The Church and the Kingdom by Giorgio Agamben
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When Law Becomes Coercion

Giorgio Agamben is an Italian philosopher who recognises the significance of theology to politics. He also recognises the significance of politics to theology, particularly when the latter is infected by the secular considerations of the former. This is the subject of this short book which contains Agamben’s 2009 homily in the Cathedral of Notre Dame to the bishops and clergy of Paris. Although specifically addressed to the Catholic Church, it is a commentary on all of Christianity. It is calm, precise, and scathing.

Much of Agamben’s philosophical work has been directed against the 20th century political theorist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt, a Catholic, had introduced and defended the idea of the ‘state of exception’ as a legitimate reason for anyone with political power to declare him or herself superior to any existing laws in order to meet the demands of a crisis. Most famously this idea was used by the German National Socialists to take power after the Reichstag Fire in 1933. But it has been a common practice of governments of every kind everywhere - the American internment of its Japanese citizens, and the more recent arrest and incarceration of suspected foreign terrorists after the 9/11 events are just two other examples.

Agamben was, I think, the first philosopher to seriously challenge the legitimacy of the notion of the state of exception. His arguments are nuanced and often complex but they lead to one point - the suspension of law becomes a habit which not only leads to coercion and violence but also to the de-legitimation of the state or other entity which practices it. Therefore, he points out in his homily, virtually all the national governments in the world have through their own actions against their own citizens have become illegitimate. One consequence of this he alludes to briefly - the growth in quasi-religious subversive cults on both the left and the right.

But his message to the bishops is not about national governments, it is about their church. This is an institution that has used the state of exception more or less continuously in order to suppress any and all attacks on its privileges and claims to superiority. In doing so, Agamben implies, the institution has destroyed its own legitimacy. Among other things, this is the real cause of the same problem among nation states. The church has led the way in the corruption of secular government. What it has modelled to the world, the world has taken note of.

Ironically, the corrupting power of the Christian church in most European nations is far less than it is in America where churches both Catholic and Protestant have employed the state of exception as a standard political tactic since the country’s foundation. The practise has in recent decades been intensified and used overtly to influence political campaigns under single issue banners like abortion, gay rights, immigration, and so-called Christian values. Politicians like Trump, Cruz, and their Red State cronies have used this state of exception rhetoric to advance their own agendas. If Agamben is correct, it is not the political which must be the priority for reform in America but the religious.

Postscript: For an exposition of Agamben’s rebuttal of Schmitt see: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...


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