Panel: POST-THEISM, POST-SECULARISM, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHRISTIANITY



50.2 - POSTTHEISM AS AN ALTERITARIAN PRACTICE

AUTHORS:
Kern C. (University of Münster ~ Münster ~ Germany)
Text:
In current theological debate, posttheism is often discussed from the perspective of discourse and conceptual analysis. It is reflected how in posttheistic approaches concepts of God change and how the relationship between God and the world can be defined differently: God not as a sovereign power intervening from the outside, but as a mysterious/mystical, transimmanent depth that is interwoven in all things and manifested in them. The article proposed here supplements this conceptual-analytical view with a performance-analytical perspective, which has so far been rather marginal in the discussion. It treats posttheism not primarily as discourse, but as performative practice. How is posttheism performed? What are the characteristics of posttheistic forms of belief and life? How are social power relations received and shaped in it? On the basis of concrete practical examples such as the "Scuola diffusa di Silenzio", posttheism is reconstructed as a "doing theology" in which the relationship to God and the world is carried out, embodied in a specific way that can be broken down into three basic characteristics: Posttheism as a practice of resistant rejection of sovereignty, as a practice of relationality, as a practice of ungrounded alterity. In posttheistic enactments, socialization and subjectivation take place in an alterity-open way. What needs to be discussed, however, is whether and to what extent this alteritarian practice critically takes up social power relations and puts them up for discussion, or whether it evades this political dimension by spiritualizing it.