Political Theology and Early Modernity

“The essays collected in this superb volume seize upon the current ‘turn to religion’ in global politics (and academia) in an effort to rethink the history of secularization as a fitful, inconsistent, and perhaps interminable process that cannot help but draw upon the energies of what it aims to surpass. The political theology of early modern Europe, along with its intense and agonistic theorizations by so many thinkers in Weimar Germany, provide the source material for these groundbreaking investigations. The volume helps us to grasp the ways in which the political theological matrix transmits its urgencies into the present.”– “Eric Santner, University of Chicago”

“This is an excellent volume. . . .Each essay makes a distinct contribution in its own right, but the value of this volume is ultimately found in the way in which the essays as a whole broaden and complicate the notion of political theology, without offering a unified perspective. Shifting political theology away from the paradigm installed by Schmitt toward multiple, and often unexpected, sites shows its pervasiveness, which in turn allows for reconsideration of the entanglement of the theological and the political not only in the past buti n the present as well. Indeed, as the volume shows, the questions and crises that constitute political theology in the early modern and modern periods still haunt the present. Political theology, then remains a pressing contemporary concern, and this volume should serve as an indispensable resource for negotiating its contours.”– “Reviews in Religion and Theology”

“This stellar collection of essays demonstrates why political theology in recent years has become such a vibrant area of critical inquiry. An unusually wide and brilliant range of scholars turn attention to the early modern period as the time when the relation of politics and theology receives a jolt that will have lasting consequence for modernity. Together in all their variety these essays provide a broad and solid base on which all future work on the subject will have to take place.”– “Margreta de Grazia, University of Pennsylvania”