Political Theology and the Conflicts of Democracy

This richly textured book helps students and scholars of religion and politics to understand the surprising ways in which conflict and conciliation can renew grassroots democracy. It appraises contemporary discussions of democratic pluralism in religious and ethical theory while advancing a bold new account of conflict's religious significance.

Nicholas Norman-Krause argues, in this authoritative and sophisticated new treatment of conflict, that contestation is a basic - potentially regenerative - aspect of any flourishing democratic politics. In developing a distinctive ''agonistic theology,'' and relating the political theory of agonism to social and democratic life, the author demonstrates that the conflicts of democracy may have a beneficial significance and depend at least in part on faith traditions and communities for their successful negotiation. In making his case, he deftly examines a rich range of religious and secular literatures, whether from the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, and Stanley Cavell or from less familiar voices such as early modern jurist and political thinker Johannes Althusius and twentieth-century Catholic social philosopher Yves Simon. Liberationists including Gustavo Gutiérrez and Martin Luther King, Jr. are similarly recruited for a theological account of conflict read not just as concomitant to, but also as constitutive of, democratic living.