Political theology

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Political theology is a branch of both political philosophy and theology that investigates the ways in which theological concepts or ways of thinking underlie political, social, economic and cultural discourses. The same term has been used in a wide variety of ways by writers exploring different aspects of the subject, with tension developing between those advocating a traditional concern with individual "moral reform", such as Clyde Wilcox's God's Warriors (1992) and Ted Jelen's The Political World of the Clergy (1993), and those on the left who focus on collective "social justice" e.g. Jeffrey K. Hadden's The Gathering Storm in the Churches (1969) and Harold Quinley's The Prophetic Clergy (1974).^[1]

Writing amidst the turbulence of the German Weimar Republic Carl Schmitt, in Political Theology^[2], argued that the central concepts of modern politics were secularized versions of older theological concepts. Drawing on Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan he argued that the state exists to maintain its own integrity in order to ensure order in society in times of crisis.

The journal Political Theology currently examines this interface of religious faith and politics.^[3]

The Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz explored the concept of political theology throughout his work.^[4] He argued for the concept of a 'suffering God' who shared the pain of his creation, writing, "Yet, faced with conditions in God's creation that cry out to heaven, how can the theology of the creator God avoid the suspicion of apathy unless it takes up the language of a suffering God?"

In the Blackwell Companion to Political Theology^[5], over 30 writers attempt to argue that Christian theology is relevant to modern issues such as feminism and ecology.

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