What was the Marseillaise of the Reformation?

Ein feste burg ist unser Gott:

Karl Kautsky, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, p. 277.

Or, if you want a version that’s been taken off the streets and institutionalised:

 

How to be truly radical: Karl Kautsky on theology

I have been thoroughly enjoying a careful reread of Karl Kautsky’s much neglected Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus, especially the second volume. The translation is known as Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation. Not a bad title, since Kautsky has no problem speaking about Christian and heretical communism. More soon, but for now an insight that goes well beyond both Marx and Engels:

The more radical a social movement, the more theological are its party words (p.221).

His immediate reference is the Reformation. Immediate political and economic terms were expressed as such – bread riots, protests against landlords, etc. But when a movement gained in breadth and strength, it sought deeper and more radical expression. This is where it became thoroughly theological.

 

Two questions regarding the Boston bombers

As an outside observer to the intense discussion under way concerning the Boston bombers, two questions keep coming up.

1. In searching for a reason, the genuine puzzlement seems to conceal a massive blind spot. I have seen radical Islam, the dreadful Russian government, the fierce independence of Chechens, dislocation in the USA … Studiously avoided is any self-examination: how are we to blame?

2. To follow on: now that the brothers seem to have been Muslim, they can be slotted into a convenient string of successful and foiled ‘terrorist’ attacks. But why are they not part of the sickening pattern of ‘domestic’ massacres that happen with banal regularity? Sandy Hook is the name of only the most well known recent one. After all, were not the Boston bombers long-time residents of the USA? Enough time to notice how one expresses a grievance.

 

From separatists to terrorists: the Boston bombers

A couple of years ago I was at a conference in Yalta, in the Crimea. Those attending were from the various states of the former USSR, so the language of the conference was Russian. One participant from Rostov pointed out at length that when an attack is made on the USA, the UK or somewhere like that, the perpetrators are called – by the respective politicians and media outlets – ‘terrorists’. But when an attack is made in Russia by, say, the Chechens, they are called ‘separatists’ or ‘independence fighters’ – seeking independence of course from the evil Russian state.

Scroll forward: of Chechen origin too is the last surviving suspect of the Boston bombings, although he and his dead brother have been resident and studied in the USA for some time. Now of course they are called ‘Chechen terrorists’, and Muslim to boot. No one seems to call them ‘separatists’ and ‘independence fighters’ now.

 

From Yoga to Twenty Below: Religion and Radicalism

Last weekend’s Religion and Radicalism conference was quite something. Under normal circumstances, it requires a little more effort than usual to get here – to Herrnhut, Saxony. On this occasion, the effort was significant. For those who evaded Malaysian elections, slashed feet, dreadful German immigration officials, lambing season and so on, the day of travel revealed … a Lufthansa strike. From Kiev to Oslo, from Helsinki to London, people scrambled to find other options. Eventually, people managed to get here over the next day. The result was that once here the appreciation was much higher.

The paper sessions were absorbing, generating new ideas and at times vigorous debate:

 

 

In the evenings we gathered in our apartment for drinks (the amusement was largely due to this map) …

… and took instructions in yoga:

Amazing what a few drinks will make people do at 1.00 am:

Even so, ageing bones make the lotus position just a little more difficult:

On Sunday afternoon we had a special treat: the wind chill knocked what was already the coldest ‘spring’ day on record to -20 Centigrade:

It was our day for trekking, exploring the early days of the Moravian Brethren, Zinzendorf’s Schloss, and the stone circles used for quiet gatherings in the forest. The circles were used to meet and discuss community problems in the 1700s:

With weather like this, I’m guessing not many problems would have been that urgent. Meanwhile, we made the most of it and plunged down steep hillsides:

On return, there was nothing a little bit of thawing wouldn’t restore to its old self.

Yet, despite it’s apparent remoteness …

… it is a place to which people seem to come from all corners of the globe. They even had flags out for us:

Or, more closely:

 

How to look like an ageing rock group … in Herrnhut

To whet your appetite for the full report on last weekend’s Religion and Radicalism conference in Herrnhut, where the temperature dropped to almost -20 degrees. We were out on a trek through the frozen landscape:

The kind of shot they produce these days of ageing and wiser rock groups.

 

Religion and Radicalism Conference Program (Herrnhut, 22-24 March)

So, next weekend travellers will cross the seven seas and come from the four corners of the globe to … the bustling village of Herrnhut, Saxony. The reason: a conference on Religion and Radicalism. It is the fourth in our series, which began in Copenhagen three years ago.

THE PROGRAM

Pre-conference: Arrival and settling in.

Friday, 22 March

8:00-9:00      Breakfast

9:00-10:30    Papers

Mika Ojakangas, On the Medieval Origins of Radical Reformation: An Outburst of the Inner Truth

Christina Petterson, Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine: Radical or Reactionary?

10:30-11:00  Morning coffee

11:00-12:00  Papers

James Crossley, Turning the World the Right Way Up? Or, How British Marxist Historians Found Comfort in the Bible in the Face of Anarchism

Timothy Gorringe, Winstanley as an Inspiration for Contemporary English Radical Politics

12:30-13:30  Lunch

13:30-15:00  Papers

Lu Shaochen, Authority and the Russian Revolution: Luther, Calvin, Lenin

Tamara Prosic, Orthodoxy, Collectivism and Communism

15:00-15:30  Afternoon tea

15:30-17.00  Papers

Mehmet Karabela, Uses of Marx in the Iranian Revolution: Shariati’s Marx and ‘Muslim Marxists’. NB. This paper will be delivered via skype.

Holly Randall-Moon, Secular Critique, Religion and Cultural Studies

17:00-18:00  Relax

18:00-22:00  Dinner and viewing of the film: Winstanley (1975)

 

Saturday, 23 March

8:00-9:00      Breakfast

9:00-10:30    Papers

Mads Peter Karlsen, ‘Stony Ground but not Entirely’ – On Badiou’s Materialist Notion of Grace and its Political Implications

Ole Jakob Løland, Saint Paul: The Legitimizer or Deligitimizer of a New Revolutionary Order?

10:30-11:00  Morning coffee

11:00-12:30  Papers

Chris Hartney, A Lone Radical Christian Voice Against Economic and Governmental Excess? The Example of the Jesus Christians

Marion Maddox, Green Christians: A New Australian Progressive Voice, and the Remarkable Campaign to Silence It

12:30-13:30  Lunch

13:30-15:00  Papers

Tatiana Senyushkina, Religion and Civil Society: Between Secularisation and Fundamentalism

Jorunn Økland, Gender Equality as Value in Religious and Secular Contexts

15:00-15:30  Afternoon tea

15:30-17:00  Papers

Roland Boer, Omnia sunt Communia: Enthusiasm, Reason, and Luther Blissett’s ‘Q’

Anthony Gwyther, Christian Communism Today: The Experience of the Basisgemeinde Wulfshagenerhütten

17:00-18:00  Relax

18:00-22:00  Dinner

 

Sunday, 24 March

Optional walking tour (depending on weather) of Hengstberg, stone circles, Langsamer Tod (the slow death – climb from Ruppersdorf), Zinzendorf walk through the Wald, Zinzendorfer Schloss at Berthesdorf, and Gottes Acker (God’s Acre) at the Hutberg. This will take about three hours.

You may also opt to saunter through the village of Herrnhut (also included in above walk) and go to the Hutberg, a few hundred metres from town.

Or you may opt to have a quiet rest day at Tagungs- und Erholungsheim.

 

Full Paper Proposals

1. Roland Boer

University of Newcastle, Australia

Omnia sunt Communia: Enthusiasm, Reason, and Luther Blissett’s ‘Q’

This paper involves a reading of the popular novel Q, originally published in Italian in 1999. My particular concern is the tension between enthusiasm and reason, revolutionary passion and calculated organisation. Obviously, this tension has both political and religious translations, with neither claiming priority. Theoretically, the question comes out of Ernst Bloch, while its particular manifestation is Q. Written by the Italian radical collective, Luther Blissett (now Wu Ming), this long novel provides a skilful and engaging retelling of forty years of the revolutionary sixteenth century. Our guiding character moves from Luther, through engaging closely with Thomas Müntzer (‘The Coiner’) and the anarchists of the Lowlands, and then works through the complex machinations that lead to the half-hearted settlement between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Throughout, our protagonist is shadowed by a Vatican agent, Q, penner of letters, worker of intrigues, agent of the pope to be, Paul IV. Since this paper is in the process of being written, I simply list my interests: the sympathies of the novel are clearly with the passionate revolutionaries, even though they all, bar one, come to grisly ends; the novel has become a favourite among the various arms of the anti-capitalist movement, which uses slogans from the book such as omina sunt communia; this popularity indicates that in our day the religious nature of the revolutionary tradition has come to the forefront, with activists becoming well informed indeed concerning the Reformation, Anabaptism, Müntzer, Münster, the Counter-Reformation, and the theological debates around them. All of this will lead me back to the tension between passion and reason, for this interest in the revolutionary religious tradition is happening among the passionate activists, outside the conventional modes of the production of knowledge.

2. James Crossley

University of Sheffield, UK

Turning the World the Right Way Up? Or, How British Marxist Historians Found Comfort in the Bible in the Face of Anarchism

The British Marxist historians (e.g. Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, E.P. Thompson, and Rodney Hilton) were among the most influential twentieth century thinkers in English speaking historiography and British political activism. However, when a new generation of historians and activists were making their mark in light of 1968, there was that curiously ambivalent attitude present among certain British Marxist historians (and found elsewhere in Western Marxism and remaining present in certain contemporary strands of Marxist thought), as well as, or perhaps because of, a hostility to the perception of a strong anarchist presence in the upheavals. A number of ideological and historical reasons will be given for this ambivalence and hostility but it will be seen that, despite the rhetorical hostility, anarchism managed to influence (probably unintentionally) this now ageing generation of Marxist thinkers and one key way was through biblical language and the study of ‘heretical’ users of the Bible. Particular attention will be paid to Christopher Hill and his famous 1972 publication on the English Revolution, The World Turned Upside Down.

3. Timothy Gorringe

University of Exeter, UK

Winstanley as an Inspiration for Contemporary English Radical Politics

Gerrard Winstanley was the main spokesman for the 17^th century Diggers. Largely forgotten until the late nineteenth century he was then taken up by Russian socialists and in the 20^th century by the Marxist historian Christopher Hill.  Today his ideas and writings are inspirational for a variety of groups in the UK following the breakdown of the welfare consensus. ‘The Land is Ours’ movement,  founded by the journalist George Monbiot, campaigns for land reform and land re-distribution (in a country where 70% of the land is owned by 1% of the population);  the ‘Diggers and Dreamers’ network coordinates information about eco settlements and alternative forms of living; the journal The Land tackles planning issues largely, though not exclusively, for the rural poor; the Transition Towns movement is creating a bottom up democracy which pulls the rug from under corporate and managerial politics. These movements put class, distributive justice, and sustainability together in an interesting way and in the UK are one of the most vibrant socialist voices, following the abandonment of socialist goals by ‘New’ (i.e. market driven) Labour.  They illustrate the way in which socialist discourse and praxis is both reconfigured and continued under 21^st c conditions and in face of the emerging threats of peak oil and climate change.

4. Anthony Gwyther

Basisgemeinde Wulfshagenerhütten, Germany

The Basisgemende Wulfshagenerhütten: An experiment in the embodiment of the radical potential of the christian religion.

In the course of history, religion (although it has supported power structures of every sort) has again and again been involved in movements which critique elements of the existing social/political/economic/religious order. This critique of the existing order has been at times theoretical, but also practical: that is, attempts have been made to put this radical critique into a lived form. In this paper I describe the Basisgemeinde Wulfshagenerhütten (of which I am a member), a christian community in northern Germany which seeks to embody an alternative way of life in its varying dimensions. The community originated in the social and political upheavals of the late 1960s which also provoked members of the established churches into an exploration of the radical dimensions and potential of the christian religion. The Basisgemeinde practices Gütergemeinschaft (a community of goods) and operates a manufacturing cooperative which is jointly owned by its members. After a description of the Basisgemeinde I will examine the importance of Religionskritik and Sozialkritik in the beginning of the community and how this comes to lived expression 40 years after the beginning of the community.

5. Christopher Hartney

University of Sydney, Australia

A Lone Radical Christian Voice Against Economic and Governmental Excess?:
The Example of the Jesus Christians

Like many poverty movements throughout the history of Christianity, the Jesus Christians re-imagine a Christ-inspired simplicity that puts them at sharp odds with both mainstream Christian thought and mainstream cultural flows of the West. This small movement, which has been in development since the 1970s,  provocatively rails against “Churchies” who seek prosperity and comfort in the message of the New Testament, while at the same time seeking a life without money that extends as far as dumpster diving and the reuse of abandoned food. The movement is not necessarily left wing in ideology, but certainly in its communal practices it can be seen as offering a radical challenge to other Christians in their relation to issues of poverty, ecology and the state. This paper positions the Jesus Christians in their heritage to other Christian groups such as The Family and the Quakers, but ends by assessing the unique challenge they offer to mainstream Christians. I conclude by considering why mainstream Christianity will never be able to adequately respond to the challenges this organisation presents.

6. Mehmet Karabela

Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

Uses of Marx in the Iranian Revolution: Shariati’s Marx and ‘Muslim Marxists’

7. Mads Peter Karlsen

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

‘Stony ground but not entirely’ – On Badiou’s materialist notion of grace and its political implications

Even though Alain Badiou’s depicts himself and his philosophy as ‘militant atheist’ he nevertheless employs the fundamental theological notion of grace on numerous occasions. This is the case not merely in relation to his interpretation of the Apostle Paul, but also in his presentation of his own philosophical position. This recurrent usage of the notion of grace raises questions of clarification concerning the sense in which Badiou more specifically uses and understands this term: What precisely does Badiou mean when he talks about ‘laicised’ or ‘materialist’ grace? Why does he not just leave this notion behind? In what sense does he need it? Furthermore, it also raises a more fundamental question concerning whether his alleged materialist philosophy of the event might actually be interpreted as a theological doctrine of grace. In my paper I will begin the discussion of these issues and of their political implications.

8. Ole Jakob Løland

University of Oslo, Norway

Saint Paul: The Legitimizer or Deligitimizer of a New Revolutionary Order?

The religious figure Paul the Apostle has returned to continental philosophy as an inspiration for various thinkers. This paper focuses on two of these philosophers, Slavoj Žižek and Jacob Taubes, and asks: Which political themes emerges when we take a close look on the Pauline passages that both Žižek and Taubes use in their interpretations of Paul? How does Pauline Politics look like when we take their common Pauline sources as our point of departure? Our preconception of Zizek’s Paulinism as a desicionist messianism that is ready to legitimate and justify a New Political Order will be put to test by these close readings. The paper will also evaluate the view of Taubes’ Paul as a figure that is constantly delegitimizing any positive political content. By a comparative study of Žižek and Taubes’ interpretations of the same Pauline passages the author will show different aspects of Pauline politics that appears in the contemporary philosophical debate about Paul’s legacy and relevance for the political Left today.

9. Lu Shaochen

Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Authority and the Russian Revolution: Luther, Calvin, Lenin

10. Marion Maddox

Macquarie University, Australia

Green Christians: A New Australian Progressive Voice, and the Remarkable Campaign to Silence It

In the 2010 Australian federal election, the Australian Greens Party fielded its largest-ever slate of candidates. They included several members of the clergy; a lay congregational leader who had been recruited into the party by nuns; a senior church social justice official of many years’ service; and numerous highly committed lay members of their local congregations.

The same election campaign also saw a series of extraordinary attacks on the Greens Party. Australia’s Catholic Cardinal, George Pell, called the party ‘quite remarkably anti-Christian’; the Australian Christian Lobby wrote in its annual report that its attacks on the Greens had been among its most important undertakings for the year; and several Christian organisations issued election guides urging voters to put the Greens last. On the election day itself, a Greens campaign worker was denied legally-mandated access to the space outside a polling booth, because the booth was inside a Catholic church and the priest would not allow the campaign worker onto church grounds.

Drawing on interviews with self-identified Christian Greens candidates, this paper explores their religious motivations for standing, and their responses to and interpretations of the campaign against them.

Next, it analyses the religious anti-Greens campaign in the broader context of the Australian religious and political climate.

Finally, it considers why the Christian left voice, credited with a significant impact on the outcome of the 1993 federal election, has been so effectively eclipsed over the intervening 17 years, and what conditions might enable progressive Christians such as those active in the Greens to reassert a Christian left public theology.

11. Mika Ojakangas

University of Jyväskylä, Finland

On the Medieval Origins of Radical Reformation: An Outburst of the Inner Truth

In this paper, I shall argue that one of the most revolutionary doctrines of radical reformation was actually an orthodox Scholastic doctrine, namely that of the spark of conscience (synderesis), meaning the divine remnant of the fall within the soul of every human being. Although this doctrine of inner truth was revolutionary from the very beginning, its revolutionary potentiality did not become fully affirmed until the authority of the universal Church was called into question, notably by Luther. Yet Luther himself repudiated the doctrine of inner truth, as the only truth is that of the written Word. Instead, radical reformers, such as Müntzer and Denck, argued that both the Church and the Word must be subjected to the authority of the inner truth. The Scripture bears witness to God but only mediately, while the experience of the inner truth is His immediate expression. Thus, these radicals were Catholics without the Church and Protestants without the Word, but it was precisely this that made them revolutionary in the first place. It was the inner truth alone that had authority over them and inasmuch as they had this truth within, so is God and everything that belongs to Him: omnipotence, righteousness, and mercy.

12. Christina Petterson

Humboldt University, Germany

Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine: Radical or Reactionary?

In this paper I want to examine the relation between the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine and a couple of different social contexts (Europe and the colonies) to discuss whether the movement could be determined as radical or reactionary in terms of its socio-economic status, gender politics and theologicial convictions. Embedded in this discussion is a consideration of uses of radical and reactionary and their relations to what is called a ‘fall narrative’ namely that the original pure and dynamic movement became institutionalised and rigid at a certain point in time, thereby leaving behind its radical origin.

13. Tamara Prosic

Monash University, Australia

Orthodoxy, Collectivism and Communism

Communism as a type of social organisation with common ownership of the means of production in many ways rests on the principles of collectivism or worldviews that emphasize the relational, social nature of human beings and their interdependence. Given that religions are all embracing social phenomena that can inform every aspect of one’s life, they are certainly one of the sources that contribute or can contribute towards building a collectivist outlook and embracing the ideals of communism. The paper discusses some of the basic Christian concepts such as the relationship between god and humans, the nature of humans, the concept of sin and their extremely collectivist understanding in Orthodox Christianity, suggesting that it was the Orthodox worldview that also contributed to the success of 1917 Russian communist revolution.

14. Holly Randell-Moon

Macquarie University, Australia

Secular Critique, Religion and Cultural Studies

In the last decade, religious issues have emerged as intense sites of conflict in media and political discourse in western liberal democratic countries. With its focus on issues of representation, power and discourse, cultural studies is well placed to engage with religion’s influence on media, political and cultural communication. However, religion’s influence on everyday life has largely escaped the disciplinary attention of cultural studies. In this paper, I explore how specific kinds of theoretical and methodological assumptions govern the types of knowledge produced and analysed within cultural studies and how these knowledge practices in turn work to marginalise religion within the discipline. Cultural studies is implicated in the secular epistemological orientation of academic critique even as it contests some of its fundamental humanist assumptions from a radical left perspective. As result, there are specific cultural, political and corporeal economies that condition intellectual engagements with the secular and religious in certain ways. Any engagement with religion therefore requires a concomitant engagement with the cultural and institutional operation of secularism. Typically, secularism is understood to separate religion from politics, legally or constitutionally, thus rendering religion a matter of private belief and individual choice. Such an understanding has been challenged by a number of scholars (such as Asad [2003], Taylor [2007], Mahmood [2004] and Masuzawa [2005]) who argue that secularism produces particular understandings of religion. Drawing on these critiques, this paper argues that it is not tenable to exclude religion from cultural studies’ theoretical and disciplinary paradigms. In order to include religion within the purview of cultural studies’ disciplinary concerns, the secular constitution of knowledge practices, and our complicity in reproducing these practices as scholars, must be opened up to critical interrogation.

15. Tatiana Senyushkina

Taurida National V.I. Vernadsky University, Crimea

Religion and Civil Society: Between Secularisation and Fundamentalism

The influence of fundamentalist and secular values ​​in the development of religious consciousness and civil society, using the example of post-Soviet countries, including Ukraine, is analysed in this paper. Civil society is analysed as a result of the influence of secular consciousness on social life and on the relationship between people, which are slowly being transformed in the direction of eroding the clear boundaries of the sphere of influence of religious principles. These processes take place in the context of the formation of priorities drawn from the values ​​of individualism, which is the basis of capitalist society. With the dominance of the economic ethos of capitalism (Max Weber), society needs to find effective mechanisms of social solidarity which is necessary for the regulation of social relations with individualistic values, which are free from regulatory control of the collective forms of religious consciousness. However, along with these processes we can see the examples of the activation of various fundamentalist religious movements, particularly in Islam, which is beginning to play an important role in global geopolitics. The paper focuses on the inter-Islamic contradictions in the Ukraine (Crimea), especially as a result of the conflict between the secular character of “Traditional Islam of Crimean Tatars” and radical movements, such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafis (Wahhabis), which are developing under the influence of the Arab countries.

16. Jorunn Økland

University of Oslo, Norway

Gender Equality as Value in Religious and Secular Contexts

This will not be a formal paper but a brainstorming session, based on the energetic work at the Gentre for Gender Research at the University of Oslo and seeking ideas to move forward in a collaborative fashion.

WEATHER

Ah yes, the weather: winter refuses to budge, so we have snow and sub-zero temperatures into next week:

Thursday: 4° to -5°

Friday: 1° to -6°

Saturday: -3° to -12°

Sunday: -1° to -8°

 

Is China more democratic than the USA?

Sometimes you stumble on a real piece of tripe – to wit, this supposedly challenging piece from the ‘Open Democracy’ bunch called ‘Is China More Democratic than Russia‘. They trot out some stunners, such as: if an alien landed on earth today with a political science degree (as aliens do), they would mistakenly assume Russia is democratic and China not. Ah yes, the universality of ‘democracy’. Always dangerous when the qualifier drops away – bourgeois democracy. I also like this one: the Russians are faking democracy while the Chinese are faking communism …

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, the five points suggested, but replace ‘Russia’ with USA, as in ‘Is China more democratic than the USA’.

1. Rotation of power: The United States (or Australia, or Germany …) clearly has elections, but no rotation of power … the role of the elections are not to secure the rotation of power, but to avoid it.

2. Listening to the people: The United States’ rigged elections are a much weaker test to judge the mood of the people and the ability of the regional leaders to deal with them.

3. Tolerance of opposition, tolerance of dissent. Democratic decision-making depends upon both diversity of views and the acceptability of disagreement … If you compare the USA and China, you will see that in USA there is certainly much more tolerance for organised opposition. The process is completely screwed up, but you can register a party, you can go on the street to protest, you can even ask the president to resign. But while Capitol Hill broadly tolerates the opposition, it does not listen to it.

4. Recruitment of elites. First, the great majority of the American elites went to a few Universities. Second, the most important factor influencing membership of this elite circle is to have known a leading politician. In short, the United States is governed by a circle of friends. This is not a meritocratic system in any sense: most of these people have not had proper careers, but have simply ended in this ruling group.

5. Experimentation. My last point comparing these two systems is to emphasise the way in which the Chinese and Americans  totally differ in their view of the experimental nature of politics. Chinese political and economic reforms are organised around the experimentation of different models in the different regions and try to figure out what works from the point of view of the leadership. This is emphatically not the case in the United States: experiment is, basically, a dirty word there. They are not experimenting in the process of trying to build a governable state.

Then again, honour to whom honour is due: when read in this way, in China the government rotates power, listens to the people, tolerates opposition, recruits not merely elites but across the board, and experiments. That makes it a whole lot more democratic than the USA, or Australia, or Germany …

 

Second Call for Papers: Helsinki – St. Petersburg conference on Power/Religion

Second Call for Papers

Power/Religion: A Revanche of Reaction or a Metaphor of Revolution?

Venues: Helsinki (University of Helsinki)

St Petersburg (European University at St Petersburg and Russian Christian Academy for Humanities)

Date: September 10–15, 2013

Paper proposals due May 1, 2013

After a short-lived belief in the secularization of societies, religion has returned to the political arena with a vengeance. It is one of the most controversial but also determining political issues in today’s world. The majority of contemporary wars and terrorist attacks are religiously laden. The age of theocracies is by no means over. European secular countries are trying to tackle with the issue of religious symbols in the public sphere. Religious words such as blasphemy have reappeared in political vocabulary. While the Lutheran State-Church is reduced to insignificance, in Orthodox countries the Church and the State have entered into a mutual partnership legitimizing each other’s power claims against secular reformists. Overtly secular intellectuals in the West have turned to religious discourses in their quest for tools of cultural and political criticism in order to fight capitalism and neoliberal hegemony. Not Marx or Lenin but the Apostle Paul and Thomas Müntzer are leading revolutionary figures today.

But is religion a reactionary force or does it involve revolutionary potentiality? Or is religion, particularly the Abrahamic religions, fundamentally twofold, originally based on a revolutionary event but developed into a power system of the Church. Or is the very power of the Church based on the fidelity to the revolutionary event in its origin? What about religious doctrines? In the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul proclaims that every person should be subject to the governing authorities (Romans 13), while in the same letter he observes that we are “not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14). Further, in Acts 5:29 we may read the Apostles’ collective reply to the high priest who charged them not to preach in the name of Christ: “We must obey God rather than men.” Indeed, does not religion open up a transcendent dimension of freedom within the immanence of political order? Or is it precisely this transcendent dimension of freedom – but also that of secrecy (arcana) – that is needed in order to legitimize clerical and political power? Presumably, there is no definitive answer to these questions, for it is quite obvious that we have to take into account historical contexts: it is probable that same religious principles that empower revolutionary militants can be used by the established Churches in order to suppress them. Or is it? This two-day conference addresses these and related questions. Papers may deal with perennial, historical or contemporary issues. Both theoretical and empirical approaches are welcome.

Schedule

Tuesday September 10

Arrival at Helsinki

19:00 Get together party / dinner

Wednesday September 11

Venue: Collegium for Advanced Studies (University of Helsinki)

9:15 – 11:45 five papers

11:45 – 13:15 lunch

13:15 – 15:45 five papers

19:00 Departure from Helsinki (Ferry to St Petersburg)

Thursday September 12

9:30: Arrival at St Petersburg

14:00 – 17:30 five papers

19:00 Dinner

Friday September 13

10:00 – 12:30 five papers

12:30 Lunch

14:00 – 17:30 special section for additional Russian participants (in Russian)

19:00 Dinner

Saturday September 14

Sightseeing

20:00 Departure from St Petersburg (Ferry to Helsinki)

Sunday September 15

8:30 Return to Helsinki

Paper Proposals

Researchers interested in presenting a paper at the conference are asked to send an abstract of no more than 300 words by the 1^st of May 2013 to the following email addresses:

mika.ojakangas@jyu.fi

power.religion2013@gmail.com

NOTE: The conference will take place in Helsinki and St Petersburg. Those participants who wish to participate in the sessions in both cities are recommended to use the opportunity to purchase a visa free cruise / hotel package to St Petersburg including two nights on board (St Peter Line / Princess Maria, Helsinki – St Petersburg – Helsinki) and two nights’ accommodation in a hotel (four stars) in St Petersburg. The price of the cruise / hotel package is about 250-300€. If you are interested in the package, please contact Mika Ojakangas (mika.ojakangas@jyu.fi) before the 1^st of April.

Looking forward to receiving your paper proposals,

Roland Boer (University of Newcastle, Australia)

Sergey Kozin (Russian Christian Academy of the Humanities)

Mika Ojakangas (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

Sponsors:

Subjectivity, Historicity, and Communality Research Group (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki)

Academy of Finland (Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki)

European University at St Petersburg

Russian Christian Academy for Humanities

Religion and Political Thought Project (Australian Research Council)

 

Why I am not a social-democrat

It is reasonably common refrain these days that social-democrats (or labour parties) have abandoned their true beliefs, that they have become proponents of rampant capitalism, that the only people who vote for them are middle class. This assumes that once upon a time the social-democrats stood for a political philosophy that was distinct and would make the world a better place. That’s crap, since social-democracy has always been deeply problematic.

To be clear, by ‘social-democrat’ I mean the political movements and parties that split away from the socialists in 1914. Before then, communists were known as social-democrats. But when the German Social-Democratic Party voted in favour of war credits so Germany could begin the First World War, the difference became apparent. Other social-democratic parties followed suit in their own countries, thereby destroying what had been a consensus in the Second International until then: workers would refuse to fight in an imperialist war, turning their weapons against the capitalists. When the national social-democratic parties broke that agreement and supported their respective war efforts, they revealed their true colours.

The most obvious of those was an acceptance of bourgeois democracy as the untranscendable horizon within which they would work. They soon dropped the ‘bourgeois’ epithet from ‘democracy’ and argued that the ballot-box was the only way to achieve lasting change. The problem, of course, was that they chose to fight on ground not of their own choosing. That ground was chosen and laid out by the bourgeoisie, which thereby was able to set the terms of debate, the acceptable range of what could and could not be changed, which boiled down to a liberal program and the unquestioned validity of capitalism. Social-democratic parties were all too happy to oblige, feeling that they had a better agenda for making capitalism work.

This means that any change has to take the path of reform. Illegal activity is unacceptable, and social-democrats have often been the harshest on any extra-parliamentary communist agitation. But pure reform (without being subservient to a revolutionary program) entails an evolutionary approach. The champion of this was Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932). He infamously argued that workers could persuade the bourgeoisie of the benefits of social-democracy, to which they would then turn in grateful acceptance. All one need do is use the sacrosanct bourgeois parliaments to achieve the necessary reforms. Bernstein liked to think that the tail would wag the dog, but the reality is that the dog was and is firmly in control of the tail. I would suggest that all social-democratic parties today are Bernsteinian by default.

That leads to some of the oddest arguments I have heard of late: social-democrats governments have actually achieved socialism by parliamentary means. I hear it reasonably regularly in relation to Scandinavia, but it has also been trotted out in regard to Scotland (!), the UK and even Australia. And it is made by those who identify as being on the Left. This position is coupled with two other assumptions. First, the communisms of Eastern Europe and Asia are assumed to be travesties, of no worth. Indeed, the achievements of Western social-democratic governments outshine – so it is asserted – any of those ‘pseudo-communisms’. Second, this curious position often appears with a good deal of nostalgia. Once social-democrats believed they could change the world: nationalise industrious and banks, establish welfare states, provide universal education. Once upon a time they actually achieved a Bernsteinian socialism. But now they have ceased to be true believers. I’m sorry, but the only faith of social-democrats is capitalism and bourgeois democracy.