Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T23:41:54.819Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Christian Political Theology as Comparative Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2020

Joshua Ralston
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Get access

Summary

Debates about sharī‘a and its relationship to public law, political pluralism, and Christianity have been a dominant feature of recent political discourse. Unfortunately, Christian political theologians have failed to engage with the challenges raised by Islamic political theology, instead either essentializing Islam or focusing on broad questions of social diversity. To remedy this, the chapter develops a comparative political theological method for engaging debates over the law. By adopting a comparative approach, two routes that dominate discussions of political theology in Christian-Muslim exchange are avoided. One leans strongly on secularism and too quickly silences religious imaginaries and their critiques of modernity. The other reasserts the ultimacy of religious community against the secular, largely through reinscribing battle lines between Christendom and the dār al-Islām. The chapter concludes that debates regarding sharī‘a, secularism, and law can be productively reframed by attending to the history of debate over the law in Christian-Muslim encounter and the nuanced theological perspectives on law and sovereignty within both traditions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law and the Rule of God
A Christian Engagement with Shari'a
, pp. 1 - 47
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×