Abstract
Political Theology: Demystifying the Universal digs deep into the mythologies of Western rationalism in order to show not only the theological roots of our supposedly secular, modern world—to some extent we already knew about that—but also the degree to which that origin has an unexpected resilience, an ongoing and specific role to play in the “post-theological” infrastructures that are built upon it. This book brilliantly shows how the domination, not just of Christian but more specifically of occidental Christian beliefs (i.e., Catholic and Protestant), affects both its own subjects as well as subjects of other theological faiths not of a Western Christian origin. Although their analysis implicitly encompasses every religious tradition, Diamantides and Schütz focus on the Eastern Christian churches, Judaism, and Islam and show how all of these traditions are forced to adapt their own demonstrations of faith to the form of the universal proclaimed by occidental Christianity.
For Diamantides and Schütz, this forced adaptation explains two seemingly contradictory but actually related phenomena. On the one hand, diverse religious traditions are aligned through a broad and globalizing—and violent—secularism. On the other hand, specific aspects of the particular theological heritage of individual political actors, states, or places are intensified. Because Diamantides and Schütz do not draw a bright line between theology and politics—quite the contrary, the book is dedicated precisely to erasing such a line—they do not need to reconcile what otherwise might seem to be contradictory patterns. Instead they show how subjugation to the universal of occidental Christianity does not mean uniformity. According to Diamantides and Schütz, this universal is actually composed of multiple forms. Hence, disparate but related responses to the requirements and strictures of the occidental Christian model do not undermine but rather reiterate it.
Diamantides and Schütz claim the power and lastingness of the occidental Christian model is due precisely to its ability to weave disparate things into one apparent whole. This ability is something that is inherent, they argue, in the core beliefs of the occidental Christian tradition and especially beliefs related to the Trinity. In this tradition, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all different but they are also the same. This sets the model, the authors suggest, for the secular world. What is more, it allows Western Christianity to present itself among other religious traditions as merely the “primus inter pares” when it is actually (like God in the Trinity) in a uniquely privileged position vis-à-vis the others.
The authors give the excellent example of the French state’s response to the Burkini to show what they mean. France banned the Burkini, a particularly modest form of bathing attire, on the grounds that it threatened secular values. Ironically, the Burkini was the product of a highly globalized entrepreneur from Lebanon who, responding to what the authors call “glocalization,” was trying to fit Islamic strictures into a global, universal lifestyle. While Christian symbols are deemed inoffensive and apolitical, symbols like the Burkini that come from other traditions are considered a threat to the very global culture that spawns them.
Even in the face of the dominance of occidental Christianity, variations in religion can nevertheless lead to very different political outcomes. As the authors show, a separate reading of the Trinity like the one given by Eastern Christian churches results in an entirely different model of politics. In the Eastern tradition, God’s power is undisputed; unlike in the Catholic and Protestant traditions, there is no sense that Jesus and the Holy Spirit have any kind of independent authority. For this reason, the authors argue that whereas in the West, even as sovereign power remains entirely dominant, it appears to recede into the lifeworld that it reigns over, in the East, God’s power remains absolute, severely limiting the authority and power of the terrestrial sovereign. Indeed, the Eastern Christian sovereign is only legitimate as long as it retains the good faith of those who back it, as long as it delivers on what it promises.
Although in their reading of the contemporary world, the authors argue that the occidental Christian model is dominant, it seems as if the Eastern Christian model is perhaps better aligned with a de facto slippage they observe in sovereign authority, something which corresponds with the rise of what Giorgio Agamben (who has a very large influence in this book) calls the oikonomia. The management of day-to-day life—the rise of biopolitics in other words—is in fact where true power lies in the modern world. In the occidental Christian model, this submission to managerialism is disguised by the glorious (and unquestioned) display of sovereign authority. Conversely, in the Eastern Christian model, the biopolitical nature of rule, along with the weakness of sovereign models of authority, is far more apparent. Because of the predominance of the Western Christian model of the universal, this clarity eludes us. The study of the Eastern Christian model has a kind of Cassandran element to it, then; we see what it shows us but it doesn’t really change the way we think or act.
In the face of this condition, the authors don’t necessarily propose solutions to the rise of the oikonomia so much as offer a sense of what we are facing and the costs of trying to resist this regime. (This isn’t quite accurate; they do offer suggestions for ways to think and act differently but that is not the focus of this book.) They cite, for example, cases of individuals and groups who seek to hold onto their own local traditions in the face of the Western Christian universal. Neturei Karta is one group they discuss, an anti-Zionist Jewish movement that refuses to integrate itself into the modern Jewish state. Whereas initially a large number of orthodox and Hasidic movements rejected Zionism outright as being blasphemous, the fact of the state of Israel’s formal secularism (and the de facto control over many aspects of daily Jewish life offered to them by the state) allowed most of these orthodox and Hasidic movements to find a way to live with political Zionism. Neturei Karta resisted this accommodation, but such resistance led only to their isolation and what the authors call the “waste” of their own forms of life in the face of Israel’s alignment with global Western Christianity. Specific individuals can also make these kinds of resistant choices but the authors show that they too become marginalized and politically irrelevant.
The power of this book comes then not from some kind of programmatic set of solutions (the end of the book, very refreshingly in my opinion, avoids having that last paragraph where it finally says after pages of critique, “here is what to do”) but rather from the clarity by which it reads the phenomena it opposes. As already noted, the authors’ attention to the varieties of responses to what looks like one uniform model allows Diamantides and Schütz to see some of the pluralities and slippages that occur within what is ordinarily read as a homogenous whole.
One of the key concepts they work with in this regard is that of epigenesis. Diamantides and Schütz argue that the current political moment, a time when most events are explained by a logic they refer to as “stuff happens,” is akin to the Darwinian model of evolution. According to this model, change seems to happen only locally and discretely, and in a way that allows for no real learning, no sense that any one event is connected to some larger system. Diamantides and Schütz suggest that by depriving us of any way of thinking systematically about change, Darwinism actually serves to disguise a deeper teleology. They claim the Darwinian model only seems to embrace randomness and happenstance when in fact it is an instrument to ensure the intentionality behind the occidental Christian model is allowed to work its effects unnoticed. To help us think more carefully about change, how changing environments affect us, and how we can respond, the authors propose a version of the Lamarckian model of epigenetics. This epigenetic model deals with “the unintended or collateral: side-products of consequences, which are triggered rather than ‘achieved,’ ‘created,’ or ‘made’ – by the actions that give rise to them” (114). Recognizing epigenetic forms of change, we can see precisely the way the intention driven sovereign model does not work, how weak and vulnerable it really is. And here is where the political pay-off of Political Theology: Demystifying the Universal becomes more evident.
The authors have equal blame to give out to the left and the right for failing to recognize the limits of the sovereign model insofar as both ends of the political spectrum, in their view, subscribe to an occidental Christian teleology. According to this teleology, even an idea like revolution (or perhaps especially an idea like revolution) is assumed to lead to a good result. To the degree that such an assumption is a manifestation of occult theological eschatology, the authors implicitly ask the reader to think in ways that do not assume such good outcomes or the certainties of progress.
There is something radically anarchic about this position, not only in the way that Diamantides and Schütz refuse any sense of a grand system per se but also in the way that they refuse to provide another grand system disguised as something else. The authors frequently refer to an anarchic God in relation to the highly constrained human subject. But if only God can truly be free there seems to be no space for human freedom to occur. For these authors, the solution to this dilemma is emphatically not to emulate God for that would only continue the practice of calling ourselves free when in fact we are limited and predisposed to certain habits of thought and practice (to the benefit of some far more than others). Rather than try to resolve this dilemma then, the authors instead turn their intention to the de facto anarchism that can be found in all of the varieties of response within the apparent totality of the occidental Christian universal. While some might find themselves frustrated and even depressed by the book’s refusal to provide a solution to the problems of the world, I took that refusal as a sign of the authors’ commitment to avoid being ensnared in the very sorts of diversions and lies that they describe as the legacy of the West. Diamantides and Schütz describe how Western Christian theology has led to a collective sense that has “little or no relation to reality” (12). The violence of this system comes from the way that it insists that what it is promoting is real when it is not. For this reason, evoking an alternative sense of reality is no small accomplishment and that is precisely what this book does.
If you want a happy ending, read a different book. If you want a brave and insightful glimpse of the way the modern world is continually shaped and reshaped by hidden theologies, then this is the book for you.