The Political Theology of President George W. Bush (Abraham, 2007)
[su_document url="https://oimts.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/2007-6-abraham.pdf"]
Tag: 05 political
Political church and the profane state in John Milbank and William Cavanaugh by Richard Davis (2013)
This thesis argues that the state is neither sacred nor profane, but if accepted as mundane, it is something that can be freely engaged with by the church as part of its overall witness to politics and society. In order to outline and assess the political theology of Milbank and Cavanaugh three biblical and doctrinal lenses – creation, preservation and redemption – are used to judge their work.
Liturgy as Politics: An Interview with William Cavanaugh (Cavanaugh, 2005)
This is often our approach to liturgy and social life: we try to “read” the liturgy for symbols and meanings that we take out and apply in the “real world” — the offering means we should give of our wealth, the kiss of peace means we should seek peace in international relations, and so on. This is fine, but it doesn’t address the liturgy as an action that forms a body, the body of Christ.
“A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House”: Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State (Cavanaugh, 1995)
My purpose in this essay will be to focus on the way revulsion to killing in the name of religion is used to legitimize the transfer of ultimate loyalty to the modern State. Specifically I will examine how the so-called “Wars of Religion” of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe are evoked as the founding moment of modern liberalism by theorists such as John
Rawls, Judith Shklar, and Jeffrey Stout.
Cardinal Pell and the Theology of the Nation State (Cavanaugh, 2005)
How might a Christian envision the way the world ought to be and how humans ought to live in community. I guess if you take the biblical story, which I do with my very beginning students, and you look at the biblical story as a whole, it can be told as the story of primordial unity and then scattering and gathering again, salvation as a kind of gathering again into a harmony amongst humans and between humans and God. And so the way the story of the Fall in Genesis is told it encapsulates the whole thing: that there is this Creation that begins good and then through sin kind of falls apart and so on and then we are to be gathered back together.
Setting An Agenda for Political Theology, Joan Lockwood O’Donovan at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary (Lockwood O’Donovan, 2007)
Lecture and Q&A from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary 2007 Conference on Setting the Agenda for Political Theology
Setting An Agenda for Political Theology: Mercy (Webster, 2007)
Lecture (“Mercy”) and Q&A from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary 2007 Conference on Setting the Agenda for Political Theology
The Concept of Rights in Christian Moral Discourse (Lockwood O’Donovan)
The entrenchment of rights language in contemporary discourse is beyond dispute. No less significantly there are indications that the concept of rights is itself passing beyond dispute. The concept of subjective rights, or rights ascribable to individuals and groups, has entered contemporary political and legal currency primarily through the liberal contractarian tradition. Consequently, the meanings of the term ‘rights’ cannot be properly ascertained in detachment from this theoretical context. For these meanings are embedded in a constellation of political-legal, philosophical and theological concepts with a complex history. Thus, to appraise the contemporary vocabulary of ‘rights’ is to appraise the dynamic theoretical complex that has given rise to it. If such an appraisal seeks its standard of judgement in the Bible, then it is bound to proceed theologically.
My impression is that theologians often engage in a naive and facile appropriation of the language of rights.