Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | April/2022 |
Spalte: | 349–351 |
Kategorie: | Dogmen- und Theologiegeschichte |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Phillips, Elizabeth, Rowlands, Anna, and Amy Daughton [Eds.] |
Titel/Untertitel: | T & T Clark Reader in Political Theology. |
Verlag: | London u. a.: Bloomsbury T & T Clark 2021. 736 S. Kart. £ 49,99. ISBN 9780567666963. |
Rezensent: | Dafydd Mills Daniel |
The T&T Clark Reader in Political Theology (London, 2021) is something of a treasure trove for students, teachers, and general readers of political and moral theology.
The reader is edited and compiled by (in the order they appear on the book’s cover): Elizabeth Phillips, Director of Studies, Westcott House (an Anglican theological college based in Cambridge); Anna Rowlands, Associate Professor in Catholic Social Thought and Practice, Durham University; and Amy Daughton, Lecturer in Practical Theology, University of Birmingham.
Dr Phillips is an ›overarching‹ figure here, at least in the sense that the book is designed as a companion to her Political Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London, 2012). For example, the extracts included in this reader are divided up into eight sections which ›correspond‹ to those in the earlier book, while the chosen texts that comprise the reader are many of those directly discussed or highlighted as further reading in the earlier book. However, as the co-written introduction points out, this is only ›one‹ way of using the book, which also goes beyond its companion by including extracts from texts not discussed there.
In one sense, I have described the book as something of a trea-sure trove, because of the texts that are brought together here, which are those that (one hopes) excite teachers and entice students and general readers alike. However, in a much more important sense I have done so, because of how these key texts are arranged and introduced within the book.
The books is divide up into eight sections, with their own introductions, three written by Dr Phillips, three by Dr Rowlands, and two by Dr Daughton.
The first two sections, through a mix of scriptural, patristic, medieval, and twentieth century writers, explore the longevity of key questions and concerns for political theology within Christian theology itself, and how the discipline of political theology, as such, emerges. The remaining six sections, in effect, explore whether and if so to what extent questions – whether (and, if so, to what extent) the church is political; Jesus is political; Christians can support violence; can support liberalism; can support the marginalised; can relate end-times to these-times in creation.
What is impressive here is how each section illustrates, just as each introduction adeptly and expertly explains, both developments and continuities, oppositions and shared heuristics, with-in political theology. So, on the one hand, changes in the issues explored, and in how they are approached, by individual theol-ogians, and within Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Or-thodox denominations, are indicated, and we have a sense of how political theology advances through time and place. On the other hand, an historical eye is always open, and we have a sense of how what is distinctive about political theology within a particular time, figure, or movement is not necessarily something that ultimately distinguishes it from themes and concerns in what has come be-fore.
Also noticeable and commendable here, is not only the exploration of political theology through time and place, and so through, for example, complex Augustinian, liberationist, womanist, and anabaptist shades, but, as such, the attention to political theology in, ostensibly, non-theologians, including Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke, Jürgen Habermas, and Slavoj Žižek.
There are some minor quibbles. For the most part, the reader is very good at not just giving us a particular figures’ political theology, but how their theology came to be enacted politically; as in, for example, discussions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth, Dorothy Day and James Cone. It would have been interesting to hear more here with respect to, for example, William Temple (the wel-fare state), Jürgen Habermas (the EU), Reinhold Niebuhr (as echoed by myriad US presidents in justification of war), not least because these figures and issues directly relate to the dramatic opening to the book, which calls attention to the reader, as not just of academic interest, but as a way of thinking through, and reacting to, some current political events.
Also, a minor issue (that stems from the publishers rather than the editors, no doubt) is that the bibliographical information for the texts is bundled up at the beginning rather than attached in, for example, a footnote at the beginning of each extract, which makes finding the original source and date of publication cumbersome. However, such very minor quibbles do not detract from a volume which brings together, and (to return to the treasure metaphor) encourages us to mine, a wealthy vein of primary political theol-ogy, not least thanks to the rich section introductions from each of the three editors.
Indeed, the section introductions, despite being just a few pages, are often better than some textbooks, not just in the succinctly expressed information they contain, but in how they clearly, and seemingly effortlessly, encapsulate the nuances and conundrums that are central to how different strands of political theology de-velop, and which, as such, are often the key stumbling-blocks for students (including, for example, shifts of emphasis in Luther, contested uses of Augustine, the differences between political and public theology, how rejecting politics is not necessarily apolitical, the ›cultural turn‹ in black theology, and so on).
For these introductions in themselves it is worth reading the book, and recommending it to students, let alone for the curated material, spanning the entire, and ongoing, history of Christian political theology, it contains.