More on Political Violence and Christian Theology



My post yesterday about political violence and its alternatives put me in mind of another paper I wrote a few years ago but had forgotten about. It was for the 2022 joint annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion.

Since it's on topic and specifically deals with political violence and political force that is downstream from some ideas that are rooted in, or sometimes justified by, certain strains of Christian theology, I thought I'd post it here.

In the paper (link below), I talk about the Christian roots of many of modernity's political movements, including classical liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, etc. I don't touch (much) on the political movements of the past few years, as this was a more historically oriented paper. But it was contemporary political tendencies that got me thinking about all this in the first place.

Here's a quote, but there's a lot more at full paper just below: 

As essential as literal millennialism and expectation of a coming messianic and earthly New Jerusalem was to some early Christians, other early Christians, and for a long time the dominant strain of Christian thought, favored a view of the millennium and New Jerusalem that was immanentized in the present age. Both these movements were also fundamentally animated by a strong belief in Christian progress, both now and in the eschaton, of human progress toward becoming like God, and even in a real sense “becoming god.” These elements: a conviction of God’s action in history, of a spiritual reality breaking forth now through the ecclesial community of Christians, and of history’s direction toward man’s ultimate transformation and God’s final glory took on an energy of their one. One so strong that, even when sundered from their Christian roots beginning especially in the eighteenth century ... the millennialistic impulse, combined with the human aspiration for transformation into something higher than themselves, and with access to state power, would provide both the ends and the means for Western political thought and action.

Like I say, there's a lot more in the full essay. 


(Note, this is the spoken version--it's not in publishable form yet, so bear with its provisional nature. Some of these ideas will soon make it into my next book...)

--
Image: Religious symbolism on display during the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol violent protest. (Flickr photo by Tyler Merbler)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bringing God's Kingdom to Earth: Activism, Assassination, or Another Way Entirely?

Image
My research into the New Jerusalem has proven constantly relevant throughout my research. Surprisingly often, the news cycle reminds me of aspects of the reception of Revelation's holy city that I'm looking into for this current DFG project. This has been happening a lot recently. (In fact, it's part of why I wanted to study this topic in the first place.) Tragically this time, it happened again last week with what seems to be the at-least-partly politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk. Folks back home in America are talking more and more about politics and faith and how they may, ought, may not, or ought not come together, especially in light of the growing number of recent politically motivated assassinations or attempted assassinations in the USA. I'm thinking of, in the last year or so, the targeting of Charlie Kirk, Rep. Melissa Hortman (D-MN), and Pres. Donald Trump. I'm also thinking of the credible threats of hanging against Vice Pres. Mike Pence...
Read more

Next book, first chapter written!

Image
As much as I enjoy having written, I don't always enjoy the writing itself.  Like Flannery O'Connor famously said, writing well is "like giving birth to a piano, sideways." I'm the sort of writer that needs incentives to put words on paper. So when an email came into my inbox announcing two seminars--one the Uni Regensburg Post-Graduate Theological Seminar this past week, and another as part of a Göttingen-Regensburg Theological Seminar scheduled for late March--I knew it was time to commit to presenting two chapters--the first two I'll write!  Because promising to colleagues that I'll present on two chapters means that I'll have to actually write those two chapters in order to present them. And that's progress.  The Regensburg seminar happened this past Friday. Via Zoom, it turns out, because of inclement weather--Glatteis, which also cancelled our daughter's school that day.  The paper was called "'The World’s Most Miraculous Place’:...
Read more

The Point of it All: New Jerusalem and Teleology

Image
Stream of consciousness, un-proofread update. Here we go... I've been writing up a storm in the last half year. Mainly papers for conferences in Chicago (NAPS), Leuven, Sophia (EABS), and other things I'm probably forgetting about, and then polished and expanded versions for publishing in various venues. Ending versus Meaning  One of the main ideas I've been trying to develop circles around my attempt to make sense of a certain fact that is becoming more and more apparent to me as my research proceeds.  And that's this: The New Jerusalem, both in John's thinking when he writes Revelation, and in the late antique reception of it, is a condensed symbol that stands not principally for the end of everything but of the point of everything--a symbol that somehow  makes sense of everything.   Yes, early Christian authors and intellectuals were concerned about what some modern Christians like to talk about as "the end times." But, unlike many modern Christians...
Read more