1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910768469103321

Autore

James Tom <1971->

Titolo

The Transcendence of Desire : A Theology of Political Agency / / by Tom James, David True

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2023

ISBN

9783031462276

3031462270

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (260 pages)

Collana

New Approaches to Religion and Power, , 2634-6087

Disciplina

261.7

Soggetti

Liberation theology

Political science

Social sciences - Philosophy

Liberation Theology

Political Theory

Social Theory

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction: The Politics of Death -- 2. Renewing Political Agency: Arendt on Natality and Judgment -- 3. Theology's Re-politicizing: Crisis and Critique -- 3. Transcendence in a Secular Age: Cruciform Desire -- 4. The Problem and Promise of Politics -- 5. Prophetic Agency -- 6. Practical Agency -- 7. The Church as a Community of Desire.

Sommario/riassunto

The “secular age” is not a smooth, untroubled process of accumulation and advance but an uneven and unpredictable series of clashes of interest. Charles Taylor’s “immanent frame” cannot be construed merely as a phenomenon within religion and culture but urgently needs to be understood in political and economic terms–i.e., as a class project. The failure of the secular, vividly displayed in the crumbling legitimacy of global institutions and in the spectacle of police violence, both calls for and makes possible a renewal of political agency. Tom James and David True argue that a theology of the cross has a distinctive potential today: it can pierce the sacred aura of normalcy



around the consensual anti-politics of the neoliberal order so that a vision of a world beyond today’s racialized capitalism can emerge. But they contend that we don’t need to forsake the emancipatory aims of modernity nor retreat to local communities. As an alternative to these weak strategies, they offer a constructive and cruciform account of political agency that includes both prophetic resistance and practical wisdom, each embedded in contemporary struggles for freedom that, they argue, embody divine desire for a common world. Tom James is a pastor in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of In Face of Reality: The Constructive Theology of Gordon D. Kaufman (2014) and co-author of A Philosophy of Christian Materialism (2015). David True is a visiting scholar at Pfeiffer University and is co-editor of the journal Political Theology. He is the co-editor of Paradoxical Virtue: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Virtue Tradition (2020) and the editor of Prophecy in a Secular Age: An Introduction (2021). .