Kierkegaard, Statecraft and Political Theology

Written against the fractured landscape of contemporary Christianity and the increasing popularity of “political theology,” Christopher B.Barnett wrestles with the question: what if Søren 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 sta