Politics: Creating Home in Contested Spaces

Polarization is the watchword of the contemporary context and while there have been, often sincere, attempts in the past to keep ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ separate from one another, either in the function and task of each within society or the language we use to describe different factions, this no longer seems possible. The focused politicization of religion, primarily by right-wing groups, has been in motion since the 1980s, but in recent years it has accelerated rapidly, associating Christian identity with reactionary nationalist politics. Despite the growing acknowledgement of Catholicism as a ‘world church,’ repeated condemnations of such extremism from recent popes, and the strength of Catholic Social Doctrine, the church has also been drawn into this political polarization via the ‘culture wars’ which have narrowly defined Catholic identity.
This ‘small group’ will address the problem of polarization by proposing the very nature of public space to be inherently contested space where people are able to encounter one another as actual others, rather than as enemies. The group will explore how contested spaces can be transformed through dialogue and even critical debate into a common home.
We will emphasize the role and importance of space for promoting honest discourse. The encounter with others in space enables the free recognition of reality as it appears, rather than as it has been framed in political discourse. This reality must be dealt with in dialogue with others, potentially leading to consensus. We will explore this process of dialogue in both the political context, as an extension of the democratic process, and in ecclesial spaces, as a function of synodality within the church. Since religious spaces and contexts have been politicized, the ways in which political and democratic processes can positively inform encounter and dialogue within the church should be examined.

Bradford E. Hinze is the Karl Rahner, S.J. Professor of Theology at Fordham University. He is the author of Prophetic Obedience: Ecclesiology for a Dialogical Church (Orbis, 2016).

Daniel Minch is Assistant Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Graz. He is the author of Eschatological Hermeneutics: The Theological Core of Experience and Our Hope for Salvation (T&T Clark, 2018).