth issue (2009/2010) is titled "Złoty róg, czyli nieodzyskana podmiotowość" ("Lost Identity"; publisher's translation).
Those able to read Polish can find a table of contents here:
http://teologiapolityczna.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=138&Itemid=94
Publisher's description: "What could be described as Poland's identity in modern times? And does Poland have the resources and means to maintain and further develop that identity? Such issues are tackled in detail in the fifth issue of Political Theology, 'Lost identity'. It is not just identity that is taken into account here, but also a certain notion of independence. Can Poland still follow its own path of modernisation and development, maybe one with a greater role of the church, or does it have mimic the increasingly secularized western nations if it wants prominence in the EU? In an article called 'It's Impossible to Xerox Modernity', Dariusz Karłowicz severely criticises a one-size-fits-all approach to political and social progress and modernisation. He argues that each country has its own culture and identity and needs to develop according to that rather than merely copy its seemingly more advanced neighbours. Furthermore, the issue also attempts to affirm and fully understand what it means to be Polish in today's times and what role Poland's unique identity (Solidarity, the role of the church, a newly developing democracy) means in today's cosmpolitan [sic], ever-globalising times. Finally, the advance of secularism in the modern world is looked at it in detail, and the U.S. and European approaches to the issue are compared and contrasted."
To order a copy, please contact: redakcja@teologiapolityczna.pl
Those able to read Polish can find a table of contents here:
http://teologiapolityczna.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=138&Itemid=94
Publisher's description: "What could be described as Poland's identity in modern times? And does Poland have the resources and means to maintain and further develop that identity? Such issues are tackled in detail in the fifth issue of Political Theology, 'Lost identity'. It is not just identity that is taken into account here, but also a certain notion of independence. Can Poland still follow its own path of modernisation and development, maybe one with a greater role of the church, or does it have mimic the increasingly secularized western nations if it wants prominence in the EU? In an article called 'It's Impossible to Xerox Modernity', Dariusz Karłowicz severely criticises a one-size-fits-all approach to political and social progress and modernisation. He argues that each country has its own culture and identity and needs to develop according to that rather than merely copy its seemingly more advanced neighbours. Furthermore, the issue also attempts to affirm and fully understand what it means to be Polish in today's times and what role Poland's unique identity (Solidarity, the role of the church, a newly developing democracy) means in today's cosmpolitan [sic], ever-globalising times. Finally, the advance of secularism in the modern world is looked at it in detail, and the U.S. and European approaches to the issue are compared and contrasted."
To order a copy, please contact: redakcja@teologiapolityczna.pl
06 June 2010
Book: Contextual Theology and Revolutionary Transformation in Latin America
Just published: Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell, "Contextual Theology and Revolutionary Transformation in Latin America: The Missiology of M. Richard Shaull" (Pickwick Publications, June 2010):
http://wipfandstock.com/store/Contextual_Theology_and_Revolutionary_Transformation_in_Latin_America_The_Missiology_of_M_Richard_Shaull
Publisher's description: "U.S. audiences know Latin American liberation theologies largely through translations of Latin American Catholics from the 1970s and beyond. Most of the few known Protestant authors were students of Richard Shaull, whose critical thinking on social change, prophetic Christianity, and dialogue with Marxism and Christian use of Marxist analysis precedes the emergence of the formal schools of liberation theology by two decades. His own education at Princeton, and the education he provided in Brazil, charts the course of Protestant influences into this stream of theological reflection that became a global phenomenon in the latter decades of the twentieth century. Also, Shaull's career roughly parallels the emergence of the World Council of Churches and the engagement of the Catholic Church – in Latin America and around the world – after the Second Vatican Council. He himself was engaged, and became the flash point, in some of the major conferences, movements, and institutions of the 1960s and beyond.
"Santiago-Vendrell documents the entrance of the ecumenical movement in Brazil, among the most dramatic transformations in Catholic-Protestant relations around the globe, as well as Shaull's role in that development. Along the way he notes Shaull's prophetic and destabilizing role in the worldwide student movement in the 60s and 70s, charting decisions that mark the ecumenical movement. Shaull's contributions are important for an understanding of the ethical debates in the worldwide, ecumenical Protestant and Orthodox communities. Santiago-Vendrell examines primary, secondary, and historical documents that shine a light on Shaull's transformation into a contextual theologian of the poor. He offers a definitive view of this North American Protestant missionary who wrote extensively on Latin American liberation theology, the base Christian communities, and how conversion to solidarity with the poor offers transforming possibilities for the mainline churches' theological identity and practical faith."
Endorsements: "Long before there was such a thing as liberation theology, the 'revolutionary theology' of Presbyterian missionary Richard Shaull was heralding a new and more just world born out of solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. This biography of Shaull fills a gap in understanding a complex man who sought to hold the church accountable while inspiring Christians to a more radical and biblical form of social engagement. A wonderful adventure in contextual theology." (Bryan Stone, Boston University)
"We can be grateful to Dr. Santiago-Vendrell for making available to us a story that has required research in both Spanish language and American resources not widely available to the U.S. reading public. Probably nothing has done more to change perspectives on U.S. foreign policy and journalistic knowledge about the realities of Latin American politics and the plight of its peoples than the presence of U.S. missionaries during the crucial mid-decades of the twentieth century. This theological biography will be as interesting to those concerned about interAmerican politics and economic policy as it will be to theologians and church historians." (Jeffrey Gros, Memphis Theological Seminary)
Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell is Assistant Professor of Mission at Memphis Theological Seminary.
http://wipfandstock.com/store/Contextual_Theology_and_Revolutionary_Transformation_in_Latin_America_The_Missiology_of_M_Richard_Shaull
Publisher's description: "U.S. audiences know Latin American liberation theologies largely through translations of Latin American Catholics from the 1970s and beyond. Most of the few known Protestant authors were students of Richard Shaull, whose critical thinking on social change, prophetic Christianity, and dialogue with Marxism and Christian use of Marxist analysis precedes the emergence of the formal schools of liberation theology by two decades. His own education at Princeton, and the education he provided in Brazil, charts the course of Protestant influences into this stream of theological reflection that became a global phenomenon in the latter decades of the twentieth century. Also, Shaull's career roughly parallels the emergence of the World Council of Churches and the engagement of the Catholic Church – in Latin America and around the world – after the Second Vatican Council. He himself was engaged, and became the flash point, in some of the major conferences, movements, and institutions of the 1960s and beyond.
"Santiago-Vendrell documents the entrance of the ecumenical movement in Brazil, among the most dramatic transformations in Catholic-Protestant relations around the globe, as well as Shaull's role in that development. Along the way he notes Shaull's prophetic and destabilizing role in the worldwide student movement in the 60s and 70s, charting decisions that mark the ecumenical movement. Shaull's contributions are important for an understanding of the ethical debates in the worldwide, ecumenical Protestant and Orthodox communities. Santiago-Vendrell examines primary, secondary, and historical documents that shine a light on Shaull's transformation into a contextual theologian of the poor. He offers a definitive view of this North American Protestant missionary who wrote extensively on Latin American liberation theology, the base Christian communities, and how conversion to solidarity with the poor offers transforming possibilities for the mainline churches' theological identity and practical faith."
Endorsements: "Long before there was such a thing as liberation theology, the 'revolutionary theology' of Presbyterian missionary Richard Shaull was heralding a new and more just world born out of solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. This biography of Shaull fills a gap in understanding a complex man who sought to hold the church accountable while inspiring Christians to a more radical and biblical form of social engagement. A wonderful adventure in contextual theology." (Bryan Stone, Boston University)
"We can be grateful to Dr. Santiago-Vendrell for making available to us a story that has required research in both Spanish language and American resources not widely available to the U.S. reading public. Probably nothing has done more to change perspectives on U.S. foreign policy and journalistic knowledge about the realities of Latin American politics and the plight of its peoples than the presence of U.S. missionaries during the crucial mid-decades of the twentieth century. This theological biography will be as interesting to those concerned about interAmerican politics and economic policy as it will be to theologians and church historians." (Jeffrey Gros, Memphis Theological Seminary)
Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell is Assistant Professor of Mission at Memphis Theological Seminary.
27 May 2010
Journal "Constellations" on "Political Theologies"
The June 2010 issue of "Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory" (17 [2]) features five articles on the theme "Political Theologies":
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118514711/home
Contents:
Bernard Flynn (State University of New York), "Political Theology and Its Vicissitudes" (pp. 185-96).
Excerpt: "In this article, I argue that the Judeo-Christian conception of 'the creation of the world from nothing' contains within itself the possibilities for the political transformation of a theological concept. It does this in two respects: on the one hand, the conception of divine providence appears in secular thought in the guise of philosophy of history. I follow Karl Löwith's path, in Meaning in History, of unmasking this secular theory as theology. On the other hand, the theological notion of creation ex nihilo becomes the political concept of the Event. In order to show the centrality of the notion of the Event in recent political thought, I investigate certain aspects of the thought of both Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. Then I conclude by invoking the thought of Claude Lefort who, while practicing political philosophy, is sensitive to the role of theological concepts in the constitution of the political. For the thinkers associated with political theology, this disjunctive opposition between political theology and political philosophy comes to be blurred. It is possible that while practicing political philosophy, in their own self-representation, they are, in fact, in the grips of political theology, notwithstanding even a militant atheism. My claim is that beneath the surface of a secular theory, a theological problematic continues to operate. This claim is stronger than the claim that there are structural similarities between the two; rather it is that unbeknownst to themselves these secular theorists are pursuing a theological enterprise by 'other means.'"
Ruth Marshall (University of Toronto), "The Sovereignty of Miracles: Pentecostal Political Theology in Nigeria" (pp. 197-223).
Excerpt: "This paper will examine aspects of Pentecostalism's global 'revolutionary' project as they are being played out in the post-colonial world today in an effort to clarify elements of a Nigerian Born-Again political theology beyond the epithets and the long-standing antimonies and categories of analysis that have marked our understanding of the relationship between the religious and the political."
Nicolas Guilhot (CNRS, France, and New York University), "American Katechon: When Political Theology Became International Relations Theory" (pp. 224-53).
Excerpt: "While nobody would deny that international relations theory is a secular social science, especially in its 'realist' guise, it is interesting to note that a number of commentators and historians of the discipline often turn to religious metaphors in order to characterize some of its core features or talk about its main thinkers. Such eschatological or theological references run indeed throughout the literature, like a faint but always present watermark. [...] These references are too pervasive, too ubiquitous to be treated as mere coincidences. They point at a theological substratum that once provided an explicit background against which a number of central concepts of IR theory resonated, when the discussion of international affairs still involved not only scholars but also public intellectuals, diplomats, historians, political theorists and, last but not least, theologians, many of whom considered themselves 'Christian realists.' Obviously, the figure of Reinhold Niebuhr loomed large over these discussions. [...] But such considerations pervaded the early search for a 'theory' and were common to a group of individuals who actively discussed the shape of the future discipline. [...] Yet, as the discussion of international politics became an academic specialty enclosed in political science departments, this background was progressively bracketed out."
Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (Columbia University), "Can Democracy Emancipate Itself From Political Theology? Habermas and Lefort on the Permanence of the Theologico-Political" (pp. 254-70).
Excerpt: "In the following paper, I address the relation between political theology and the modern democratic form. To do so, I compare the writings of two authors who have more solid democratic credentials than Carl Schmitt: Jürgen Habermas and Claude Lefort. I argue that both of these authors attempt to put forward a conception of modern democracy that emancipates itself from the dimension of political theology, but that they achieve this goal to different extents. Habermas develops a conception of democracy articulated around the notion of 'communicative rationality' which ultimately ends up reintroducing an element of political theology through the very means that were sought to overcome it. Lefort, on the other hand, delineates a conception of democracy articulated around the notion of an 'empty place of power' which proves more sophisticated in extricating itself from the dimension of political theology because it recognizes the persistence of an irreducible locus of transcendence within the structure of the political itself, but construes it in such a way as to pervert its theologico-political character. From a political point of view, this contrast is instructive because it gives an indication as to what strategies might be more effective for advancing a secularist response to the recent resurgence of attempts to colonize the political with the theological."
Ada S. Jaarsma (Sonoma State University), "Habermas' Kierkegaard and the Nature of the Secular" (pp. 271-92).
Excerpt: "In what follows, I describe Habermas' normative program for the successful and mutually beneficial co-existence of the religious and the non-religious, looking especially at his reliance upon a particular reading of Kierkegaard. [...] As I argue below, the specific ways in which Habermas employs Kierkegaard's thought demonstrates what Habermas himself advocates for others: an appreciative respect for religious insights and simultaneous self-reflection on the limitations of both secular and philosophical thinking."
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118514711/home
Contents:
Bernard Flynn (State University of New York), "Political Theology and Its Vicissitudes" (pp. 185-96).
Excerpt: "In this article, I argue that the Judeo-Christian conception of 'the creation of the world from nothing' contains within itself the possibilities for the political transformation of a theological concept. It does this in two respects: on the one hand, the conception of divine providence appears in secular thought in the guise of philosophy of history. I follow Karl Löwith's path, in Meaning in History, of unmasking this secular theory as theology. On the other hand, the theological notion of creation ex nihilo becomes the political concept of the Event. In order to show the centrality of the notion of the Event in recent political thought, I investigate certain aspects of the thought of both Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. Then I conclude by invoking the thought of Claude Lefort who, while practicing political philosophy, is sensitive to the role of theological concepts in the constitution of the political. For the thinkers associated with political theology, this disjunctive opposition between political theology and political philosophy comes to be blurred. It is possible that while practicing political philosophy, in their own self-representation, they are, in fact, in the grips of political theology, notwithstanding even a militant atheism. My claim is that beneath the surface of a secular theory, a theological problematic continues to operate. This claim is stronger than the claim that there are structural similarities between the two; rather it is that unbeknownst to themselves these secular theorists are pursuing a theological enterprise by 'other means.'"
Ruth Marshall (University of Toronto), "The Sovereignty of Miracles: Pentecostal Political Theology in Nigeria" (pp. 197-223).
Excerpt: "This paper will examine aspects of Pentecostalism's global 'revolutionary' project as they are being played out in the post-colonial world today in an effort to clarify elements of a Nigerian Born-Again political theology beyond the epithets and the long-standing antimonies and categories of analysis that have marked our understanding of the relationship between the religious and the political."
Nicolas Guilhot (CNRS, France, and New York University), "American Katechon: When Political Theology Became International Relations Theory" (pp. 224-53).
Excerpt: "While nobody would deny that international relations theory is a secular social science, especially in its 'realist' guise, it is interesting to note that a number of commentators and historians of the discipline often turn to religious metaphors in order to characterize some of its core features or talk about its main thinkers. Such eschatological or theological references run indeed throughout the literature, like a faint but always present watermark. [...] These references are too pervasive, too ubiquitous to be treated as mere coincidences. They point at a theological substratum that once provided an explicit background against which a number of central concepts of IR theory resonated, when the discussion of international affairs still involved not only scholars but also public intellectuals, diplomats, historians, political theorists and, last but not least, theologians, many of whom considered themselves 'Christian realists.' Obviously, the figure of Reinhold Niebuhr loomed large over these discussions. [...] But such considerations pervaded the early search for a 'theory' and were common to a group of individuals who actively discussed the shape of the future discipline. [...] Yet, as the discussion of international politics became an academic specialty enclosed in political science departments, this background was progressively bracketed out."
Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (Columbia University), "Can Democracy Emancipate Itself From Political Theology? Habermas and Lefort on the Permanence of the Theologico-Political" (pp. 254-70).
Excerpt: "In the following paper, I address the relation between political theology and the modern democratic form. To do so, I compare the writings of two authors who have more solid democratic credentials than Carl Schmitt: Jürgen Habermas and Claude Lefort. I argue that both of these authors attempt to put forward a conception of modern democracy that emancipates itself from the dimension of political theology, but that they achieve this goal to different extents. Habermas develops a conception of democracy articulated around the notion of 'communicative rationality' which ultimately ends up reintroducing an element of political theology through the very means that were sought to overcome it. Lefort, on the other hand, delineates a conception of democracy articulated around the notion of an 'empty place of power' which proves more sophisticated in extricating itself from the dimension of political theology because it recognizes the persistence of an irreducible locus of transcendence within the structure of the political itself, but construes it in such a way as to pervert its theologico-political character. From a political point of view, this contrast is instructive because it gives an indication as to what strategies might be more effective for advancing a secularist response to the recent resurgence of attempts to colonize the political with the theological."
Ada S. Jaarsma (Sonoma State University), "Habermas' Kierkegaard and the Nature of the Secular" (pp. 271-92).
Excerpt: "In what follows, I describe Habermas' normative program for the successful and mutually beneficial co-existence of the religious and the non-religious, looking especially at his reliance upon a particular reading of Kierkegaard. [...] As I argue below, the specific ways in which Habermas employs Kierkegaard's thought demonstrates what Habermas himself advocates for others: an appreciative respect for religious insights and simultaneous self-reflection on the limitations of both secular and philosophical thinking."
Book: Political Theology: Schmitt – Derrida – Metz (in German)
Michaela Rissing and Thilo Rissing are the authors of the monograph "Politische Theologie: Schmitt – Derrida – Metz: Eine Einführung"
(Political Theology: Schmitt – Derrida – Metz: An Introduction; my translation), published by the German Wilhelm Fink Verlag in August 2009:
www.fink.de/katalog/titel/978-3-7705-4871-2.html
From the publisher's description: "'Political theology' – a term as suggestive as controversial. Depending on whether one views it from a political, philosophical or theological perspective, it reveals different guiding principles that traverse its conceptual field in diverging directions, cross each other or even converge. Starting from the political theology of Carl Schmitt, [...] the authors continue with an exposition of the thinking of Jacques Derrida [... and] the model of the new political theology of Johann Baptist Metz. The question is asked as to whether theology is political and, conversely, politics remains bound to theological figures of thought even under secular conditions." (my rough translation)
I can find no reliable biographical information about the authors who have, between them, published a number of books before this.
(Political Theology: Schmitt – Derrida – Metz: An Introduction; my translation), published by the German Wilhelm Fink Verlag in August 2009:
www.fink.de/katalog/titel/978-3-7705-4871-2.html
From the publisher's description: "'Political theology' – a term as suggestive as controversial. Depending on whether one views it from a political, philosophical or theological perspective, it reveals different guiding principles that traverse its conceptual field in diverging directions, cross each other or even converge. Starting from the political theology of Carl Schmitt, [...] the authors continue with an exposition of the thinking of Jacques Derrida [... and] the model of the new political theology of Johann Baptist Metz. The question is asked as to whether theology is political and, conversely, politics remains bound to theological figures of thought even under secular conditions." (my rough translation)
I can find no reliable biographical information about the authors who have, between them, published a number of books before this.
21 May 2010
Book: Chicano Liberation Theology: The Writings and Documents of Richard Cruz and Católicos por la Raza
Mario T. García is the editor of "Chicano Liberation Theology: The Writings and Documents of Richard Cruz and Católicos por la Raza" (Kendall Hunt Publishing, May 2009).Publisher's description: "[García's book] focuses on the role of religion in the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This was the most widespread and significant civil rights, identity, and empowerment movement by Mexican Americans in the United States. This book highlights the most important faith-inspired urban movement to bring about social change inspired by Catholic social teachings. Chapter topics include: The Chicano Movement and the Catholic Church; The Origins of Católicos Por La Raza; Católicos in Action; Oral Histories; Richard Cruz: People's Attorney; Reflections by Richard Cruz. This is an edited collection of the writings and documents of Richard Cruz and Católicos Por La Raza, along with additional supporting material and interviews with former Católicos members."
www.kendallhunt.com/index.cfm?PID=219&AUT=&ISB=&DIS=375&GRA=0&DES=&MTC=exact&BOOL=AND&KEY=&PPS=25&SRT=Author&CMD=detail&SRH=&PRD=23010
Mario T. García is Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
14 May 2010
CFP: Religion in International Relations
52nd Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), Montréal, Canada, 16-19 March 2011
Call for papers for two panels dealing with religion in international relations. (May be of interest to political theology scholars in IR.)
In IR today, religion is a little understood and under-researched area that impacts both the political and international spheres. From development to security, economics and war, terrorism and institutional consciousness, religion is present via identity, language, narratives, or motivations. These panels seek to open a more comprehensive discussion on the exchange between religion and international relations by encouraging theoretical and case-study dialogue as a means of bringing issues of religion out of the shadows of research and the imaginations of academics. In order to critically analyze the nexus of religion and international relations, researchers need to debate the issue of religion rather than constitute it as an anomalous periphery subject.
Theoretical Panel: At this point, religion in IR is debated amongst secularists who exist on the periphery of international studies. This panel seeks to open a discussion on how to best approach religion in its many forms and roles that captures the intensity and relevancy of this field of research. Theoretical frameworks need to be explored so as to intensify a much needed spotlight on the depth of influence religion has in constructing and affecting relations between states. In order to understand international relations, we must understand the complex social forces that constitute states and motivate their decisions, this includes religious forces. Therefore, this panel is seeking papers that can contribute to a discussion on theoretical frameworks we as researchers can use to study religion in international relations.
Innovative Panel: The ISA has developed a new panel program that seeks to innovate conference experience. This panel is proposing a media-oriented approach that will lead to discussion and debate on the issue of religious symbolism in IR. For this, the media will focus on religious iconography from various theo-political movements, religious organizations/institutions, etc. that have been used to motivate or incite radical religious movements from acts of terrorism to peace initiatives. Since this is a relatively new method of panel organization, input from interested contributors is welcome.
Please e-mail proposals to Sandy M. Livingston (University of Aberdeen): slivingston@abdn.ac.uk
Deadlines: Innovative Panel: 14 May 2010; Theoretical Panel: 25 May 2010
Call for papers for two panels dealing with religion in international relations. (May be of interest to political theology scholars in IR.)
In IR today, religion is a little understood and under-researched area that impacts both the political and international spheres. From development to security, economics and war, terrorism and institutional consciousness, religion is present via identity, language, narratives, or motivations. These panels seek to open a more comprehensive discussion on the exchange between religion and international relations by encouraging theoretical and case-study dialogue as a means of bringing issues of religion out of the shadows of research and the imaginations of academics. In order to critically analyze the nexus of religion and international relations, researchers need to debate the issue of religion rather than constitute it as an anomalous periphery subject.
Theoretical Panel: At this point, religion in IR is debated amongst secularists who exist on the periphery of international studies. This panel seeks to open a discussion on how to best approach religion in its many forms and roles that captures the intensity and relevancy of this field of research. Theoretical frameworks need to be explored so as to intensify a much needed spotlight on the depth of influence religion has in constructing and affecting relations between states. In order to understand international relations, we must understand the complex social forces that constitute states and motivate their decisions, this includes religious forces. Therefore, this panel is seeking papers that can contribute to a discussion on theoretical frameworks we as researchers can use to study religion in international relations.
Innovative Panel: The ISA has developed a new panel program that seeks to innovate conference experience. This panel is proposing a media-oriented approach that will lead to discussion and debate on the issue of religious symbolism in IR. For this, the media will focus on religious iconography from various theo-political movements, religious organizations/institutions, etc. that have been used to motivate or incite radical religious movements from acts of terrorism to peace initiatives. Since this is a relatively new method of panel organization, input from interested contributors is welcome.
Please e-mail proposals to Sandy M. Livingston (University of Aberdeen): slivingston@abdn.ac.uk
Deadlines: Innovative Panel: 14 May 2010; Theoretical Panel: 25 May 2010
06 May 2010
Book: Theological Interpretation of Culture in Post-Communist Context
Just published: Ivana Noble, "Theological Interpretation of Culture in Post-Communist Context: Central and East European Search for Roots" (Ashgate, April 2010):
http://ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9936&edition_id=12659
Publisher's description: "Twenty years after the fall of Communism in Central and East Europe is an ocassion [sic] to reevaluate the cultural and theological contribution from that region to the secularization-post-secularization debate. Czech theologian Ivana Noble develops a Trinitarian theology through a close dialogue with literature, music and film, which formed not only alternatives to totalitarian ideologies, but also followed the loss and reappeareance [sic] of belief in God. Noble explains that, by listening to the artists, the churches and theologians can deal with questions about the nature of the world, memory and ultimate fulfilment in a more nuanced way. Then, as partakers in the search undertaken by their secular and post-secular contemporaries, theologians can penetrate a new depth of meaning, sending out shoots from the stump of Christian symbolism. Drawing on the rich cultures of Central and East Europe and both Western and Eastern theological traditions, this book presents a theological reading of contemporary culture which is important not just for post-Communist countries but for all who are engaged in the debate on the boundaries between theology, politics and arts."
Endorsement: "Noble offers us in the West an encounter with the Other that cannot but give much food for thought about religion in our own increasingly post-institutional religious situations. Original not only in content but also methodology, her text promises numerous insights for political theology, liturgical studies, theological aesthetics, indeed, for all seeking to construct theologies at once fundamental and practical in this postmodern age." (Bruce T. Morrill, SJ, Boston College)
Ivana Noble is Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Charles University and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague.
http://ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9936&edition_id=12659
Publisher's description: "Twenty years after the fall of Communism in Central and East Europe is an ocassion [sic] to reevaluate the cultural and theological contribution from that region to the secularization-post-secularization debate. Czech theologian Ivana Noble develops a Trinitarian theology through a close dialogue with literature, music and film, which formed not only alternatives to totalitarian ideologies, but also followed the loss and reappeareance [sic] of belief in God. Noble explains that, by listening to the artists, the churches and theologians can deal with questions about the nature of the world, memory and ultimate fulfilment in a more nuanced way. Then, as partakers in the search undertaken by their secular and post-secular contemporaries, theologians can penetrate a new depth of meaning, sending out shoots from the stump of Christian symbolism. Drawing on the rich cultures of Central and East Europe and both Western and Eastern theological traditions, this book presents a theological reading of contemporary culture which is important not just for post-Communist countries but for all who are engaged in the debate on the boundaries between theology, politics and arts."
Endorsement: "Noble offers us in the West an encounter with the Other that cannot but give much food for thought about religion in our own increasingly post-institutional religious situations. Original not only in content but also methodology, her text promises numerous insights for political theology, liturgical studies, theological aesthetics, indeed, for all seeking to construct theologies at once fundamental and practical in this postmodern age." (Bruce T. Morrill, SJ, Boston College)
Ivana Noble is Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Charles University and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague.
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