Category Archives: Political Theological Analysis

Class, Mana, and Power: Organized Money

This is the first installment of a series exploring the conditions under which power is built and exercised over both the short and longue duree. Subsequent installments will look at the role of organized people and organized mana or what is … Continue reading

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Race, American Civil Religion, and the Endgame of Capital

This season of darkness and of lights is traditionally a time of taking stock, both spiritually and politically, of assessing where we are and asking where we are –and ought to be– going. And we cannot help but enter this … Continue reading

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Saecular Hegemony

Humanity now stands at a very specific juncture with respect to the struggle between Sanctuary and the Saeculum.  The stalemate between these two forces which dominated the great Silk Road Era from 200 BC-1800 CE has been broken and the … Continue reading

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Sanctuary and Saeculum: The Desire to Be God

Humanity is the desire to be God (Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness, 1943: 556). Being finite, we are aware of the infinite and seek it without limit. Being contingent, dependent on other beings for our existence, we seek the … Continue reading

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Is Humanistic Secularism Based on a Univocal Metaphysics?

Central to my philosophical and theological work in recent years has been the distinction between a univocal and an analogical metaphysics. The first regards all beings as existing in the same way. If there is a God, then this is … Continue reading

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Where Does Univocal Metaphysics Come From?

At the very core of the political theological position I have staked out is the judgment that a univocal metaphysics represents a fundamental and very dangerous error –the error which, I have argued, is at the root of both fundamentalism … Continue reading

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The Meaning of the Shutdown: Globalization, Populism, and their Discontents

What, precisely, is the broader significance of the US government shutdown? Is this just an unfortunate side effect of contingent political developments (Republican gerrymandering) which have temporarily magnified the power of a ultimately marginal elements in the society (a racist … Continue reading

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Fundamentalism is a Secularism

  There are few polemical tactics more annoying than that of trying to demonstrate that one’s adversary in fact upholds the position which s/he most abhors. I would therefore like to begin this essay with a disclaimer. My aim in … Continue reading

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How Capital Persists – And How it Will Be Defeated

Reading competing analyses of the current situation one might initially imagine that we are all living in different worlds. Where some see a global convergence around the secular ideal of scientific-technological progress and economic growth and development others see a … Continue reading

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What Bergoglio Means

The election of a Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio as Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church has, inevitably, led to numerous requests for an assessment of what the election means for the future of the Church … Continue reading

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