What is the Task of Political Theology?
For most practitioners, political theology is a vocation, a calling that illuminates our lived reality. It is, as Sheldon Wolin says of political theory, not only about the polity but for the polity. Political theology investigates the ways in which our theological concepts inform our collective existence and political experiences. As with Wolin's vision of political theory, political theology is "not so much interested in political practices, or how they operate, but in their meaning." The task of the political theologian is to unearth the "unthought" that informs our political, economic, and social practices which makes a metaphysical account of society not only inevitable but necessary.
Political theology is a critical endeavour. “Critical,” in this academic sense, means something close to “self-critical,” or reflective. In other words, political theology is a practice actively involved in recognizing its own limitations. This critical posture begins by recognizing the precariousness of its terms: the political and the theological. The compartmentalization of these disciplines, as Immanuel Wallerstein points out, is largely the product of 19th century European thought. Wallerstein explains:
[World-system analysis] has not been able to find a way to surmount the most enduring (and misleading) legacy of nineteenth-century social science–the division of social analysis into three arenas, three logics, three levels–the economic, the political and the sociocultural. This trinity stands in the middle of the road, in granite, blocking our intellectual advance. Many find it unsatisfying, but in my view no one has yet found the way to dispense with the language and its implications, some of which are correct but most of which are probably not.
This problem of compartmentalization is compounded by the famous difficulty of defining our second term. We find a helpful definition in Enrique Dussel, who calls theology a “means [of] thinking about God, about a God who reveals himself in history.” This begins to give us a sense of a possible relationship between theology and politics: for Dussel, to believe in God “is to comprehend and embrace the import of what he reveals to us. In other words, it is to comprehend and embrace the meaning of history.”
If political theology is for the polity, then investigations into “the meaning of history” must foreground questions of suffering and oppression. Hence, one contribution of the political theologian is to unearth the reified and invisible theological boundaries of oppressive orders that present themselves as though divine and eternal, yet stand on no real foundations. The political theologian must remind us that no human system is divine by explicating the theological, unthought narratives that have been appropriated by oppressive regimes throughout history.
Yet for the political theologian, it is not sufficient simply to ask: what are the theological underpinnings that legitimize oppression? Such an investigation runs the risk of proceeding only for the oppressed, but not fully with the oppressed. If the God under consideration is one who “reveals himself in history” and who makes ethical demands about care for the poor, then the political theologian must be especially concerned with those who stand at the margins. Sociologist of religion Ali Shariati explains that the proper intellectual is one whose ethical awareness allows him or her to reflect and act with regards to the fate of the oppressed “Other”. It is through this reflection, Shariati argues, that the intellectual can discern both what can be done and what ought to be done, linking the domains of political theory and theology. For Shariati, the political is a way of seeing the world, a sense of solidarity, an intellectual and visceral awareness of the collective and historical fate of the polity. Enrique Dussel echoes a similar commitment, dedicating his recent Twenty Theses on Politics “toward young people—that is, toward those who need to understand that the noble vocation of politics is a thrilling patriotic and collective task.”
A possible limitation imposed on the political theologian is the reduction of oppression to the “political”. I want to suggest, however, that political theology can move beyond this reductionism in three ways. First, as we have noted, one must be cognizant that the boundaries of what we deem to be “political” are elusive and contingent. Second, rather than seeing the political or theological as separate logics or spaces, we see them as an integrated network. Third, we must recognize that our ultimate objective is to move beyond the political and towards the theological. This is to say that the political is a lived medium through which we gain insight into the theological concepts that inform the political as one human hierarchy amongst others (economic, social, and so on).
At its best, political theology can excavate the implicit theological assumptions that render certain political spaces “autonomous,” or pseudo-divine. By identifying the narrow metaphysical horizons of an oppressive order, we can then stand outside of it and think from without. That is precisely what Enrique Dussel meant when he defined metaphysics as “knowing how to ponder the system and world from ‘the exteriority of the Other (God).’” This, in turn, allows us to revive the political, not as a space of ossification and legitimation, but of renewal.
Ali S. Harfouch is a writer and researcher focusing on secularity, contemporary Islamic thought, and political theology. He obtained his Master of Arts in Political Science from the American University of Beirut. Twitter: @asharfouch