Public Theology

Editorial Note
A version of this article was first published in the Ethik-Lexikon: Höhne, Florian, Art. Öffentliche Theologie, Version 1.0, in: Ethik-Lexikon, 12.10.2017 (https://www.ethik-lexikon.de/lexikon/oeffentliche-theologie).

Links to other media and further information regarding this topic can be found in the German version of this article.

1. Subject Matter of Public Theology

Within the German-speaking world, Wolfgang Vögele  has defined public theology as “the reflection upon the work and effects of Christianity in the public sphere of society,” which includes the “orienting-dialogical (orientierend-dialogische) participation in public debates.”¹Vögele, Wolfgang, Zivilreligion in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Öffentliche Theologie 5), Gütersloh 1994, 421f., translation by Dylan S. Belton. According to this understanding of public theology, the latter concerns itself not only with the relationship between the institutions of the Church and the state. Rather, it takes for granted the existence of a society or civil society that is not organized, controlled, or determined by the state and in which public opinions are formed on issues that concern everyone. For example: What limits should be placed on biomedical research? Or more simply: should crucifixes be hung in public buildings?

Public opinion is formed more or less by the mass media – for instance, through (guest) contributions in newspapers or talk shows – or in the public spheres of gatherings and panel discussions or at universities. Public theology understands theology self-reflexively as a part of the discourses in which public opinion emerges socially.

Since the early 1990s at the latest, public theology has become a title given to works that, in a wide variety of global contexts, promote the public significance of theology, religious communities, and traditions. It is present in, among other places, the USA, South Africa, Australia, the UK, Brazil, and New Zealand. Although no uniform and internationally agreed upon definition has yet been established, public theologians from various contexts are currently connected in the Global Network for Public Theology.

The South African theologian Dirk Smit  has provided six stories of different public theologies, the first three of which by themselves already indicate just how diverse public theology is.²Cf. Smit, Dirk J., The Paradigm of Public Theology. Origins and Development, in: Bedford-Strohm, Heinrich et al. (Eds.), Contextuality and Intercontextuality in Public Theology. Proceedings from the Bamberg Conference 23.–25.06.2011 (Theology in the Public Square 4), Münster 2013, 11–23. The first story begins with the debate about American civil religion in the 1960s/1970s. In the course of this debate, the Chicago church historian Martin E. Marty  introduced the term “public theologian.” His intention was to define a kind of public intellectual such as Reinhold Niebuhr  who brought the (Christian) religious tradition to bear on public challenges in a critical and clearly effective way.

The main figure in the second story is the Catholic Chicago theologian David Tracy . Writing roughly at the same time as Niebuhr, Tracy argued for an understanding of theology as a public discourse and differentiated between several publics in which theologians operate: the university, Church, and society. Concentrating on Germany in the early 1970s, the third story describes how the late bishop and council chairman of the Protestant Church in Germany discussed the term “public theology” as an alternative to “political theology” but then initially decided against it. After the events surrounding the collapse of the GDR regime, the role of the Church in the emergence of civil society and in civil society became clearer. As a result and also in the wake of Wolfgang Huber’s  theology, the term “public theology” became more common in Germany.

A book series dedicated to “public theology” was established in 1993. Given the diversity of international debates, it is not be possible to find a universally shared definition of public theology – partly because this threatens to limit the openness of the debate. However, it is possible to identify common features and characteristics of public theology that have emerged in the discourse. In this regard, the characteristics of public theology that Heinrich Bedford-Strohm  has developed in his essay “Öffentliche Theologie in der Zivilgesellschaft“ can be used as guidelines for the Church’s public discourse.³Cf. Bedford-Strohm, Heinrich, Öffentliche Theologie in der Zivilgesellschaft, in: Höhne, Florian/Oorschot, Frederike van (Eds.), Grundtexte Öffentliche Theologie, Leipzig 2015, 211–226.These guidelines include: first, the public contribution of the Church and theology to societal debates should be based on the specifically Christian tradition: that is, the formative potential of biblical stories, liturgical traditions, or theological teachings should be identified and put to use. Second, the public discourse of the Church and theology must, as Bedford-Strohm has indicated, be bilingual. In other words, justifications and conclusions based on the bible must be accompanied by publicly accessible rationale. Third, the contributions must be relevant. This orients public theology toward interdisciplinary dialog. Fourth, Bedford-Strohm calls for a critical and constructive attitude in the practice of public theology. Theologians and Church representatives may criticize, for instance, social injustice, poverty, or the destruction of the natural world. At the same time, however, an orientation towards the relative and actual improvement of these conditions should also be operative in public theology. Public theology will thereby not allow itself to be “harnessed to the cart of group interests,”⁴Bedford-Strohm, Theologie, 220f., translation by Dylan S. Belton. although it does certainly look out for concrete expressions of its basic orientations. Fifth and finally, Bedford-Strohm situates public theology in a global and ecumenical horizon. Global contexts therefore must be taken into consideration in the discourse.

In the technical sense, “public theology” deals with material-dogmatic and material-ethical questions (materialdogmatischen und materialethischen Fragen) of public relevance. It also asks fundamental ethical and theological questions about the public nature of theology. The rest of this article concentrates on the fundamental questions. To this end, it first of all clarifies the concept of the public sphere (2.). After offering a subdivision of the fundamental questions in public theology (3.), it names some of the typical positions found in public theology (4.). Finally, it summarizes three primary motifs present within the criticism of public theology in the German-speaking world (5.).

2. What is the Public (Öffentlichkeit)?

A significant portion of public theologies (at least in the global North) has worked with a radical conception of the public sphere (ein emphatischer Öffentlichkeitsbegriff) based primarily on the work of Jürgen Habermas . Here the public sphere is viewed as a “network for the communication of content and opinions.”⁵Habermas, Jürgen, Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats, Frankfurt a. M. 1998, 436, translation by Dylan S. Belton. Bernhard Peters  provides a useful summary of the functions and characteristics of this network. In this Habermasean tradition, the public sphere solves an old problem in democratic theory: “If democracy is to mean collective self-regulation, how is it possible to reach an agreement on decisions that is both voluntary [cf. art. Freedom] and reasonable [cf. art. Reason]?“⁶Peters, Bernhard, Der Sinn von Öffentlichkeit, in: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderhefte 34 (1994), 42–76, 47, translation by Dylan S. Belton. The public sphere thus functions as a communicative network in which common interests, descriptions of situations, and rules are negotiated upon which all those affected can potentially agree. This is possible only if the public sphere is accessible to everyone and also open to any topic, all the while being structured in a discursive manner.⁷Cf. Peters, Sinn, 46f. The latter means that participants in the discourse do not use force or bribery to persuade each other but struggle instead to reach a consensus by means of arguments. The only thing that counts here is the “unforced force of the better argument.”⁸Habermas, Jürgen, On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction. Premilimary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Barbara Fultner, Cambridge 2001, 98. A public theology that works with this understanding of the public will introduce its orientations into the public discourse as valid claims that are open to criticism and that need to be defended.

Insofar as it requires that one does not work with purely religious justifications for one’s claims, it is a challenge to be multilingual in the communication network that is the public. Some have used the term “translation” (Übersetzung) to describe the challenge of finding justifications for the claims of one’s own religious tradition that can be comprehensible within the wider public sphere. This again brings us back to Habermas  whose recent works have given religious language a place in the public domain. Religious language preserves “intuitions” that have been lost in other contexts.⁹Cf. Habermas, Jürgen, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Philosophische Aufsätze, Frankfurt a. M. 2009, 115. However, when it comes to decisions that are supposed to be binding for everyone – beyond what Habermas calls the “institutional threshold” – only secular reasons are permissible because only these are comprehensible to all citizens, including non-religious citizens.¹⁰Cf. Habermas, Naturalismus, 136f. Therefore, it is necessary to translate religious language, something that Habermas sees as a “cooperative task” for religious and non-religious citizens.¹¹Cf. Habermas, Naturalismus, 136f.

This understanding of the public sphere is, however, not uncontroversial in the debates within public theology. Speaking from a postcolonial perspective (cf art. Postcolonial Theologies), the South African theologian Tinyiko Sam Maluleke , for example, asks where exactly these open and discursive communication networks conceived of by the radical concept of the public sphere are to be found: “I would question where we might find this public sphere where strangers meet with civility.”¹²Maluleke, Tinyiko S., The Elusive Public of Public Theology. A Response to William Storrar, in: IJPT 5 (2011), 79–89, 85. Within the contexts of the global North, the question must also be asked regarding to what extent the public spheres created by the mass media or on the internet correspond and can correspond to the radical idea of the public. A public theology that is committed to this concept of the public will also have to contribute toward the conditions that make possible discursive and inclusive public spheres.

Another question focuses on what this understanding of the public and of translation entails for language and semantics. Thomas Wabel , for example, has pointed out that religious orientations are not only communicated by means of free-standing reasons but are also socially embedded and literally embodied (cf. art. Body).¹³Cf. Wabel, Thomas, „Der Mensch hat zwei Beine und zwei Überzeugungen.“ Öffentliche Theologie im Raum sozialer Verkörperung, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 58/2 (2016), 149–175, 168. What counts as public religion is therefore not just those things that can be made explicit in the public sphere. It also includes lived religious practice.

3. Foundational Questions

The self-positioning of public theology in the public sphere and in civil society is characterized by a fundamental tension: public theologians are meant to communicate in a broadly understandable and accessible way the religious orientations that originate from a particular religious tradition and that are lived out in corresponding traditional communities or by individuals.¹⁴Cf. Wabel, Thomas/Höhne, Florian/Stamer, Torben, Klingende öffentliche Theologie? Plädoyer für eine methodische Weitung, in: Wabel, Thomas et al. (Eds.), Öffentliche Theologie zwischen Klang und Sprache. Hymnen als eine Verkörperungsform von Religion, Leipzig 2017, 9–40, 15. The dilemma-like features of this tension have been discussed often:¹⁵Cf. Wabel et al., Theologie, 15. striving for general comprehensibility (Allgemeinverständlichkeit) threatens to undermine what is specifically Christian while focusing on what is genuinely Christian threatens to undermine the need for general comprehensibility. This field of tension gives rise to three foundational questions that discourses on public theology have addressed both implicitly and explicitly.¹⁶Cf. Höhne, Florian, Öffentliche Theologie. Begriffsgeschichte und Grundfragen (Öffentliche Theologie 31), Leipzig 2015.

1. First, the foundational socio-ethical question arises as to whether and, if so, how and to what extent positions or practices stemming from a particular religious tradition can be extended validity beyond the boundaries of this tradition. For example, if the religiously-based rule to set one day a week aside as holy is derived from the biblical narratives and commandments, can this rule – i.e., that one day of the week should remain work-free – be generalized?
2. Closely related to this socio-ethical question is the second, foundational theological question about the public communicability of beliefs and practices that define particular religious traditions. Can religious traditions be made generally comprehensible or are they only comprehensible to those who already participate in the rituals and other communal performances of the respective religion? Using the same example again: Can the commandment to set aside one day a week as work-free be made more generally comprehensible or is it only comprehensible to a form of piety that already sets aside a specific day?
3. Third, religious orientations do not become public in a vacuum, so to speak, but in concrete societies, in concrete contexts that have specific legal and social structures and institutions. From a Christian perspective, this leads to a foundational question pertaining to ecclesiology and church theory: Which institutions and networks of social action (Handlungszusammenhänge) enable religious orientations to become public and what role does the church play in this?

4. Positions

At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, a series of programmatic writings appeared within public theology that dealt with the kind of foundational questions outlined above. We can distill from them several types of possible answers. This provides us an overview of the discourse in public theology.

The foundational questions of social ethics and fundamental theology have been answered differently depending on the denominational affiliation of the respective public theologian.

Against the background of Catholic natural law thinking, the Catholic theologian Robert W. McElroy , for instance, dealt with these questions in the following way: The fundamental claims that public theology advocates for in the public sphere belong to the natural law that is meant to be accessible and comprehensible to common experience. The commandment to honor one’s parents, for example, is not only derived from the ten commandments but is also supposed to be reasonable against the background of childhood experience.¹⁷Cf. McElroy, Robert W., The Search for an American Public Theology. The Contribution of John Courtney Murray, New York 1989, 57. The profession of faith in Jesus Christ does not add substantially new claims to these generally understandable ones.¹⁸Cf. McElroy, Search, 150. The foundational questions noted above are thereby answered: Natural law, which is adhered to by Christians, claims universal validity for itself, but it is also universally intelligible. The tension between particularity and generality is resolved unilaterally in favor of generality. Robert McElroy ultimately does not adhere to substantively and specifically Christian claims that are not part of the general natural law.

The Lutheran theologian Robert Benne  answered the first two foundational questions with a specific version of the Lutheran teaching on God’s twofold rule (Zwei-Regimente-Lehre). This teaching maintains that God governs in two ways:¹⁹Cf. Benne, Robert, The Paradoxical Vision. A Public Theology for the Twenty-first Century, Minneapolis 1995, 82–89. On the one hand, God governs the human heart without compulsion by means of the Gospel through which the Holy Spirit creates faith. On the other hand, God governs the world through the law, which is perceived as compelling, and thereby preserves creation for God’s kingdom. Against this background, Benne distinguishes between a law-ethic and a Gospel-ethic of overflowing love. Governing the world with the latter – i.e., making love of one’s enemies the standard of foreign policy – would render the world vulnerable to “the most willful agencies of evil.”²⁰Benne, Vision, 87. What public theology focuses on in the public sphere is therefore a law-ethic. The foundational questions are thereby addressed insofar as the stock of religious orientations is implicitly divided into those that can be made publicly comprehensible and generally binding and those that presuppose faith and cannot be translated into general law.

A third type of answer is based in the Barthian-Reformed teaching on the Kingship of Christ or combines this with the teaching on the twofold rule of God. These two modes of ruling continue to be thought of as distinct but not separate. Because of this, public orientations can result from what was, in a mediated way, Gospel-ethics in Benne’s work: that is, it is possible to look for public equivalents to specific principles in Gospel-ethics (e.g. a practical equivalent to love of enemies in foreign policy).

The implicit and explicit handling of the foundational questions pertaining to Church-theory (kirchentheoretische Grundfragen) entail different understandings of the Church’s role in, and for, the public. These roles can be divided into three types:

1. The Church is thematized as a place of education: by means of life together in the congregation, involvement in church services, listening to sermons, or participating in adult education events, Christians acquire dispositions and skills with which they participate in public life and thus contribute to the publicity of Christian positions. According to this framing of the Church’s role, public theology refers not only to the official pronouncements and writings of church representatives, but also to the public lives of all Christian citizens who, motivated by their faith, participate in regular social gatherings, take to the keyboard on Facebook, or engage in other social activities.
2. Here the church conceives of itself as a place of publicity. Churches are themselves also constituted by networks of communication in which opinions on public issues are discussed and change, in which orientations in life are negotiated and transformed. This occurs, for example, in the parish, in the Protestant academy, or at the Church congress. Churches themselves therefore act as organizers of public spheres and, if they do so in a particularly fair, inclusive, and discursive manner, can serve as role models in this regard.
3. The public and political responsibility of the church as an institution or association is a responsibility that it cannot delegate to its members alone. The Protestant church assumes this responsibility institutionally, for example, by publishing texts on contemporary issues and by church representatives taking part in public debates in which they represent Protestant positions.

The different approaches to public theology emphasize one or another of the above roles. Robert Benne , for example, locates the Church’s greatest public impact in its function as a place of education. In the more recent German debate, the focus has been primarily on contributions to public discourse by church representatives (i.e., the third role above). Overall, however, these roles are not mutually exclusive. Although they can stand in productive or unproductive tensions with each other, they can also be seen as complementary and compatible.

5. Critiques

In recent years within the German context, criticism of public theology has increased in (popular) scientific discourses. Some of this criticism is directed less against public theology as a global, inter-contextual, interdenominational, and – to some extent at least – interreligious discourse as it is against the concrete public practice of the Protestant Church in Germany.

Generally speaking, it is possible to identify three particularly relevant motifs in the critiques. The first can be labeled the religion-theory critique (religionstheoretische Kritik). This critique is often traced back to an essay by the then Federal Minister of Finance, who in 2016 made the following warning in the journal Pastoraltheologie: “Sometimes, however, one has the impression that the Protestant Church is primarily about politics, as if political convictions form a stronger bond than common faith.”²¹Schäuble, Wolfgang, Das Reformationsjubiläum 2017 und die Politik in Deutschland und Europa, in: Pastoraltheologie 105 (2016), 44–53, 46, translation by Dylan S. Belton. Johannes Fischer  formulated a similar criticism in the Zeitzeichen. He asks the following question in relation to which every theology must position itself: “Is the theological task at its core an ethics for the world or is it about the spiritual orientation of those who adhere to the church or are religiously searching?”²²Fischer, Johannes, Gefahr der Unduldsamkeit. Die „Öffentliche Theologie“ der EKD ist problematisch, in: Zeitzeichen 5 (2016), 43–45, 45, translation by Dylan S. Belton. Fischer maintains that opting for the former, as public theology has done, is problematic. While this criticism is worth considering in cases where questions about God are actually neglected in favor of day-to-day political engagement, it ultimately does not succeed as a critique insofar as religion has always had a political dimension and faith has always had a public dimension.²³Cf. Albrecht, Christian/Anselm, Reiner (Eds.), Öffentlicher Protestantismus. Zur aktuellen Debatte um gesellschaftliche Präsenz und politische Aufgaben des evangelischen Christentums, Zürich 2017, 30. As Jürgen Moltmann  has pointedly noted, there is no such thing as an apolitical religion. Religion that considers itself apolitical strengthens the political status quo. What public theology upholds is precisely the fact that the spiritual dispositions of those “who adhere to the church” include their mission to the world and their orientation in the world.

Reiner Anselm  and Christian Albrecht  have formulated an incisive second criticism in their essay on “Public Protestantism”. They claim: “Instead of, as Heinrich Bedford-Strohm  recently put it, seeking to introduce political positions into the social discourse in the ‘interest of enlightenment’ (in einem ‘aufklärerischen Interesse‘) and to participate in the search for politically appropriate solutions, there is – as the objection goes – the danger of a religious valorization of certain political positions that are thereby sacralized as being in accord with Christianity.”²⁴Albrecht/Anselm, Protestantismus, 31, translation by Dylan S. Belton. This discourse-theory (diskurstheoretische Kritikmotiv) motif points to a danger in the practice of public theology: if the translation of religious positions into publicly accessible statements is successful, then there is a danger that these public statements will not be perceived as claims to validity that can be criticized in the discourse but rather as unambiguous specifications of what counts as Christian. Contrary to the intention of public theology, however, this would have the effect of foreclosing debate.²⁵Cf. Albrecht/Anselm, Protestantismus, 31–33.

A third motif can be identified as a Church-theory critique (kirchentheoretische Kritik). If we focus on the public responsibility of the Church as an association [i.e., on the third role attribution (see section 4)] and the Church’s corresponding practice in the landscape of the German media, what is striking is the strong emphasis on individual personalities and the celebrity-like status of the Church’s public presence. It is primarily (regional) bishops and Church leaders who give the Protestant Church a publicly audible voice and face in the media. However, there is a risk of losing sight of the fact that the public presence of the protestant Church must, according to its own self-understanding, emerge from the bottom up, from the congregation base. Thomas Schlag  recently reminded us of this foundational intention of many protestant public theologies: “The voice of the Church cannot primarily come from, or even be controlled from, above. Rather, the publicly dimension of the life of faith begins at the grassroots level and thus has a bottom-up perspective.”²⁶Schlag, Thomas, Vom Kopf auf die Füße. Öffentliche Theologie ist nicht nur etwas für Bischöfe und Bischöfinnen, in: Zeitzeichen 3 (2017), 16–18, 17, translation by Dylan S. Belton. This criticism can also be understood in terms of a desire to emphasize more strongly that the Church is a place of education and discourse (see section 4).

While the religion-theory critique focuses primarily on thewhat, on the subject of public theology, and the discourse-theory critique focuses on the how of public communication, this Church-theory critique focuses on the who of public theology’s discourse praxis.