Spring 2009 · Vol. 38 No. 1 · pp. 105–106
Recommended Reading
Political Theology: A Selected Bibliography
The reading list below is of course idiosyncratic, but I have included some of the sources that are important within the political theology conversation broadly conceived. Several sources are of particular interest to Anabaptists. I also want to highlight the sourcebook edited and introduced by Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan—this book is invaluable as a way into the political theology tradition (and the choices as well as their introductions say as much about the editors as about the sources).
Barth, Karl. “The Christian Community and the Civil Community.” In Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom, ed. Clifford Green, 265–96. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991.
Bartholemew, Craig et al., eds. A Royal Priesthood? The Use of the Bible Ethically and Politically—A Dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002.
Carter, Craig. Rethinking “Christ and Culture”: A Post-Christendom Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2006.
Cavanaugh, William. Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism. London: T. & T. Clark, Continuum, 2002.
Cavanaugh, William, and Peter Scott, eds. Blackwell Companion to Political Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
Coles, Romand. “The Wild Patience of John Howard Yoder: ‘Outsiders’ and the ‘Otherness of the Church.’ ” Modern Theology 18, no. 3 (2002): 305–31.
Davis, Creston, John Milbank, and Slavoj Žižek, eds. Theology and the Political: The New Debate. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005.
Doerksen, Paul. Beyond Suspicion: Post-Christendom Protestant Political Theology in the Thought of John Howard Yoder and Oliver O’Donovan. Carlisle: Paternoster Press, forthcoming.
Hauerwas, Stanley. With the Grain of the Universe. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2001.
Kroeker, P. Travis. “Why O’Donovan’s Christendom is not Constantinian and Yoder’s Voluntariety is not Hobbesian: A Debate in Theological Politics Re-defined.” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 20 (2000): 41–64.
O’Donovan, Oliver. The Desire of Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
O’Donovan, Oliver, and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, eds. From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.
O’Donovan, Oliver. The Ways of Judgment. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005.
Redekop, John. Politics Under God. Waterloo, ON; Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2007.
Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Wannenwetsch, Bernd. Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Yoder, John Howard. The Christian Witness to the State. Newton: Faith and Life, 1964.
———. The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
———. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994.
Žižek, Slavoj. The Fragile Absolute, or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? London: Verso, 2000.
