Clement to the Corinthians (on climate change?)

Sojourning as a theologico-political alternative to environmental emergency rhetoric

Bibliographic Data

ID12240652
AuthorsMichael P A Murphy (0000-0002-9523-4402, University of Ottawa, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume35
Issue6
Pages915-932
Publication date2020-07-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCambridge Review of International Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0955-7571 • E-ISSN: 1474-449X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09557571.2020.1789558
OpenAlexW3041027857
LanguageEN
References cited26

After decades of critical scholarship calling attention to the dangers of emergency powers, many critical theorists and political activists are now turning to those same tools to combat climate change. The Climate Emergency Declaration movement advocates directly for the declaration of political states of emergency in jurisdictions across the globe. This article intervenes to recall the danger of emergency powers, with particular attention paid to the crucial role played by the political state of emergency (originally l’etat de siege fictif) in nineteenth-century France in the development of emergency power doctrine and twentieth-century authoritarian sovereignty. The second half of the article looks for an alternative, arguing that the radical and emancipatory response to the threat of climate change ought to be grounded in a political theology of ‘sojourning’, rather than the exception, drawing on the First Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, as well as the commentary on that letter by Giorgio Agamben. This theologico-political response to the ethics of climate change furthers the scholarly debate on political theology and International Relations theory by engaging one of the crucial challenges of the twenty-first century and by developing a potential model for theological discussions of ethical problems beyond religious moralising

Environmental ethics · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Theology · Christian Theology and Mission · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Theology and Philosophy of Evil