Seminarraum VI der Katholisch-Theologische Fakultät, Karl-Rahner-Platz 3, 1. OG

“Political Theology as Testimony” reconceives political theology not as an academic subfield but as a form of witness: an accountable declaration of faith about the world as it is and as it should be. Framed as testimony, political theology unites a via negativa of critique with a via positiva of proclamation, denouncing idolatrous orders of domination while announcing eschatological possibilities of new life. The chapter argues that talk of God and talk of politics are inherently interwoven and examines how political theology of any kind wrestles with how political life is shaped by the basic orientations to life and death, and order and chaos. The tripartite argument explores, first, the symbiosis between theological and political language; second, the metaphysical dynamics that ground political existence; and third, political theology’s vocation as a critique of modernity’s characteristic sins and idolatries. As testimony, political theology can resist both ideological co-option and academic domestication, calling instead for communities to discern and embody forms of shared life that witness to Christ’s order of being. Political theology thereby becomes not merely a theory of politics but a therapy for living, cultivating truthful speech, humility, and participation in the divine economy of justice and love.

Luke Bretherton is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology and director of the McDonald Center for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life at Oxford University. Prior to that he was the Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology at Duke University. Before Duke, he taught at King‘s College London. His books include A Primer in Christian Ethics (2023); Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (2019); Resurrecting Democracy (2015), which was based on a four-year ethnographic study of community organizing; Christianity & Contemporary Politics (2010), winner of the 2013 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing; and Hospitality as Holiness (2006). Alongside his scholarly work, he is actively involved in forms of grassroots democratic politics.

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