New Publication!

The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics is the latest in the Continuum Studies in Religion and Political Culture series edited by Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl and will be published in early October.

Synopsis

This is a unique collection of essays that brings together contributions from theology, aesthetics, social and political science, philosophy and cultural theory to examine the surge in the public visibility of religion.Since the late 1980s, sociologists have been drawing our attention to an international surge in the public visibility of religion. This has increasingly challenged two central aspects of modern western European culture: first, the assumption that as we became more modern we would become more secularised and religion would disappear; and secondly, that religion and politics should occupy radically differentiated spheres in which private conviction did not exert itself within the public realm.

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The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts (CIDRA) is hosting a series of seminars for postgraduate students at the University of Manchester on interdisciplinary in the arts and humanities.  Professor Graham Ward will be speaking on theology and the sciences on Tuesday, 7 October, 4-6 pm in Mansfield Cooper 2.04 along with James Thompson (SAHC Director of Research/Drama), Amelia Jones (Art History/Visual Studies), and Janet Wolff, the Director of CIDRA. Further details on future events will be available on the CIDRA website linked above.

Listen to the Graham Ward, professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics at the University of Manchester, examine shifts in modern religious beliefs and behaviour at the Edinburgh International Festival 2008. Here's an excerpt from the festival brochure:

The Edinburgh International Festival was founded in 1947 in the aftermath of a devastating war, as an optimistic expression of what Europe could be. It owes its origins to an imperative to rebuild a sense of community in a continent which had torn itself apart; to restore hope to shattered lives through music, opera, drama, and dance... A festival is an expression of the creative ambition of the community it serves. It's also a place where the personal and collective challenges we face as a society can be explored; explored by artists working across and beyond the very boundaries which often seem so problematic.

Professor Ward's lecture, "The New Visibility of Religion," has been recorded into a three part series of Mp3 files for easy download and can be accessed by  visiting the festival website or clicking on the following links:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
  

Forthcoming publication with Polity Press, October 2008! Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of Any Political Theology by Carl Schmitt, translated and introduced by Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward.

From the Back Cover

Political theology II is Carl Schmitt’s last book. Part polemic, part self-vindication for his involvement in the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), this is Schmitt’s most theological reflection on Christianity and its concept of sovereignty following the Second Vatican Council. At a time of increasing visibility of religion in public debates and a realization that Schmitt is the major and most controversial political theorist of the twentieth century, this last book sets a new agenda for political theology today. The crisis at the beginning of the twenty-first century  has led to an increased interest in the study of crises in an age of extremes – an age upon which Carl Schmitt left his indelible watermark. In Political Theology II, first published in 1970, a long journey comes to an end which began in 1923 with Political Theology. This translation makes available for the first time to the English speaking world Schmitt’s understanding of Political Theology and what it implies theologically and politically.

The photo at left was taken at the St. Thomas Aquinas art exhibit at the Catholic Academy in Berlin. For further images please click here to view them in our gallery. The following provides further description of the exhibition:

Die Photos auf den letzten Seiten zeigen, was zu sehen war in den Wochen nach dem Allerheiligentag 2006 in der Kirche St. Thomas von Aquin in Berlin. Ein Altar, gleichsam aufgehoben vom Boden wie mit sphärischen Kräften, weiße, im Scheinwerferlicht leuchtend strahlende Baumwollfäden, die quer durch den Kirchraum wiesen, die einschlugen in Erde, heraustraten hinter den Säulen, um sich in den Spalten des Altarsteins zu fangen. Ein Spiel mit Symmetrie und dem Eindruck chaotischer Kräfte, die sich an dieser Symmetrie abzuarbeiten haben. Draußen vor der Tür: einige Figuren aus bloßer Erde, menschengroß liegen sie auf dem blanken Boden – die Köpfe zum Altar hingewendet, von dem sie durch eine dicke Kirchenmauer getrennt sind. Nebeneinander aufgereiht wie die Toten auf dem Friedhof hinter der Glasstür, die an schönen Tagen offen steht. Die Gemeinschaft der Lebenden und Toten, ein nicht vergangener Glaube der Christen, gewinnt hier einen Ausdruck – die menschliche Sehnsucht nach Gemeinschaft überschreitet die uns gewohnten Grenzen des Sozialen.

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Throughout the months of Octorber and November four lectures under the auspices of the Centre for Jewish Studies, the CRPC and the Manchester Reformed Synagogue will be presented:

• Thursday October 11th: Clive Lawton: "Judaism: Religion or Welfare State?" chaired by Reuven Silverman; welcome by Alistair Ulph, the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.
• Wednesday October 24th: Graham Ward: "Poverty and Piety: On the Loss of a Civic Virtue" chaired by Max Elstein
• Thursday November 8th: Imtiaz Husain: "Religion and the Welfare State: a Muslim perspective" chaired by David Berkley
• Thursday November 22nd: Michael Hoelzl: "Solidarity and Altruism: Who is Running the Extra Mile in a Secular State?" chaired by Bernard Jackson

All lectures commence at 6.00 p.m. in the Arts Lecture Theatre, Samuel Alexander Building, Oxford Road, and will be followed by discussion and reception.

Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward will be talking at the European Consortium for Political Research, Pisa, Italy, 6-8th September, 2007

Michael Hoelzl ("Silete theologi: Two concepts of normative secularization in the work of Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt") and Graham Ward ("Postsecularity or the Changing Structures of Believing?") will be speaking at  Secularism and Beyond, Copenhagen University, May 29th to June 1st 2007. Here's a brief abstract from the conference website:

"The relationship between religion and politics has attracted increased interest in public as well as academic discourse, especially within the humanities, legal studies and social sciences. The dominant way of conceiving this relationship in the Western world is through the lens of secularism. In that sense, the conception of secularism is the focal point for studying and analysing the relationship between religion, politics, law and public life and the separation of the public as a distinct sphere different from and independent of religion and a religious sphere."

 

This book provides an essential resource for studies in religion and politics. It is divided into three parts, beginning with an introduction outlining the contemporary relevance of reviewing the relationship between the two subject areas; a brief history of the interactions between religion and politics that have pertained both in East and the West, and the key concepts that relate these two fields. The second section comprises a selection of classic readings. Beginning with Aristotle, the readings explore the metaphor of the body and its political deployment in the mediaeval period, the concern with sovereignty in early modernity, religion and democracy in Enlightenment Europe, religion and democracy in America, nineteenth-century socialism, and twentieth-century concerns with totalitarianism and democracy. The third section comprises an introductory essay followed by eight full-length essays by contemporary thinkers, exploring key ideas that are currently at the forefront of debates concerning religion and political life.

Four of these essays move beyond the 'Christian' framing behind the classical texts, to examine how key concepts from this historical legacy have impacted on Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. One other essay explores issues with respect to the politics of gender and liberation theology. The remaining three treat important contemporary issues as represented by three important social/cultural theorists - the state of emergency and the homo sacer, the radical nature of agape and the relationship between democracy and secularism.

The Centre for Religion and Political Culture is affiliated within the Manchester Research Institute for Religion and Civil Society in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester. The MRIRCS brings together the established expertise of four existing research groupings exploring different aspects of the relation between religion and the public sphere. They are: the Lincoln Theological Institute, the Manchester Centre for Public Theology, the William Temple Foundation and the CRPC. It was founded in 2006 and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams gave an inaugural public lecture Faith, Freedom, Secularity to mark the occasion. A streaming video of the entire speech can be downloaded by clicking here. As well, Professor Graham Ward was interviewed by BBC Manchester radio to discuss religion and civil society. Click here to listen to an mp3 or you can also subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. (Kind permission of the Terry Christian Show, BBC Radio Manchester).

Religion and Civil Society Interview (mp3)