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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Kierkegaard, Statecraft and Political Theology

Kierkegaard, Statecraft and Political Theology

Barnett, Christopher B.

Hardcover

Philosophy

ISBN10: 1350408530
ISBN13: 9781350408531
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Jun 11 2026
Pages: 232
Weight: 1.09
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Written against the fractured landscape of contemporary Christianity and the increasing popularity of political theology, Christopher B. Barnett wrestles with the question: what if S ren Kierkegaard's rejection of modern politics was not a form of spiritual quietism, but of Christian resistance?

Tracing the rise of the modern secular state, Barnett argues that Kierkegaard's refusal of the political anticipates a crisis now impossible to ignore. For Kierkegaard, obsessive political passion signals a theological inversion: as the state grows in importance, God is displaced. The upshot is not freedom but moral exhaustion-a society saturated with envy, despair, and groupthink.

Barnett contends that Kierkegaard's reflections on politics and the modern state find a receptive audience in a trio of twentieth-century figures: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jacques Ellul, and René Girard. Loosely gathered under the heading of apostolical radicalism, each of these thinkers demonstrates that the modern state organizes contemporary life through bureaucracy, technique, propaganda, and ritualized antagonism. State politics may promise meaning, identity, and moral clarity, but as the rise of political theology shows, it ultimately absorbs all aspects of life into the sphere of politics.

Kierkegaard, Statecraft and Political Theology unleashes Kierkegaard's political thought as a live provocation, drawing unexpected lines between Christian theology and praxis and our present age of social media, tribalized politics, and permanent war. Ultimately, this book challenges readers to ask whether the modern state leads towards salvation-or the apocalypse.

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