Cruciform Pilgrims: A Constructive Theopolitical Anthropology 公开
Senior, John Edward (2010)
Abstract
This dissertation explores three related questions: What kind of self is formed in the context of political activism? Is it a good self? And what theological sense can be made of such a self? Political activism often requires that citizens exercise uncooperative, instrumental, and even aggressive forms of moral agency. Yet many theologians have neglected the implications this has for the formation of the self.This neglect is sometimes by design. Some theologians, that is, think the church is the only morally relevant polity in which persons are formed and are therefore uninterested in these three questions. Other theologians have simply not attended to the morally complex ways in which persons exercise political agency and the morally ambiguous consequences that the exercise of political agency has for the formation of the self.
The first part of the dissertation examines the ways in which selves are formed as moral agents in the context of political engagement. Specifically, it accounts for the complex interplay between moral identity (the sources of moral meaning and experience that inform a person's understanding of their fundamental moral commitments and sense of purpose) and political agency (the capacities for effective political action in different political contexts). The mutually constitutive relationship between moral identity and political agency forms the political self. That formation, however, is always incomplete and ambiguous, owing to the moral challenges political engagement poses to both agency and identity.
The second part develops an alternative political anthropology, drawing chiefly on John Calvin and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It argues that the political self, however broken, is a site of redemption. The cruciform shape the political self takes discloses God's reconciling presence in the world, despite the world's persistent denial of its ultimate political configuration in the City of God.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Steve Mackey, 1
Political Vocation, Agency, and Identity: Preliminary Definitions,
14
Political Vocation, Agency, and Identity in Modern Polities,
23
Argument and Chapter Outline, 36
Theological Assumptions, Rhetoric, and Method, 42
CHAPTER ONE
Modernity's Divided Self...55
Wanda Foley, 64
Two Framings of Pluralism, 73
Identity, Agency, and Institutional Formation, 88
The Self, Divided and Circled, 92
CHAPTER TWO
Closed Identities...98
Functional Closure: Tocqueville's American
Christian, 105
Insulated Closure: Yoder, Hauerwas, Bennett, and Niebuhr, 115
Yoder's Disciple, 166
Hauerwas's Peasant and Martyr, 125
Bennett's Christian Citizen, 131
Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man, 137
Conclusion, 143
Open Identities, 145
CHAPTER THREE
On the Narrative Construction of Political Identity...147
Political Identity, Agency, and Personal
Narrative, 156
Three Narratives: Amanda Bostwick, Diane Lawson, and Carol Hughes,
167
Amanda Bostwick, 167
Diane Lawson, 173
Carol Hughes, 179
Stanley Hauerwas on Truthful Story, Christian Politics, and the Moral Life, 190
Narrative, Rationality, and the Formation of
Character, 193
Church, World, and Liberal Polity, 204
Competing Stories and the Christian Story, 208
Conclusion, 209
CHAPTER FOUR
A Critique of Discursive Political Agency...216
Liberalism's Scholar, 224
The Legacy of Public Reason and the Religious Citizen, 231
Public Reason in the Work of John Rawls,
234
The Religious Citizen, 244
Translation, 249
Reason Giving, 250
Amanda Bostwick, 252
Diane Lawson, 259
Political Agency Beyond Discourse and Cooperation, 264
CHAPTER FIVE
Cruciform Pilgrims: Concluding Reflections on Political Agency...270
Augustinian Pilgrims, 281
Johnson's Theology of Public Conversation,
281
Mathewes' Theology of Political Life, 285
Calvin's Cruciform Pilgrim, 289
Critical Response, 299
Bonhoeffer on Responsibility and Political
Action, 305
Cruciform Pilgrims and Political Vocation, 311
Appendix A
Qualitative Research Methodology and Interview Schedule...316
Bibliography...320
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