Post-structuralism and religion

Calvinist ethics in relation to the broader theme of contemporary political theology

Abstract

Based on a problematization about the conservative aspirations of a religious worldview oriented to cultural standardization, this article, by recovering the contours of rationality marked by many ambiguities, but with pretensions that exceed a simple disjunction between the secular and religious spheres, seeks to perform, from the genealogical rescue of Calvinist ethics, an investigation aimed at understanding the logic present in a discursive formation that presents itself in clear expansion among Brazilian evangelicals, namely, neo-Calvinism. In an attempt to understand social identities from a post-structuralist perspective, we also develop, based on the Weberian notion of rationalization, a search for the links established between the Calvinian idea of free use of things that, in themselves, are indifferent (adiaphora), and the Agambenian conception of free and gratuitous use of time and the world. Finally, we will deal with aspects related to the developments of contemporary political theology, taking the reception of the reformed tradition in Brazil as a starting point. Therefore, the emphasis on the theoretical and methodological aspects of the post-structural analysis of the religious phenomenon will be given on three distinct discursive levels (an archeology of Calvinist ethics; the uses and abuses of this same ethics by contemporary Social Theory; Brazilian neo-Calvinism), constituting a powerful resource for the study of Calvinist ethics about the broader theme of contemporary political theology.