In this article, I discuss the vilification of Kṛṣṇa as a deceitful sorcerer in the Mughal poet-laureate Shaikh Abū'l Faiḍ bin Mubārak, or ‘Faiḍī's Mahābhārat and his correspondent apotheosis as the ‘essence of the True God' in the Shāriq al-maʿrifat, a treatise also ascribed to Faiḍī. As I argue, this inconsistency, or ambivalence, is a common and overlooked facet of the elite Islamicate engagement with religious diversity and difference in early modern Hindustan. In the case of the Mahābhārat, however, Faiḍī's portrayal of Kṛṣṇa as a deceitful illusionist reflects not only an Islamic discomfort with Vaishnavite theology, but Faiḍī's own performative insecurities as a Hindustani writer of Persian poetry and literary prose. Kṛṣṇa's so-called ‘magic’ lies in large part in his way with words: the verbal and social manipulation he uses to stoke the flames of conflict. The character thus becomes a kind of shadow or double of Faiḍī himself-a demiurgic author of the Mahābhārat upon which the poet can displace the classical Islamicate association of poetry with sorcery and deceit.

This essay begins with a quotation from Carl Schmitt in which he quotes Søren Kierkegaard on the significance of the exception in political theology. The essay is an extended reflection on this quotation within a quotation. Through a comparison of Kierkegaard and Schmitt, the author presents two readings of the state of exception: the first centers on the figure of the sovereign, while the second centers on the figure of the martyr. The sovereign suspends the law from above, while the martyr suspends it from below. In the political sphere, there are two ways of becoming the exception: the sovereign versus the martyr.

This article contrasts the teaching on just war as presented by the 2000 document, ‘Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church’ (Moscow Patriarchate), with the insights provided by a similar social document issued in 2020 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, ‘For the Life of the World: Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church’. The article argues that whenever religion is instrumentalised to justify the political ambitions of church and secular leaders, and especially when they are used as the main driving force behind military conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, it is the prophetic role of theologians and scholars to show that religion offers resources to deconstruct the weaponisation of Christian faith for political gain.

This article introduces and comments on some of the themes raised by contributors to the special issue on my work. The contributions are divided into two categories. First, those delving into the sources and coherence of my many different projects. Second, those who try to apply to the law of the European Union the methods I have deployed to study American constitutionalism.

Paul Kahn has offered a fascinating account of the role of political theology in the field of law, through an exploration of some core concepts of the discipline. This article explores the nature of Kahn’s undertaking through a comparison with Carl Schmitt. The conclusion is that, rather than actual theology, Kahn’s “political theology” is a valuable form of legal anthropology anchored in an exploration of our legal culture.

Incest (“revealing the nakedness of the flesh of one’s flesh”) and slavery are presented in the Triteuch (Gen 1 through Lev 26) as twin threats to kinship creation (becoming “one flesh”) as the uniquely human matrix for fulfilling the commandment “be fruitful and multiply.” The serpent’s duplicitous nakedness symbolizes incestuous reproduction; the Tower builders, who seek to preserve their “one lip,” acquire one name, and avoid fragmentation into distinct kinship groups, “imagine” (zāmam, suggesting incest) a new way to reproduce themselves and their name; Pharaoh attempts to efface Israelite kinship and its “names” with the selective genocide of the males. The divine name YHWH, glossed as “I will be,” represents the freedom to give names to one’s children—the expression of the continuity of kinship creation (antitype of slavery)—and also the indexical uniqueness of each “I”-sayer—the interlinguistic basis of the oneness of humanity (antitype of the Tower).

In comparing the works of two major Catholic thinkers, John Courtney Murray (1904–1967) and Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1930–2019), one finds an example of the divergences between European-continental Catholic and US Catholic concepts of the state and society. This divergence has become more evident in the context of the rise of American Catholics in politics and in the context of the crisis of the post–World War II liberal political order, but they have been at the heart of different Catholic intellectual traditions for quite some time. A comparative analysis of Murray and Böckenförde helps to explain the role of US Catholicism in the crisis of American democracy and the complexity of the reception of Vatican II in political theology in different Catholic Churches around the world.

Sulh-i kull or ‘Total Peace’ with all religions was a policy introduced by the Mughal empire in South Asia in the late sixteenth century. It was a radically accommodative stance for its day, especially when compared to the intolerant manner in which other Muslim and Christian polities of the early modern world dealt with religious difference. This article introduces a new perspective on Mughal Total Peace by arguing that it was meant to solve a long-standing problem created by the monotheistic ban on oaths sworn on non-biblical deities. Such a ban restricted the ability of Muslim kings to solemnize peace treaties with their non-monotheist rivals and subjects. In the second half of the article, I examine two pre-Mughal cases, from the eleventh century (Mahmud of Ghazna) and the seventh century (the prophet Muhammad), respectively, to explore what other, less ‘total’, mechanisms were invented to suspend this ban and enable oath-taking and solemn peace-making between monotheist and non-monotheist. In effect, I use the Mughal case to highlight a specific issue that shaped political theology in Islam over the long term.

Why does Mao's embalmed corpse continue to arouse powerful religious feelings among contemporary Chinese writers after the end of his rule, from fantasies of resurrection to yearnings for redemption? While extant scholarship focuses on the sociopolitical aspects of Mao's posthumous cult, this essay reveals the crucial role that literary narrative plays in the (un)making of Mao's quasi-religious appeal. Drawing on literary genres such as diary, memoir, science fantasy, and satirical fiction, I argue that the political theology of Mao can be read as a grand “political fiction” that linked the doubling of Mao's immortal body with the perpetual sovereignty of the Chinese Communist Party. However, even as literary narrative authorizes the political mythology of Mao, contemporary Chinese literature also demonstrates its capacity for ideological critique. My narrative begins with the party's controversial effort to sacralize Mao's biological remains, from the ritualized display of political sovereignty to the ambiguous allusion to religious miracle. Then I look at the bizarre resurrection of Mao's flesh in Liu Cixin's 劉慈欣 1989 science fiction novel China 2185. The story features a cybernetic uprising in the distant future, when a computer engineer breaks into the Mao mausoleum and “uploads” Mao's mind into cyberspace. Lastly, I draw on the satirical fictions of Yan Lianke 閻連科 and Chan Koonchung 陳冠中 to reveal the desacralizing impacts of neoliberal capitalism on the Maoist political religiosity.