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In recent decades, comparative discussions of early Jewish and Christian traditions were dominated by questions of “political theology,” in which Paul, say, appeared as a kind of repressed touchstone within apparently secular conceptualizations and practices of the political (i.e., Jacob Taubes, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou). Economic crises since 2000, however, have produced more recently a wide-ranging philosophical fascination with the possibility of addressing similar structures of political life by way of a comparative and genealogical exploration of “economic theology.” The philosophical examples tell this tale of shift in focus. If early philosophical explorations of political theology were steeped in allusions to American exceptionalism, the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, the emergency suspension of laws prohibiting torture or the detentions at Guantanamo Bay, then more recent discussions of “economic theology” are similarly steeped in the massive proliferation of student and consumer debts, the European Union’s dramatic enforcement of austerity measures against the democratic will of individual member states, and the political implications of publically funded bailouts of banking corporations in the United States of America and Europe. This essay analyzes contemporary repetitions of early Jewish and Christian discourse as a way of understanding contemporary economic crises. With this backdrop, the essay makes suggestions about the important new role for an academic study of religion which is both comparative and experimental. In recent decades, comparative discussions of early Jewish and Christian traditions were dominated by questions of “political theology,” in which Paul, say, appeared as a kind of repressed touchstone within apparently secular conceptualizations and practices of the political (i.e., Jacob Taubes, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou). Economic crises since 2000, however, have produced more recently a wide-ranging philosophical fascination with the possibility of addressing similar structures of political life by way of a comparative and genealogical exploration of “economic theology.” The philosophical examples tell this tale of shift in focus. If early philosophical explorations of political theology were steeped in allusions to American exceptionalism, the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, the emergency suspension of laws prohibiting torture or the detentions at Guantanamo Bay, then more recent discussions of “economic theology” are similarly steeped in the massive proliferation of student and consumer debts, the European Union’s dramatic enforcement of austerity measures against the democratic will of individual member states, and the political implications of publically funded bailouts of banking corporations in the United States of America and Europe. This essay analyzes contemporary repetitions of early Jewish and Christian discourse as a way of understanding contemporary economic crises. With this backdrop, the essay makes suggestions about the important new role for an academic study of religion which is both comparative and experimental.
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