[Presented at the inaugural Political Theology Network Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. A version of this paper is under review with the journal Studies in Christian Ethics.]
Short overview
In his 2017 Gifford Lectures, Jeffrey Stout explained that his series was guided by the following question: “how would our understanding of religion and politics need to change if the religious voices in egalitarian freedom movements were given their due?” Critical ethical movements like anti-colonialism, abolitionism, and women’s suffrage, Stout reminds us, were largely supported by religious practicioners. Too few political theorists adequately account for the role religious commitments have played in historic struggles against domination.
The proposed paper argues that theological claims were fundamental to the case made by many of the religious critics that Stout commends. The theological doctrine of the authority of God, in particular, figured centrally in their arguments against domination. Religious practitioners as wide-ranging as Las Casas, Milton, Martineau, and King all affirm God’s absolute authority, and insist that no human being should usurp that stature which belongs only to God. Domination—the relationship wherein an individual is subject to another’s arbitrary will—is morally wrong for these figures precisely because it is tantamount to usurping a prerogative that is God’s alone.
The paper proceeds as follows. After briefly reviewing Stout’s definition of domination, I show how the theory of domination that emerged in the modern period relates to the notion of God as Dominus, the Latin word for “Lord.” Then, I focus on literature from Milton and his contemporaries to show the political implications of that theological commitment. This includes a treatment of Paradise Lost that highlights Satan’s desire to “set himself in glory above his peers” and Adam’s opprobrium against those who “assum[e] / Authority usurped, from God not given” in Milton’s text. The paper concludes by considering how the theological notion of the kingship of God can bolster, rather than undermine, republican democracy, as it necessitates that political authority must be limited.