| These scholars sought to define and refine a coherent agenda for a long-term, trans-disciplinary research project on theology’s influence on political ideas and institutions. |
Scholarly literature suggests two reasons for the recent re-emergence of political theology across the social sciences and humanities, challenging what many thought was an outdated modality of inquiry. The first is a growing concern that the practical and theoretical subordination of politics to a service function for markets, which goes hand in hand with an isolation of individuals, deprives human beings of their potential to shape their future in collaboration with others. The second is a suspicion that the research orientation of much contemporary social science remains beholden to a positivist epistemology that can describe and analyze only what already exists, and thus (at least unwittingly) supports the subordination of politics by underplaying the creative potential of human beings to reimagine more satisfying lives in the company of others. Political theology promises to address these concerns by wondering about the orientation of politics to guiding values, and by searching for enduring historical influence of theological ideas on political concepts and the formation of political institutions. This project brought faculty from Classics, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, Divinity, Germanic Studies, and English together with invited visiting scholars for bi-weekly workshops to define and refine a coherent agenda for a long-term, trans-disciplinary research project on political theology.
David B. and Clara E. Stern Distinguished Service Professor; Professor of Classics, History and in the College
University of Chicago
Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science
Tel Aviv University
Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department
University of Chicago
Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in Classics and in the College
University of Chicago
Professor of Political Science
University of Chicago
Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and Thought; Associate Faculty in the Department of History
University of Chicago
Associate Professor, Department of English; Director, Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture
University of Chicago
Mary R. Morton Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College; Co-director, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory; Associate Faculty in Anthropology
University of Chicago
