"Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be your
mattress,/
And you shall sleep restful nights" (St. Ephraim the Syrian).


Monday, May 24, 2021

Anarchy and the Kingdom of God

I'm greatly looking forward to reading this new book upon its release next month. When I started reading French existentialists in high-school, and then later figures like Jacques Ellul, who has written intelligently about Christian "anarchy," I started to find that the reactionary, order-obsessed nature of some parts of Christianity seemed to deliberately obscure and deny the radical, if not "anarchic," nature of the freedom promised by and in Christ. I shall see how these and other arguments unfold next month upon the release of Anarchy and the Kingdom of God: From Eschatology to Orthodox Political Theology and Back by  Davor Džalto (Fordham University Press, June 2021), 320pp. 

One of the "blurbers" for this book notes:

Perhaps the best book on Christian anarchism since Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and the Kingdom of God is a timely and valuable addition to resurgent interest in political theology across various disciplines. Learned and well-written, it brings neglected sources from the Orthodox Christian tradition into this current renaissance and makes clear their relevance for contemporary economic and political debates in contexts ranging from the United States to post-communist Europe and Russia. -- Eric Gregory, Princeton University

And the publisher, in turn, tells us this about the book: 

Anarchy and the Kingdom of God reclaims the concept of “anarchism” both as a political philosophy and a way of thinking of the sociopolitical sphere from a theological perspective. Through a genuinely theological approach to the issues of power, coercion, and oppression, Davor Džalto advances human freedom—one of the most prominent forces in human history—as a foundational theological principle in Christianity. That principle enables a fresh reexamination of the problems of democracy and justice in the age of global (neoliberal) capitalism.

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