Beyond the protestantism of political theology: Thinking the politics of theological voluntarism

Abstract

In an attempt to think through the Islamic alongside the Christian, this article draws upon the political theology of Carl Schmitt to reflect on the salience of sovereignty. But in doing so, the article re-reads Schmitt’s political theology for its Protestant voluntarism, and adopts a more robust theological voluntarism as a vehicle for reflecting on political thought across both Christian and Islamic history. Moreover, this approach to political theology makes possible reflections on how political theology, whether in Christian or Islamic thought, may offer a critical lens by which to gain new analytic insights into the operation of sovereignty in presumably secularised regimes of thought, such as international law.