“What do I owe my fellow citizens whose conscience reaches different conclusions than my own?”
It seems like an important task of political theology is to critically reflect on moments of political crisis by pulling back the veil on its latent theological content.
How we conceive of diakonía sheds a potentially critical light on existing roles and institutions associated with ‘service’.
We must develop strategies to resist the political deployment of the image of the innocent victim as a tool of further oppression and we must seek to mobilize the image of the innocent victim towards the end of emancipation and liberation.
Queries on enfleshment, the nature of materiality and the corporeal intertwining with histories of coloniality and race relations cannot be separated from an understanding of political theology and its mobilization.
The question for us, and for the field of political theology, is how do we wish to live in the end?
Joseph knows that this situation with Mary is not about legalities, or honor or shame or what other people may think or say; it is about God bringing Christ to the world. All that matters is God’s call. Joseph honors Mary, and their marriage, this family, as the opportunity God has created to bring hope, salvation to all the world.
Let us remember Metz’s apocalyptic witness dangerously, in our texts and in our embodied acts of solidarity.
While political theology must possess planetary (global) concerns, it must work locally and collaborate across locales to further understanding, decision, and action to meet those concerns.
Rather than understanding political theology as a single school of thought, I seek to define political theology as a more inclusive category by looking at the rich historical resources within each of the Abrahamic religions that help each tradition unpack the complex relationship between the political and theological spheres
“Can’t the disadvantaged be advantaged without disadvantaging us? Does their uplift necessarily have to entail our own loss?”
I cannot say that I hope for more discussions of political theology in 20 years. But I do hope for the endurance of conversation, indeed, for the preservation of the art and wisdom of conversation.