Love and Democracy (3): Pentecostalism and Catholic Social Teaching

This post is the third in a series inspired by Luke Bretherton’s recent book Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019. https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7640/christ-and-the-common-life.aspx

Here we look at two further case studies in political theology from Part One of Luke’s book : Pentecostalism and Catholic Social teaching

1. Pentecostalism

As I remarked in the previous post, associating Pentecostalism with Black Power is an astute move by Bretherton. Without the recognition of the black, feminist and socially radical genealogy of the original Pentecostal outpourings of the early 20th century, (see my work on this in Church, Gospel and Empire. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2011, Ch 5), Pentecostalism is all too easily associated with the pragmatic adaptations and subsumptions that have made it prey to American evangelical conservatism and most recently the incipient racism and fascism of the current Americam presidency. However, this is far from the original character of early Pentecostalism and its proper inheritance in the Charismatic movement, the branches and cultural formations of which give it such a socially transformational impetus, particularly in the southern hemisphere.

Bretherton’s particular interest is in Pentecostalism’s capacity to form what he calls a dyadic relationship with the contemporary world, by which he means its emphasis on the present work of the Spirit in the world rather than solely relying on the received biblical and ecclesial tradition. Luke traces the theological roots of this emphasis in Pentecostal pneumatology, eschatology and soteriology, that is to say what Pentecostalism understands about the Spirit, the future and the salvation of people and planet. The implication of this is that the Spirit’s work is in the world and not just in the church, and therefore Pentecostalism has the potential for recognising and forming a common life with any who have a heart for social and economic justice with the result that they reorientate society towards love. While I prefer to explore the categories of incarnation and trinity more than his three traditional, systematic theological categories, I find his dyadic approach very exciting on two counts. Namely it has been the after effect of my own personal Pentecostal/Charismatic experience and accords with its role in cultivating new political space in many post-austerity contexts. This is borne out by my research generally and my experience particularly in the current horizontal socio-economic politics of Morecambe Bay.

2. Catholic Social Teaching

Catholic Social Teaching represents a radical turn in the history of Catholicism. Given the church’s partnership with empire from the 4th century onwards and its developing theological and ecclesial legitimation of the currencies of empire as I trace in chapters two and three of Church, Gospel and Empire (see above), Catholic Social Teaching marks a shift away from the Negotium Crucis and a recovery of the true body of Jesus. Instead of falsely identifying military violence on behalf of church and empire as a participation in the sufferings of Christ as Pope Innocent III had argued, or inverting the true and mystical bodies of Christ as Henri de Lubacs has exposed, Catholic Social Teaching made democracy the normative form of political order advocated by the Catholic Church. Participation in Christ was seen as a participation by the laity in the incarnational life of the true body of Jesus.

Bretherton tracks these developments over the past 140 years up until their culmination in the current papacy of Francis and examines five particular characteristics: the consecration of the laity, the recognition of the laity’s role as participating in the work of Christ, the consociational vision of sovereignty, the emphasis on the dignity of work and the emphasis on people power at a key moment in history. All five of these are well suited to the challenge of cultivating horizontal political space rather than vertical statecraft. This move in Catholicism, which Luke rightly sees as part of the major impact of the Pentecostal movement on the Catholic Church, makes it remarkably open to radical politics. It is this that has made my chapter “Authority Without Sovereignty” from Towards a Kenotic Vision of Authority in the Catholic Church (Edited by Anthony J. Carroll, Martha Kerkwijk et al, Washington, D.C: The Council for Research and Values, 2015) one of the most downloaded papers on my Academia site.

Nevertheless, as I have argued in the first of these posts, describing consociational democracy as a form of sovereignty is unhelpful. In my view it was precisely this that prevented Catholic Social Teaching from exposing the oppression in Pinochet’s Chile as William Cavanaugh powerfully describes in his critique of Jacques Maritain’s practical theology in Torture and the Eucharist (Oxford and Malden Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1998). It was not so much the neglect of the vertical power of state or church so much as the failure to adequately critique the myth of peace through sovereign power that lay behind them. So the disappearance and torture of people progressed far too far before the church realised what was happening. Unless the horizontal has priority over the vertical in the practice of consociational or what I prefer to call relational politics then the sovereignty myth on which the vertical is overlaid will tend to dominate in the end.

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