Immigration: Is Sovereignty or Law – or Freedom – at stake?
Kahn assumes the United States, as a state, to be a ‘norm’ and does not seem to grapple with anything or anyone external to it: his focus is internal. I would like to suggest that immigrants have been...
View ArticleThe Elusiveness of the Sacred
At this moment of extreme political intensity, Paul W. Kahn’s new book, Political Theology, appears as a timely meditation. By means of a sustained engagement with the controversial German legal...
View ArticleTaking Exception: Paul Kahn Rocks the Liberal Boat
In the October 13 issue of the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner published a critique of the Bush administration’s policy on torture, under the title “Our State of Exception”. He didn’t give Carl...
View ArticleMaking the People Sovereign
Kahn’s book is intriguing and in many places insightful, conversant in theoretical literature ranging from that of Giorgio Agamben to that of Brian Leiter. I have two worries, one about Kahn’s...
View ArticleAm I Impossible? A Political Theologian’s Response to Kahn’s Political Theology
A sensible theologian gets used to the marginalization of theology in the mainstream academy. To find a book about the importance of political theology by a legal scholar at Yale is, however, cause for...
View ArticleSquaring the Exceptional and the Normative? A Realist Response to Kahn’s...
This book is a timely intervention within current debates about the role of religion, politics, philosophy and the public square. I was reading it as the Western World was once again reflecting (and in...
View ArticlePolitical Theology: A Response (Part One: The Disciplinary Divide)
It is certainly interesting to see a reflection of myself in the response of another discipline, even if I sometimes have trouble recognizing that image. Most useful will be for me to address the...
View ArticlePolitical Theology: A Response (Part Two: The Autochthonous State)
In my prior posting, I was concerned with elaborating the disciplinary position from which I take up the project of political theology. It is a part of the secular study of our political practices and...
View ArticleThe Politics of Sacrifice—Exodus 12:1-14
In the Passover we find a myth of the foundation of a nation that differs markedly from the contractarian myths of the Western liberal tradition. It disclosure of the sacrificial basis of the political...
View ArticleThe Politics of Abraham’s Foreskin—Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
The promise that Abraham will become a great nation is connected with the circumcision of his foreskin, forging a connection between sex and politics. This connection has controversial and unsettling...
View ArticlePolitical Theology Is Not Theological Enough (David Newheiser)
The following is the third of a five-part symposium on the question “how theological is political theology”, which took place at the 2016 American Academy of Religion meeting in San Antonio. The first...
View ArticleTaking Exception: Paul Kahn Rocks the Liberal Boat
In the October 13 issue of the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner published a critique of the Bush administration’s policy on torture, under the title “Our State of Exception”. He didn’t give Carl...
View ArticleMaking the People Sovereign
Kahn’s book is intriguing and in many places insightful, conversant in theoretical literature ranging from that of Giorgio Agamben to that of Brian Leiter. I have two worries, one about Kahn’s...
View ArticleAm I Impossible? A Political Theologian’s Response to Kahn’s Political Theology
A sensible theologian gets used to the marginalization of theology in the mainstream academy. To find a book about the importance of political theology by a legal scholar at Yale is, however, cause for...
View ArticleSquaring the Exceptional and the Normative? A Realist Response to Kahn’s...
This book is a timely intervention within current debates about the role of religion, politics, philosophy and the public square. I was reading it as the Western World was once again reflecting (and in...
View ArticlePolitical Theology: A Response (Part One: The Disciplinary Divide)
It is certainly interesting to see a reflection of myself in the response of another discipline, even if I sometimes have trouble recognizing that image. Most useful will be for me to address the...
View ArticlePolitical Theology: A Response (Part Two: The Autochthonous State)
In my prior posting, I was concerned with elaborating the disciplinary position from which I take up the project of political theology. It is a part of the secular study of our political practices and...
View ArticleThe Politics of Sacrifice—Exodus 12:1-14 (Alastair Roberts)
In the Passover we find a myth of the foundation of a nation that differs markedly from the contractarian myths of the Western liberal tradition. It disclosure of the sacrificial basis of the political...
View ArticleThe Politics of Abraham’s Foreskin—Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 (Alastair Roberts)
The promise that Abraham will become a great nation is connected with the circumcision of his foreskin, forging a connection between sex and politics. This connection has controversial and unsettling...
View ArticlePolitical Theology Is Not Theological Enough (David Newheiser)
The following is the third of a five-part symposium on the question “how theological is political theology”, which took place at the 2016 American Academy of Religion meeting in San Antonio. The first...
View Article