Political Theology Without Religion

There is a constant tension that exists within each individual. This is the struggle between the hidden ideologies and fixed ideas which enslave the individual and the need to rid themselves of them. It is through these that implicit religion forms. We require, in order to counteract this, a new theology, a secular theology – one which emphasizes the individual. In order to bring about a new theology, it is necessary to reconsider the philosophies of Adam Weishaupt, Louis Althusser, and Max Stirner and bring them into the modern discussion of implicit religion. This paper aims to bring together these understudied philosophers as well as contemporary leaders in political theology in order to reimagine the potential of the individual to rid themselves from fixed ideas and to realize their potential.

The Tools that B(l)ind: Technology and Religion

Technology is a new theology. Substantively, technology represents the culmination of human creation undergirded by reason, without reference to the supernatural. In that sense, technology is a kind of secular substitute for theology. Functionally, through its ubiquity and esoteric rules that govern our lives so comprehensively, technology echoes the binding nature of theology as a subset of religion (from religare, meaning ‘to rebind’). However, the binding nature of techno-secular theology produces biopolitical violence. In this article, I propose that recognition (‘re‑cognition’) of technology as techne, a tool to be used for good, rather than a religare, a binding, warrants a return to a theological framework to develop a more charitable community. This will facilitate the development and improvement of theology as a means of exploring mystery.

Epistemological critique of “Islamic reason” in the neomodernist project of Mohammed Arkoun

The article deals with analyzing the historical epistemology of “Islamic reason” as it is developed in the works of the French philosopher Mohammed Arkoun. The key concepts comprising the supporting framework of Arkoun’s theory are clarified. Special attention is given to the problem of historical interrelation of religion and violence, the role of “dogmatic enclosure” in legitimizing the religious violence and the “secular theology” as a possible antidote that could preserve the religion from being instrumentalized by different political actors. In Arkoun’s view, one can reach the unthought of Islamic religious tradition by consciously resorting to modern historical-anthropological, linguistic and sociological knowledge. This appeal makes it possible to reveal a special “regime of truth” and the attitude that have accompanied Islamic reason throughout history, and, therefore, to reach new horizons of thought. This whole process may be called criticism of the Islamic mind. According to Arkoun, the “deconstruction” of traditional structures performed in the course of this criticism is not identical with the destruction of the Islamic mind par excellence, but coincides with the emancipation of its content within the framework of the emergent reason, that is, with the demonstration of its inclusive and truly all-human — humanistic — potential. In the conclusion of the article, both the theoretical scientific and practical existential significance of reaching the unthought of Islamic tradition is noted.

Religion, Emotion, Sensation

Religion, Emotion, Sensation asks what the blooming field of critical inquiry known as affect theory has to say about God or gods, religion or religions, scriptures, theologies, or liturgies. Contributors explore the crossings and crisscrossings between affect theory and theology and the study of religion more broadly. At once transpersonal and prepersonal, affect transcends and subtends the human. As such, it has affinity with divinity, but a divinity that is indissociable from materiality. Bringing together affect theorists, theologians, biblical scholars, and scholars of religion, this volume enacts creative transdisciplinary interventions in the study of affect and religion through exploring such topics as biblical narratives, Christology, animism, Rastafarianism, the Egyptian mosque movement, the unending Korean War, the Sewol ferry disaster, trans and gender queer identities, YA fiction, historiography, the prison industrial complex, debt and neoliberalism, and death and poetry, all in dialogue with such fields as postcolonial and decolonial theories, critical animality studies, secular theology, feminist science studies, new materialism, and indigenous futurism. Not only does the volume map affect theory and add breadth and depth to the study of affect and religion, but it demonstrates the political and social import of such study. Those desiring an introduction to affect theory, together with those eager to delve into its wide-ranging applications within religious studies, will find this volume to be essential reading.

“Orthodoxy or Death”: Religious Fundamentalism during the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

This essay first contextualizes the question of the relationship between the religious and secular aspects of contemporary Greece that lies behind of any discussion of fundamentalism. It is important to note that the Greek case looks quite different from other Western societies. Despite the (external) change or progress in various aspects of institutions or daily life, religiosity remains high in Greece, and the religio-political identity of Greek Orthodoxy has allowed the Church to maintain a voice in the public square. This study then provides a brief overview of the main aspects of religious fundamentalism (e.g., reactivity, selectivity, inerrancy, moral Manicheanism) in contemporary Greece, and it concludes by describing the basic contours of an Orthodox secular theology—focusing on the incarnation, eschatology, unity of truth, and the modern existential concern—that offer a response to the current state of this Orthodox fundamentalism.

A Fine Subject for Tragedy

This chapter reads Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748) alongside dramatic precursors such as Charles Johnson’s Cælia; or, The Perjur’d Lover (1733) and public responses to the novel in order to argue that Richardson’s seminal text staged a debate over the basic interpretability through which affliction’s experience is navigable and thus ultimately made bearable. Responses to the novel are analyzed, tracing contemporary theories of poetic justice in order to account for readerly expectations and their frustration as crucial to Richardson’s broader moral project. In doing so, the chapter reads poetic justice as a secular theology against which tragedy is positioned. The chapter then turns to consider Clarissa’s own fractured response to her suffering, placing her “Meditations” in dialogue with the epistolary of the novel in order to analyze her rhetorical and practical responses to pain.