The created heavens and earth–indeed all of God’s creation—are fleeting, temporal, and ephemeral, not permanent like God’s eternal Kingdom. Our worldly kingdoms aren’t completely worthless, but they are penultimate and ought to be despised in contrast to God’s eternal stable Kingdom.
In a recent episode of The Word on Fire, Bishop Robert Barron examines Marxism and its relationship to Catholic social teaching. Although rightly pointing out some of the contrasts, Barron neglects the ways Catholic social thought has benefited from dialogue with Marxism.
Is it the case that the European political theology is indeed derived, not from the universal requirements of any sovereign order (as Schmitt sometimes claimed), but rather from specific Christian underpinnings? Or is it the case that a fundamentally similar political ideology, one which depends on the logic of sovereignty rather than on parochial cultural assumptions, can indeed be found elsewhere?
The field has often shown a Eurocentric bias…As such, the field has left out important reflections on political theology during the anticolonial and postcolonial struggles in the Global South.
Faith is an enacted practice we live into through our whole selves, continuously laying our souls and bodies bare and vulnerable before the unknown. The consequences of this are thoroughgoing, touching every single aspect of our lives and making demands on both our loyalties and our activities in the world.
Invoking “natural law” in debates over human rights does not necessarily lead to privileging religious rights over others, denying people’s rights to express their sexual or gender identity, or refusing to acknowledge economic and social rights.
If one speaks of Political Theology as a “field” with its own “canon” one must surely be preparing to deconstruct it.
True ritual is a searching indictment of all injustice, a corrective for it, and a model for righteous behavior. Presenting ourselves before God in our ceremonies, we invite his inspection of the entirety of our lives; recognizing this fact, we must comport ourselves accordingly in all that we do. Civil religion and cultural religiosity will betray all those who put their hope in them.
The quest for a homeland and the experience of being a stranger and an alien—a refugee—in the world is central to the calling of the faithful in Hebrews 11. This reality should remain integral to our self-understanding as the people of God today.
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The texts I have identified as “need to become ‘essential’ texts” function in this spirit…Each addresses questions of community-creation outside of liberal norms and modes of power.
This text is not preaching erasure of difference under One Christ but reminding us that we are all interdependent. Our difference is always in relation, and not an ontological chasm.