The Elusiveness of the Sacred
At this moment of extreme political intensity, Paul W. Kahn’s new book, Political Theology, appears as a timely meditation. By means of a sustained engagement with the controversial German legal...
View ArticleTaking Exception: Paul Kahn Rocks the Liberal Boat
In the October 13 issue of the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner published a critique of the Bush administration’s policy on torture, under the title “Our State of Exception”. He didn’t give Carl...
View ArticleMaking the People Sovereign
Kahn’s book is intriguing and in many places insightful, conversant in theoretical literature ranging from that of Giorgio Agamben to that of Brian Leiter. I have two worries, one about Kahn’s...
View ArticleSquaring the Exceptional and the Normative? A Realist Response to Kahn’s...
This book is a timely intervention within current debates about the role of religion, politics, philosophy and the public square. I was reading it as the Western World was once again reflecting (and in...
View ArticlePolitical Theology: A Response (Part One: The Disciplinary Divide)
It is certainly interesting to see a reflection of myself in the response of another discipline, even if I sometimes have trouble recognizing that image. Most useful will be for me to address the...
View ArticlePolitical Theology: A Response (Part Two: The Autochthonous State)
In my prior posting, I was concerned with elaborating the disciplinary position from which I take up the project of political theology. It is a part of the secular study of our political practices and...
View ArticleA Review of “The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law”...
The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law, edited by Leonard V. Kaplan and Rudy Koshar, is a set of papers from a conference held at UW-Madison in the fall of 2008 (Lexington Books,...
View ArticleA Review of “The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law”...
What brought Strauss into conversation with Schmitt was their mutual disillusionment not just with the political liberalism of the Weimar Republic but with post-Enlightenment liberalism in general. For...
View ArticleGod and International Relations: Christian Theology and World Politics
In this fresh and provocative study, Mika Luoma-aho is not content with merely contributing to skepticism concerning the secular narrative about the Westphalian order or with reconfiguring the dilemmas...
View ArticleLet’s Talk About God and World Politics, by Mika Luoma-aho
God and world politics: these two are scarcely found in a single sentence, would you not agree? To talk about religion and international relations is constant, books coming out right left & center,...
View ArticlePolitical Theology and Islamic Studies Symposium: What is Islamic Political...
The revival of interest in political theology at the turn of the millennium began with Islam, then moved to Christianity. In the wake of September 11, 2001, it became clear that not all religion was...
View ArticleThe Political Theology Syllabi Project: György Geréby
. . . We begin with a first dip into the conceptual issues (the issues of political form, legitimacy, cosmic analogy, acclamations, secularization) by reading the third chapter of Schmitt’s Political...
View ArticleThe Political Theology Syllabi Project: Martin Kavka
. . . As you can tell from the course description, I even started the course by asking, in effect, "Why are people using this term?" I'm still not sure that I know the answer to that question almost...
View ArticleThe Political Theology Syllabi Project: Dana Hollander
In the academic setting of Religious Studies, developing curricular spaces in which to thematize the relationship of religion and politics is a highly effective way both to engage undergraduate...
View ArticleBook Preview – The Future of Illusion by Victoria Kahn
Victoria Kahn (University of California, Berkeley) previews her new book, The Future of Illusion: Political Theology and Early Modern Texts (University of Chicago Press, 2013). The Future of Illusion...
View ArticleReasoning about Exceptions – Editorial for Political Theology 15.5
One of the most important tasks for political theologians today is the cultivation of capacities for democratic reasoning about exceptions to the rule of law. The task is important because liberal...
View ArticlePolitical Theology or Social Ethics?: Towards The Democratic (Keri Day)
Within Christian traditions, one may be met with this provocative question: does “political theology” or “social ethics” sponsor liberative practices oriented towards human flourishing? Interestingly,...
View ArticleWeird John Brown and the Uses of Elusiveness (E. Brooks Holifield)
In conjunction with the Marginalia (part of the LA Review of Books), Political Theology Today has organized a symposium on Ted Smith's extraordinary new book Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the...
View ArticleThe Blurred Line Between Law and Violence (William T. Cavanaugh)
A bishop recently said that 90% of the homilies he has ever heard can be boiled down to two words: “Try harder.” Of all the things that Ted Smith’s book does well, the most compelling for me is his...
View ArticleJohn Brown: Madman? Terrorist? Righteous warrior? (Peter Ochs)
Ted Smith delivers an unprecedented thesis about Brown's violent assault on slaveholders as the human side of a “divine violence.” From beyond the limits of any earthly system of political justice and...
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