Book Review The gospels of the manifesto moment: Insurrection after God. A review commentary on: An Insurrectionist Manifesto. Four New Gospels for a Radical Politics . Ward Blanton, Clayton Crockett, Jeffrey W. Robbins, and Noëlle Vahanian. Foreword by Peter Rollins, Preface by Creston Davis, and Afterword by Catherine Keller. (Columbia University Press: 2016)

Abstract

A manifesto sets out an impassioned political and social argument, while traditionally the religious equivalent has been a creed. Yet read from the position of a radical theology and secular political theology, the historic and institutional nature of a creed acts as a barrier and limitation on radical and political theology, reducing radical theology and especially political theology to sectarian disclosure and closures. A manifesto on the other hand, overtly political in nature and outlook, becomes the open call to possibility that sits at the heart of both radical and political theology. These four new gospels are a powerful and prophetic work of political theology. They operate out of what Mary Ann Caws terms ‘the manifesto moment’ which is its positioning ‘between what has been done and what will be done, between the accomplished and the potential, in a radical and energizing division’,1 a moment of crisis expressing ‘what it wants to oppose, to leave, to defend, to change.