Kees van dungeon biography of barack obama
Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life 9781107030398, 9781107641969, 2014023800
Citation preview
Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-03039-8 - Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life Luke Bretherton Frontmatter More information PHARAOH AKHENATEN ORDERS THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL AMUN ARTIFACTS In the third year of his reign, he ordered the construction of a gigantic temple just east of the Great Temple of Amun in Karnak to honor the new god of his choice: Aten, god of the sun. In the fifth year, he settled on a representative image of a solar disk and changed his name to Akhenaten, meaning “agreeable to the sun disk.” To fortify his domain, he abandoned the traditional Egyptian capital at Thebes and established a new city 200 miles away, along the Nile River but still surrounded by desert. He called this city, which is located at the site of present-day Tell el-Amarna, Akhetaten (“horizon of the Aten”). This was all highly unusual. Ancient Egyptians traditionally communed with the divine through individual worship, through priests, and through their pharaoh. And while pharaohs were considered to be representations of gods in human form, no pharaoh had ever declared himself to be the people’s sole channel of divine communication, as Akhenaten had. Additionally, Ancient .
Resurrecting Democracy
Through a case study of community organizing in the global city of London and an examination of the legacy of Saul Alinsky around the world, this book develops a constructive account of the relationship between religious diversity, democratic citizenship, and economic and political accountability. Based on an in-depth, ethnographic study, Part I identifies and depicts a consociational, populist, and faithfully secular vision of democratic citizenship by reflecting on the different strands of thought and practice that feed into and help constitute community organizing. Particular attention is given to how organizing mediates the relationship between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and those without a religious commitment in order to forge a common life. Part II then unpacks the implications of this vision for how we respond to the spheres in which citizenship is enacted, namely, civil society, the sovereign nation-state, and the globalized economy. Overall, the book outlines a way of re-imagining democracy, developing innovative public policy, and addressing poverty in the contemporary context. Luke Bretherton is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics and Senior Fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Before Duke he was Reader in Theology and Politics at King’s College London (2004–2012). His other books include Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity (2006) and Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (2010), winner of the 2013 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. In addition to publishing journal articles and books, he w Theft! Forgery! Murder!: Art History’s Greatest Crimes
1350 B.C.
There are two things for which Pharaoh Akhenaten, née Amenhotep IV, is best known almost 3,500 years after his short, tumultuous reign: being the husband of Nefertiti, whose famous bust has earned her the title of most beautiful woman who ever lived; and instituting a heretical monotheistic religion that brought about the first instance of iconoclasm in recorded history. Next to Osiris, the god of the underworld, Amun-Ra was the most invoked and recorded of the Ancient Egyptian gods, beginning with the dynasty of Ahmose I in the mid-16th century B.C.This is the religious climate that Amenhotep IV (whose name meant “Amun is content”) entered when he assumed the throne of Egypt, circa 1353 B.C.Along with members of the nobility, priests were second in command, and Amenhotep was wary of their power.