Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

by Catherine Keller

Amid melting glaciers, rising waters, and spreading droughts, Earth has ceased to tolerate our pretense of mastery over it. But how can we confront climate change when political crises keep exploding in the present? Noted ecotheologian and feminist philosopher of religion Catherine Keller reads the feedback loop of political and ecological depredation as secularized apocalypse. Carl Schmitt’s political theology of the sovereign exception sheds light on present ideological warfare; racial, ethnic, economic, and sexual conflict; and hubristic anthropocentrism. If the politics of exceptionalism are theological in origin, she asks, should we not enlist the world’s religious communities as part of the resistance?

Keller calls for dissolving the opposition between the religious and the secular in favor of a broad planetary movement for social and ecological justice. When we are confronted by populist, authoritarian right wings founded on white male Christian supremacism, we can counter with a messianically charged, often unspoken theology of the now-moment, calling for a complex new public. Such a political theology of the earth activates the world’s entangled populations, joined in solidarity and committed to revolutionary solutions to the entwined crises of the Anthropocene.

Genres: Theology, Politics

248 pages, Paperback

Published October 30, 2018

About the author

Catherine Kelle is a contemporary Christian theologian and Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University's Graduate Division of Religion. As a constructive theologian, Keller's work is oriented around social and ecological justice, poststructuralist theory, and feminist readings of scripture and theology. Both her early and her late work brings relational thinking into theology, focusing on the relational nature of the concept of the divine, and the forms of ecological interdependence within the framework of relational theology. Her work in process theology draws on the relational ontology of Alfred North Whitehead, fielding it in a postmodern, deconstructive framework.

Reviews

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keller writes "in a time of heightened political disarray and lowered planetary hope" wondering if we have time to solve our problems, including the climate crisis? She refuses to give up, ceding to the ideologues on the right with a nihilism or hopelessness on the left. She does believe we yet have time to create a new public who can face our issues. That in fact our moment of overlapping crises can be a kairos moment, when a new public emerges. And she thinks that theology has a key role to play, largely because theology was complicit in getting us into our problems. Traditional theological categories have continued to influence contemporary secular politics and economics, and so alternative theologies (long existing in the tradition) must speak up in order to undermine the continuing secular power of the damaging categories.

After reading Ignatieff's On Consolation, I thought it was important to gain some perspective on how we deal with the issues we are facing. And Keller writes so beautifully. One of the best prose stylists in theology (not a discipline known for writing style).

I'm not sure I come away with any radically new ideas or energy. For one the theological position she advocates (Process based) has been mine for almost thirty years. Also, the book was published in 2018 and it's even more difficult after the crises of the ensuing years to muster hope that this is a kairos moment (though people taking to the streets in the summer of 2020 sure felt that way and I believe planted seeds that will have lingering affects in our body politic). Instead one wonders if we aren't headed for the Dark Years predicted by Richard Rorty? And if so if we've then lost the struggle to avoid the worst effects of climate change?

But, even if we have and even if we are headed to an ever darker period, the sort of vision and conviction that Keller evidences will be the sorts of lights we'll need to guide us through.

[Jacqui · Rating 3 out of 5]

How can theology contribute to the struggles for eco-social justice? How can we counter the exceptionalisms (white, male, Western, Christian, capitalist, extractive, human etc etc.) which perpetuate injustice across our planetary communities?

Ambitious project, but I couldn't quite get all the threads to weave into something sturdier. I liked how Keller draws from diverse sources, and her poetic and playful use of language was delightful (although sometimes a bit too much for my own comprehension). Perhaps I wasn't the best audience for this book, but I am still glad to have read it.

[Theresa Barkasy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A difficult slog for those unacquainted with theology.
The argument perhaps could have been improved if there were a clear focus.
Perhaps could have benefitted from reading, "The Myth of Religious Violence," by Cavanaugh, regarding definitions of 'religious' and 'political.'
Not cautious of potentially offensive use of terms or scholars (eg. Mary Daly and her known transphobia and anti-male sentiments, depictions of God as rapist, and "hunchback theology."

[Ali Jones Alkazemi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is not even about ecology, but process theology. Not even about political theology, but negative theology. It also has no arguments and is really just a 200+ page long rant with no goal or purpose in mind. Never read this book. It is better to take a walk or run or really just do anything else.

[Joseph Sverker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather on the difficult side I must say. I do get her process theology stand point here, but I'm not quite sure that I understand her thinking about time and the compressed(?) time here.