Articles and Chapters by Andrew R Murphy
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Political Theology, 2023
From its emergence in early Christianity to its invocation in twentyfirst century debates, martyr... more From its emergence in early Christianity to its invocation in twentyfirst century debates, martyrdom has always highlighted the complex relationship between politics, religion, death, and memory. A specifically political notion of martyrdom beyond the world's faith traditions would facilitate the concept's more capacious application and analysis. Political martyrdom, I argue, consists of several components: (1) a death, occurring in what we might call "unnatural" circumstances, connected in some way to an individual's identity(ies) or political commitments; (2) consecration of that death by a community or sub-community; and (3) transmission of accounts of that death across time, through processes of commemoration. This essay illuminates the ways by which political communities enshrine certain deaths in their collective memory, where they subsequently contribute to communal solidarity, identity formation, and political mobilization. I conclude by reflecting on how political martyrdom offers new insights into the intersection of politics, religion, death, and memory.
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The Forum, 2019
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Political theorists can at times forget that the origins of political theory lie in the struggles... more Political theorists can at times forget that the origins of political theory lie in the struggles of concrete political life. This paper focuses on one arena of political contestation: the collision between dissenters and their communities' legal systems. It focuses on The Peoples Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted (1670), a purported transcript of the trial of William Penn and William Mead for disturbance of the peace. The trial plays an important role in the emergent principle of jury independence and a key role in Penn's career as a political actor during the 1670s, culminating in his American colonizing enterprise. After a few remarks about the trial itself, the paper proceeds in two parts, each emphasizing an aspect of the text's performative nature. First, akin to canonical works of the Anglo-American tradition, Peoples presents embedded principles: coherent and substantive visions of legitimate government, justified by reference to authoritative texts, arguments, and practices. But the defendants in Peoples also enact and embody political dissent in ways other than overt and explicit argumentation: Penn and Mead themselves appear as characters performing a politics of dissent. As a work of both political theory and political theater, Peoples offers insights into Deleuze's notion of " dramatization, " and can lead us to a broader appreciation of the many different genres that constitute political theory.
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Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2014
For much of 2010, plans to develop a multipurpose Islamic center near the site of the 9/11 attack... more For much of 2010, plans to develop a multipurpose Islamic center near the site of the 9/11 attacks in Lower Manhattan occasioned an intense nationwide debate. In this study of the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy, we focus on questions of identity and the sacred in the contemporary USA. We argue that the response to the “Ground Zero mosque” illuminates three important phenomena. First, it reveals the dynamics of cultural guardianship among those who opposed Park51, an effort to “preserve” a national identity tightly linked with Christianity (and antithetical to Islam). Second, as illustrated by the rights-based response by defenders of the project, we suggest that the language of liberalism may be insufficient to address a more expansive and complex understanding of the relationship between religion and political identity. And third, the controversy highlights the challenges that remain in the post-9/11 USA for American Muslims, many of whom understood the proposed center as their own, rather conventional, attempt to join the American mainstream.
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Political Theology, 2014
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This paper explores the influence of Hebraic themes and ideas on the ideological construction of ... more This paper explores the influence of Hebraic themes and ideas on the ideological construction of Early American society. It discusses a particular intersection between the American jeremiad and the Hebraic tradition: the use of Hebrew Scriptures as focal texts in New England election sermons. Looking more carefully at the verses Puritan preachers chose to explore in their election sermons sheds light on the development of an American way of thinking about politics that remains deeply informed by the idea of the " chosen nation. " New England Jeremiahs articulated themes of covenant, sin, judgment, and redemption as they sought to connect the experiences of their own communities with the story of the ancient Israelites. The power of the jeremiad—for the ancient Hebrews and the seventeenth-century Puritans—lay, in part, in the way it expressed both a sense of chosenness and a deep anxiety about the prospects of continued blessings. Beyond the parameters of early New England, the jeremiad continued to provide both millennial hope and existential anxiety for Americans into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it still does down to our own day.
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Murphy/The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence, 2011
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As a religious problem, the problem of suff ering is, paradoxically, not how to avoid suff ering ... more As a religious problem, the problem of suff ering is, paradoxically, not how to avoid suff ering but how to suff er, how to make of physical pain, personal loss, worldly defeat, or the helpless contemplation of others' agony something bearable, supportable— something, as we say, suff erable. —Clifford Geertz, " Religion as a Cultural System " Cliff ord Geertz suggests an intimate connection between religion and suff ering, a problem of interpretation central to any consideration of the relationship between religion and violence more generally. Th is chapter examines key episodes in America's nearly 400-year history of turning to the jeremiad to explain violence endured and sometimes to justify violence infl icted. Th e jeremiad is part of a longstanding American rhetorical tradition, one that understands the nation as existing in a special, covenanted relationship with God, with special purposes to accomplish in the world. Although the jeremiad did not originate in America, and is not unique to the American experience— other peoples, in many diff erent times and places, have proven all too eager to claim sacred status for their own communities —it has played a key role in Americans' self-understandings since the early days of colonization. Th e jeremiad draws its inspiration from the He-brew prophets, who frequently lamented Israel's violation of its covenant with God. Th rough the jeremiad, prophets called Israelites to repent of their sins and rededicate themselves to their covenant with God; they predicted blessings if the people reformed, and catastrophes if they did not. In like manner, many Ameri-cans, from the earliest days of colonial settlement down to the twenty-fi rst century , have understood their nation as chosen to carry out God's purposes in human history. Th us Americans have oft en interpreted their nation's successes
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The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 2011
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Politics and Religion, 2008
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I assess several politically powerful ways of drawing on the past in the search for solutions to ... more I assess several politically powerful ways of drawing on the past in the search for solutions to problems in the present. To probe these dynamics, I turn to the American jeremiad, a longstanding form of political rhetoric that explicitly invokes the past and laments the nation's falling-away from its virtuous foundations. I begin by focusing on the Christian Right's traditionalist jeremiad, which offers both nostalgic and Golden Age rhetoric in its assessment of the United States' imperiled national promise. I argue that, despite differences in the historical location of their ideals and the significant rhetorical power that they bring to political life, such nostalgic and Golden Age narratives represent a constraining political ideal, one ultimately incapable of doing justice to an increasingly diverse American society. I argue furthermore that there is another strand of the American jeremiad and conclude by sketching a different way of drawing on the past, a progressive jeremiad epitomized by the thought of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Such a jeremiad is also deeply rooted in the American tradition and offers a far more promising contribution to a diverse and pluralistic American future. Men always praise (but not always reasonably) the ancient times and find fault with the present; and they are such partisans of things past, that they celebrate not only that age which has been recalled to their memory by known writers, but those also (being now old) which they remember having seen in their youth.. .. I do not know, therefore, whether I merit to be numbered among those who deceive themselves, if in these Discourses of mine I shall laud too much the times of the ancient Romans and censure ours. And truly, if the virtu that then reigned and the vice that now reigns should not be as clear as the Sun, I would be more restrained in talking, being apprehensive of falling into that deception of which I accuse others. —Niccolo Machiavelli [In the religious conservative vision for America] America would look much as it did for most of the first two centuries of its existence, before the social dislocation caused by Vietnam, the sexual revolution, Watergate, and the explosion of the welfare state. Our nation would once again be ascendant, self-confident, proud, and morally strong. Government would be strong, the citizenry virtuous, and mediating institutions such as churches and voluntary organizations would carry out many of the functions currently relegated to the bureaucracy. —Ralph Reed 1 Preliminaries: Nostalgia, Golden Age, and the Jeremiad A fascination with the past, with distant founding eras and the larger-than-life personalities who inhabited them, has long characterized the history of political thought and action. The Greek poet Hesiod—who, if he did not coin the phrase, certainly is responsible for the widespread association of gold with an idealized and harmonious past time—had the good sense (or perhaps the strategic foresight) to place his own version of the golden age outside of human history, safe from the prying eyes of skeptical historians. 2 But political theorists and actors have rarely shown such restraint, offering a variety of historical candidates
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Political Theology, 2005
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Encyclopedia of Political Theory, 2010
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The rhetoric of moral, spiritual and political decline represents a recurrent rhetorical form, on... more The rhetoric of moral, spiritual and political decline represents a recurrent rhetorical form, one that has appeared throughout history in a variety of contexts. This article takes a closer look at one episode in the history of decline rhetoric — the fourth-century anti-Christian critiques regarding Roman imperial decline, and Augus-tine's responses to them in his City of God — in order to explore the phenomenon of decline rhetoric more deeply. Augustine's response to those who blamed Christianity for the empire's decline took place on both the empirical and the interpretive levels. First, he drew on the Roman historians Sallust and Livy to argue that moral decline, if it took place at all, predated Christianity. Second, his theory of the two cities took issue with the notion of decline as a fundamental misunderstanding of historical change. The article closes by drawing out some implications of this particular study for approaching decline rhetoric in political life more generally, concluding with a consideration of the controversial remarks of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who viewed the 11 September attacks as divine punishment for American moral decline. Bad times! Troublesome times! This men are saying. Let our lives be good; and the times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times. 3 Consider the following narrative, or something like it. Once, this nation was governed by a moral-religious consensus that checked self-interest and cemented the close connection between piety, self-sacrifice, and a commitment to the common good. Under this regime, the nation became great, growing from a small group of fledgling settlements to rule a world empire. As time went on, however, commitment to these religious foundations waned, and what had formerly been a relatively robust public consensus was supplanted by new and quite different ideas, ones that undermined the willingness of citizens to work for the common good and distracted them from service to their neighbours. A number of citizens and public figures tried to shore up the traditional beliefs and practices, but neglect of these foundations brought a steady rise in social pathologies and a diminution of
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Environmental Ethics, 2003
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The Review of Politics, 1998
... For example, John Dunn refers to religious toleration as the "single most important ... more ... For example, John Dunn refers to religious toleration as the "single most important application" of Lockean theory, and Richard Ashcraf t sees it as asine qua non of the political movement in which Locke played an important role, "a core problem ... ...
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Articles and Chapters by Andrew R Murphy
Though Penn is an iconic figure in both American and British history, controversy swirled around him during his lifetime. In his early twenties, Penn became a Quaker -- an act of religious as well as political rebellion that put an end to his father's dream that young William would one day join the English elite. Yet Penn went on to a prominent public career as a Quaker spokesman, political agitator, and royal courtier. At the height of his influence, Penn was one of the best-known Dissenters in England and walked the halls of power as a close ally of King James II. At his lowest point, he found himself jailed on suspicion of treason, and later served time in debtor's prison.
Despite his importance, William Penn has remained an elusive character -- many people know his name, but few know much more than that. Andrew R. Murphy offers the first major biography of Penn in more than forty years, and the first to make full use of Penn's private papers. The result is a complex portrait of a man whose legacy we are still grappling with today. At a time when religious freedom is hotly debated in the United States and around the world, William Penn's Holy Experiment serves as both a beacon and a challenge.
Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration focuses on the major political episodes that attracted William Penn's sustained attention as a political thinker and actor: the controversy over the Second Conventicle Act, the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, the founding and settlement of Pennsylvania, and the contentious reign of James II. Through a careful examination of writings published in the midst of the religious and political conflicts of Restoration and Revolutionary England, Murphy contextualizes the development of Penn's thought in England and America, illuminating the mutual interconnections between Penn's political thought and his colonizing venture in America.
An early advocate of representative institutions and religious freedom, William Penn remains a singular figure in the history of liberty of conscience. His political theorizing provides a window into the increasingly vocal, organized, and philosophically sophisticated tolerationist movement that gained strength over the second half of the seventeenth century. Not only did Penn attempt to articulate principles of religious liberty as a Quaker in England, but he actually governed an American polity and experienced firsthand the complex relationship between political theory and political practice. Murphy's insightful analysis shows Penn's ongoing significance to the broader study of Anglo-American political theory and practice, ultimately pointing scholars toward a new way of understanding the enterprise of political theory itself.
Political Religion and Religious Politics:Navigating Identities in the United States explores the multifaceted implications of these developments by examining a series of contentious issues in contemporary American politics. Gutterman and Murphy take up the controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque," the political and legal battles over the contraception mandate in the Affordable Health Care Act and the ensuing Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, the national response to the Great Recession and the rise in economic inequality, and battles over the public school curricula, seizing on these divisive challenges as opportunities to illuminate the changing role of religion in American public life.
Placing the current moment into historical perspective, and reflecting on the possible future of religion, politics, and cultural conflict in the United States, Gutterman and Murphy explore the cultural and political dynamics of evolving notions of national and religious identity. They argue that questions of religion are questions of identity -- personal, social, and political identity -- and that they function in many of the same ways as race, sex, gender, and ethnicity in the construction of personal meaning, the fostering of solidarity with others, and the conflict they can occasion in the political arena.
—John Corrigan, Lucius Moody Bristol Distinguished Professor, Florida State University
Penn’s early political writings illuminate the Whig understanding of English politics as guided by the ancient constitution (epitomized by Magna Charta and its elaboration of English native rights). The ancient constitution symbolized, for Penn and other Whigs, a balanced governing relationship between King and Parliament, established from antiquity and offering a standard against which to judge the actions of particular Parliaments. The values of liberty, property, and consent (as represented by Parliament) provide the basis for Penn’s advocacy of liberty of conscience in Restoration England. During the 1660s and 1670s, Penn used his social prominence as well as the time afforded him by several imprisonments to compose a number of works advocating religious toleration and defending the ancient constitution as a guarantor of popular liberties. In the 1680s, Penn’s political thought emphasized the substantive importance of toleration as a fundamental right and the civil magistrate’s duty to grant such freedom regardless of those interests in society (e.g., the Church of England, Tories in Parliament) who might oppose it. His social status, indefatigable energy for publication, and command of biblical and historical sources give Penn’s political writings a twofold significance: as a window on toleration and liberty of conscience, perhaps the most vexing issue of Restoration politics; and as part of a broader current of thought that would influence political thought and practice in the colonies as well as in the mother country.
William Penn (1644–1718) lived during the two great political and religious upheavals in seventeenth-century England: the Civil Wars of the 1640s and the 1688 Revolution. He was expelled from Christ Church College, Cambridge, for religious nonconformity, and in 1667 he converted to Quakerism. After his conversion, he worked as a preacher, writer, and spokesman for the Quakers, promoting religious liberty and attempting to advance the interests of the Quakers in the American colonies.
Murphy argues that contemporary liberal theorists have misunderstood and misconstrued the actual historical development of toleration in theory and practice. Murphy approaches the concept through three "myths" about religious toleration: that it was opposed only by ignorant, narrow-minded persecutors; that it was achieved by skeptical Enlightenment rationalists; and that tolerationist arguments generalize easily from religion to issues such as gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality, providing a basis for identity politics.