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Religions
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Religion and Contemporary Political Theory and Practice
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Religion and Contemporary Political Theory and Practice

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2023) | Viewed by 5363

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Charles Lesch

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Political Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 919055, Israel
Interests: religion and democracy; social solidarity; political theology; Jewish political thought
Dr. Ryan W. Davis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Political Science, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
Interests: justice; rights; democratic ethics; Kantian ethics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Few political issues generate more controversy, or inspire stronger feelings, than those touching religion. Moreover, few are more important for shaping the contours of global politics, political thought, and popular discourse. For this Special Issue of Religions, we invite submissions from a broad range of fields, methodologies, and substantive areas on Religion and Contemporary Political Theory and Practice.

This might include, for example, approaches from analytic political philosophy, interpretive textual analysis, comparative political theory, feminism, critical theory, legal studies, ethnography, and post-modernism. It might also include the examination of political ideas within or between religious traditions, of “religions without God,” or of the political-theoretical significance of specific religious practices (e.g., ritual, prayer, pilgrimage, monasticism). Submissions which apply insights from past thinkers or historical periods to contemporary questions and problems are likewise welcome.

Possible topics include: political theology and theopolitics; nationalism and political religion; multiculturalism, pluralism, and toleration; secularism and the public sphere; community and social solidarity; citizenship and civil religion; post-colonialism and indigeneity; civil disobedience and resistance; gender; law and constitutionalism; theocracy and religious jurisprudence; and apocalypticism, messianism, and eschatology.

This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather an invitation for contributors to think in expansive and creative ways about the key intersecting points between religion and the study of contemporary political theory in all of its normative, conceptual, and empirical dimensions.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Charles Lesch
Dr. Ryan W. Davis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • political theory
  • political philosophy
  • political theology
  • secularism
  • secularization
  • public sphere
  • civil religion
  • pluralism
  • toleration
  • solidarity
  • law
  • gender

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 238 KiB  
Article
Humanism and History as Ethics of Institutions: A Reflection on Linda Woodhead, Truth, and Institutions
by Nathaniel A. Warne
Religions 2024, 15(1), 73; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010073 - 07 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1215
Abstract
This paper builds on Linda Woodhead’s discussion of institutions and truth-telling and suggests how we might make progress towards more ethical institutions. Much of the literature on the ethics of institutions focuses on institutions like banks, churches, hospitals, universities, or even political entities. [...] Read more.
This paper builds on Linda Woodhead’s discussion of institutions and truth-telling and suggests how we might make progress towards more ethical institutions. Much of the literature on the ethics of institutions focuses on institutions like banks, churches, hospitals, universities, or even political entities. This is also Woodhead’s focus. But another understanding of institutions is something akin to “an established law, practice, or custom”; namely, a tradition. How these two senses of institutions might relate and inform each other regarding justice and facilitating truth-telling is largely ignored. Drawing out this distinction helps reposition ourselves with regard to the starting point of the ethics of institutions and provides a backdoor into our understanding of formal institutions. Taking this as my starting point along with Woodhead’s discussion of truth and institutions, in this paper, I explore this backdoor further. I do this by drawing on the work of Edward Said and showing that the ethics of institutions is the realm of the humanist, but more specifically, the historian. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion and Contemporary Political Theory and Practice)
17 pages, 250 KiB  
Article
Commercial Discrimination as Religious Messaging in 303 Creative v. Elenis
by Mark Satta
Religions 2024, 15(1), 37; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010037 - 25 Dec 2023
Viewed by 693
Abstract
In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a web designer sought a legal right to refuse to make wedding websites for same-sex couples while making wedding websites for other couples as a service provided by her business open to the public. The web [...] Read more.
In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a web designer sought a legal right to refuse to make wedding websites for same-sex couples while making wedding websites for other couples as a service provided by her business open to the public. The web designer also sought a legal right to post a notice on her business webpage stating that she would refuse to provide such services for same-sex couples’ weddings. Here, I argue that 303 Creative marks a fairly radical break from previous legal cases dealing with whether service providers have the legal right to deny services for same-sex weddings. This is because, if we take the web designer at her word, the web designer appears to have sought these legal rights, in significant part, in order to use an act of commercial discrimination as an act of religious message sending. In support of this conclusion, I argue that acts of selective commercial service constitute the primary means by which the web designer sought to promote her preferred religious messages and that these acts of selective commercial service are acts of discrimination. I also discuss some of the significance of this case for religion and politics in the United States. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion and Contemporary Political Theory and Practice)
18 pages, 345 KiB  
Article
Radical Democracy’s Religion: Hobbes on Language, Domination, and Self-Creation
by Charles H. T. Lesch
Religions 2023, 14(11), 1405; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14111405 - 10 Nov 2023
Viewed by 818
Abstract
In recent decades, prominent political theorists have responded to perceived flaws in liberalism by proposing more “radical” forms of democracy. What might a radically democratic state look like? I argue that we can find one answer, counterintuitively, by looking back to the thought [...] Read more.
In recent decades, prominent political theorists have responded to perceived flaws in liberalism by proposing more “radical” forms of democracy. What might a radically democratic state look like? I argue that we can find one answer, counterintuitively, by looking back to the thought of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’ secularized theory of language introduces into political life a new way of conceiving human agency, one in which the commonwealth fills not only the negative role of stemming conflict, but the positive task of actualizing self-determination. By collapsing the distance between the true source of man’s politics and the nature of governance, Hobbes inaugurates a tradition of radical democratic thought that seeks to close the oppressive rupture of word and deed, maker and made. Yet rather than diminishing religious experience, Hobbes reconstitutes it in a new, profane, and political form. He invites us to acquire a capacity long reserved for God alone: the power to create human nature itself. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion and Contemporary Political Theory and Practice)
14 pages, 830 KiB  
Article
Between Covenant and Contract: Jewish Political Thought and Contemporary Political Theory
by Sarah B. Greenberg
Religions 2023, 14(11), 1352; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14111352 - 25 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1037
Abstract
Social contract theory has long been at the center of political theory, and one of the inheritors of the social contract tradition, liberalism, reverberates through contemporary political life. And yet, an overlooked element of liberalism are the biblical origins of social contract theory. [...] Read more.
Social contract theory has long been at the center of political theory, and one of the inheritors of the social contract tradition, liberalism, reverberates through contemporary political life. And yet, an overlooked element of liberalism are the biblical origins of social contract theory. Specifically, how the early modern political theorists were reading Hebrew Bible, and the kinds of interpretive transformations of Hebrew Bible that take place on the pages of works like Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, John Locke’s Second Treatise, and more. Covenant is the centerpiece of this entanglement. When drawn from Hebrew Bible and read in the context of Jewish political thought, covenant has a very different meaning to that which social contract theories attribute it. This Jewish understanding of covenant concretizes a practice of politics that is constitutively dissenting and agonistic, in contrast to the command–obedience model typical of social contract theory. Furthermore, covenant loses its unique conceptual framework—thus its contribution to political thought—when it is secularized into a social contract. This Jewish conception of covenant offers a new way to understand politics and democratic practice through “covenantal authority” and its constitutively dissenting, agonistic, and circulating qualities. “Covenantal authority” captures the constitutive undecidability of who has authority over the text. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion and Contemporary Political Theory and Practice)
17 pages, 289 KiB  
Article
High Heels as Hammers: Hannah Arendt’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Political Theological Analogy
by Judah Isseroff
Religions 2023, 14(10), 1261; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101261 - 05 Oct 2023
Viewed by 896
Abstract
Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt have been read together in several studies in previous years. They make an intriguing pair because Arendt appears to share a good deal of Schmitt’s diagnosis concerning the modern crisis of legitimacy, while also departing radically from his [...] Read more.
Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt have been read together in several studies in previous years. They make an intriguing pair because Arendt appears to share a good deal of Schmitt’s diagnosis concerning the modern crisis of legitimacy, while also departing radically from his political conclusions. This article frames the Arendt–Schmitt encounter, real or imagined, in terms of the role of analogy in the discourse of political theology. Schmitt’s political theology relies on what he calls a “systematic analogy”. Arendt, meanwhile, levies a devastating critique of all conceptual analogies between theology and politics. The article shows that this difference between Schmitt and Arendt is undergirded by a fundamental theological dispute. Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty depends on the possibility that human beings can become God. Arendt’s contrasting account of freedom is structured by a fundamental disanalogy between humans and God. The article gestures to the idea that this dispute may be something of a basic difference between Christianity and Judaism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion and Contemporary Political Theory and Practice)
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