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Civil Religion, Political Theology and Public Theology: What's the Difference
Abstract
Identifying and distinguishing the dominant features of civil religion, political
theology and public theology is an important aspect of the trans-Atlantic conversation
about the role of religion in the common life. Civil religion is often a
form of patriotic self-celebration that in the West, and particularly in the US, has
often been expressed in terms of Christianity. Its defect lies in its lack of
transcendental and thus critical reference. Political theology attempts to meet
this defect by bringing the disciplines of theology and critical thought to bear on
the relation between politics and religion. Political theology, however, too often
equates or reduces the public to partisan or governmental policy, and understands
the state as the institution that comprehends and guides all other spheres
of society. Public theology seeks to remedy this by insisting that institutions of
civil society precede regimes both in order of occurrence and by right, and insists
that theology, in dialogue with other fields of thought, carries indispensable
resources for forming, ethically ordering and morally guiding the institutions of
religion and civil society as well as the vocations of the persons in these various
spheres of life.
theology and public theology is an important aspect of the trans-Atlantic conversation
about the role of religion in the common life. Civil religion is often a
form of patriotic self-celebration that in the West, and particularly in the US, has
often been expressed in terms of Christianity. Its defect lies in its lack of
transcendental and thus critical reference. Political theology attempts to meet
this defect by bringing the disciplines of theology and critical thought to bear on
the relation between politics and religion. Political theology, however, too often
equates or reduces the public to partisan or governmental policy, and understands
the state as the institution that comprehends and guides all other spheres
of society. Public theology seeks to remedy this by insisting that institutions of
civil society precede regimes both in order of occurrence and by right, and insists
that theology, in dialogue with other fields of thought, carries indispensable
resources for forming, ethically ordering and morally guiding the institutions of
religion and civil society as well as the vocations of the persons in these various
spheres of life.