Introduction to the Second Edition

William T. Cavanaugh and Peter Manley Scott

A Second Edition

It is now nearly 15 years since the first edition of the Blackwell Companion to Political Theology was published. Since 2004, the topic of political theology has become more important, evident in the number of publications that have populated the field and in the use of the term in nontheological contexts.

The original edition of the volume was an introduction to and survey of the field. With the September 11, 2001, attacks still fresh in memory, the Companion gave an overview of the resources of the Christian tradition for political engagement, the important figures in political theology, the theological themes of political theology, an account of sociopolitical structures in theological perspective, and other Abrahamic faiths’ engagement with political theology. Such an approach was vital at that particular time and the steady sales of the volume indicate that it met – and still meets – an important need. However, debates over terrorism, fresh social developments, the growth of the field, and the interpretation of political theology by nontheological disciplines now require an augmentation of the first edition.

Since 2004, a new context has emerged characterized by increasing recognition of the shift in Christianity’s center of gravity to the global South. Fresh developments and movements must also now be considered: the urgency of climate change, virtuality and the digital age, the economic crisis of 2008, the discourse of religion and violence, and new modalities of war, among others. This revised and extended second edition of the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Theology will address all of these changes. The growth of Christianity in the global South has been addressed by recruiting further contributors from this area and by commissioning chapters on topics – such as postcolonialism – of high significance to the global South. New chapters addressing social developments and movements have been commissioned. The use of the term “political theology” beyond theology is also analyzed, as are shifts within the field of political theology (for example, by reference to the political economy).

A comprehensive diagnosis of these developments is well beyond the reach of this introduction. We would be remiss, however, if we did not at least note recent shifts in the discourse surrounding the nation‐state. Following the putative “end of history” and the triumph of capitalism over communism in the 1990s, many either celebrated the fading of the relevance of national borders or worried that nation‐states no longer possessed the power to resist the worst effects of globalization, especially in parts of the global South with “failed states.” More recently, by contrast, a resurgence of nationalism in Europe and the United States has called into question the idea that national sovereignty is fading in relevance in the face of the dominance of transnational capital. National identity can still apparently mobilize grievances and political movements against a loose set of realities labeled “globalization.” It remains to be seen, however, whether or not nationalism is truly opposed to transnational capitalism or is in some sense a wholly or partially owned subsidiary of it. State and market, government and corporation, have become so densely intertwined that simple oppositions of nation‐state versus globalization obscure more than they illuminate. In the United States, for example, the current resort to oxymorons like “billionaire populist” and “nationalist CEO of a global business empire” indicates that the reality is considerably more complex.

The resurgence of nationalism might, however, help shed light on another much‐discussed development related to political theology, the “resurgence of religion.” Questioning the salience of the “secularization thesis” – the idea that modernity brings with it, inevitably, the progressive fading of religion’s social power and political relevance – is nothing new. The “resurgence of religion” has been much discussed at least since Peter Berger and others recanted their previous assertions of the law‐like character of secularization in the 1990s. By then, the phenomenal growth of Christianity in the global South, the vitality of liberation theology, the rise of militant Islam, and a host of other factors had led most to abandon the secularization thesis, at least in its basic form. What is new since the first edition of this volume, however, is the increasing attention paid within political theology to genealogies of the term “religion” and the religious/secular dichotomy. In the wake of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Talal Asad, and others, scholars have shown the historical contingency of the religious/secular binary, and many have argued, in a Durkheimian vein, that a religion is whatever acts like one. There is nothing essentially religious that is shared by Christianity and Theravada Buddhism and Hinduism on the one hand, and not by so‐called “secular” phenomena like nationalism and Marxism and free‐market ideology on the other. Secularization may not name the process by which the secular waxes and the religious wanes; it might name the process by which the very religious/secular distinction is constructed and the ideology by which this construction is presented to the world as a fact about the nature of things.

When we thought we agreed on what “religion” was, we could argue about whether it was fading or making a comeback. To many practitioners of political theology today, however, “religion” is not resurgent because it never really went away, although it may now take different forms. What the term “political theology” names, then, is the recognition that politics never was drained of the sacred; the primary locus of the sacred merely shifted from church to nation‐state and market. This was the central insight of Carl Schmitt when he launched the twentieth‐century discourse of “political theology”: the form of state sovereignty was borrowed from God’s sovereignty, and the miracle morphed into the ruler’s ability to decide on the extra‐legal exception.

What Is Political Theology?

Since the appearance of the first edition of this volume, the term “political theology” has been used more and more widely. One of us has argued that the term “political theology” identifies the relation between salvation and power, between divine action and political order (Scott 2008). Three uses of the term are identified: the relation between public and private, the transcendence of present political circumstances, and the theological discussion of salvation and power. Taken with the changes and developments outlined in the previous section, these constitute a new context for political theology. This Companion operates with an expansive understanding of what is encompassed by the term “political theology.” Theology is broadly understood as discourse about God, and human persons and other creatures as they relate to God. The political is broadly understood as the use of structural power to organize a society or community. Under this spacious rubric, politics may be understood for the purpose of a political theology in terms of the self‐governance of communities and individuals; this rubric goes beyond Max Weber’s more circumscribed definition of politics as seeking state power. Political theology is, then, the analysis and criticism of political arrangements (including cultural–psychological, social, and economic aspects) from the perspective of differing interpretations of God’s ways with the world.

For the purposes of this volume, political theology is construed primarily as Christian political theology. Not only would the inclusion of other faiths have made an already fat volume unwieldy, but the term “political theology” was coined in a Christian context and has continued to be a significant term within Christian discourse. Two points need to be made about this account. First of all, we wish to stress that the political theologies presented in this volume are concerned always with the matter of theological excess. Political theology is not reducible to politics: in the relation between salvation and power, priority is to be given to salvation. This leads to a second point: since 2004, there has been a growth in what we shall here call “secular” political theology, that is, a style of political theology which regards God as a fiction – a fiction to be taken seriously but a fiction nonetheless. The work of secular thinkers influenced by Carl Schmitt is exemplary here: Paul Kahn, Giorgio Agamben, et al. Such a style of political theology is to be contrasted with traditioned or theological political theology which works from an interpretation of the reality of God. It is this second style that populates this Companion. (In Chapter 41 an account of the content and emergence of Schmittian “secular” political theology is offered in addition.)

Within this general framework, the task of political theology is conceived in different ways by different thinkers. For some, politics is seen as a “given” with its own secular autonomy. Politics and theology are therefore two essentially distinct activities, one to do with public authority, and the...