The Politics of God
Friday, August 24, 2007
Milan Cathedral, Milan, 1998 (detail)
© Thomas Struth
In The Politics of God - an essay adapted from his new book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West - Mark Lilla considers the power of political theology. In this, his ability to present the history of theological politics up to the present day, in plain language, is masterful.
The full essay, as printed in the the latest New York Times Magazine, can be read online here. The article is lengthy but worth the read.
Additionally, I thought Thomas Struth’s images were an interesting compliment to the text.
Read this in print if you can.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Strange. I found the use of Struth’s work to be completely off target as an editorial accompaniment to the article. The people in the photographs are worshipers of art (ie tourists), not worshipers of gods of any sort. Seemed like a too-easy selection, a little lazy, almost like selecting clip art. “Let’s see. This article’s about religion. Churches would be a good thing to use. Who’s been shooting churches? Hmmm. Oh, yeah! Thomas Struth.”
August 24th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
The Politics of Editorial Accompaniment!
I still found the photographs to be interesting; I feel the images are often concerned with the architectural “presence” (and what this construction implies) - albeit, they do as a result look at the relationship between the place and the human subjects. While the situations may not be directly related to Lilla’s argument, the air of self-reflection present in the images seemed to serve the text well. Also, the scale of the individual:
Notre-Dame, Paris, 2000
© Thomas Struth
Out of curiosity, whose photographs would you have picked to go along with the article?
August 25th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
maybe r. gober?
August 27th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I felt it was a very bad article! Lilla fails to understand history and makes up a convenient new category of ‘political theology’ instead of tackling the irelationship between politics and ideology and understanding what theology is. Not to mention his treatment of morality which he separates from religion so that he can attack religion. The article is flawed on many accounts. For more you can check my blog http://paswonky.blogspot.com