Religious truth is like troth, the experience of fidelity where one is affianced and then betrothed. What is true, then, is an experience of faith, and this is as true for agnostics and atheists as it is for theists. Those who cannot believe still require religious truth and a framework of ritual in which they can believe. At the core of Wilde’s remark is the seemingly contradictory idea of the faith of the faithless and the belief of unbelievers, a faith which does not give up on the idea of truth, but transfigures its meaning.
As the Iowa Caucus approaches, increased attention is being paid to the religious affiliations of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Much of this discussion has centered upon Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, but the media has also paid a significant amount of attention to Newt Gingrich’s Catholicism. The latest round of controversy in the mainstream media began with Laurie Goodstein’s New York Times piece, in which she speculated about whether Gingrich’s 2009 conversion to Catholicism fits into a broader shift towards the right for Catholic participation in American politics in the post-Kennedy era. Likewise, Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s NPR piece narrated the details of his conversion process, highlighting the pivotal role of his current wife, Callista, as well as his attraction to the intellectual tradition of the Church.
“Political theology” as discourse came back into circulation almost a hundred years ago thanks to the efforts of Carl Schmitt. In Germany, at least, its feasibility as a theological category was promptly booted out of play by his close friend Erik Peterson (d. 1960) in an oft-cited – but less often read – monograph on “Monotheism as a Political Problem” (1935). That and other writings of Peterson’s are now available in English translation, most of them for the first time, in my edition of Theological Tractates (Stanford University Press, 2011). Peterson reveals himself to have been an “anti-political” theologian who yet possessed an acute sense of the political dimension of subjects as diverse as liturgy, mysticism, ecclesiology, and martyrdom.
First, I want to take social practices and norms as foundational. They do not come from anywhere else, not from people or institutions or God. It is practices and norms all the way down, as it were. Second, I want to present practices and norms as always in conflict. Norms are derived from practices, but they always misrepresent practices; practices are pulled towards norms.
The Libyan situation poses very different questions as whatever regime Gaddafi was leading has clearly been removed by the revolutionaries, and hence the question of what will replace it is currently vexing minds in Libya and beyond.
The deeply politico-theological questions of shame as an act, guilt as an affect, and redemption as an aspiration remain, to my mind, under-examined in genealogies of modern political ideas, especially regarding the narration and critique of imperial history.
Prophets certainly tend to be charismatic, which suggests that charisma can potentially serve as an index of ethical leadership, but prophets aren’t always charismatic, at least not in an obvious way.
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To gain power, some leaders buttress their narratives with their institutional credentials, while others rely on intangible but often more powerful authority: the authority of charisma.
In a place where Caesar’s authority appeared unquestionable, Peter recognizes another kingdom and another source of authority. His confession quietly challenges every power that claims the final word over human life, hope, and belonging. It reorients allegiance away from imperial claims toward the reign of God revealed in Jesus Christ.