Agency under Duress: A Political Theological Approach to Peacebuilding

This dissertation offers an account of religious actors in situations of duress. The thesis is that the kinds of actions performed by war-torn communities in Colombia, South America, indicate a kind of agency that is undertheorized in peace studies but that can be illuminated by theology in a way that contributes to peace studies. It argues that messianic theology is the best theoretical framework for illuminating peacebuilding agents under duress, like the featured communities. After all, their practices are subaltern, vulnerable, and transformative. Moreover, moral judgment is key for neutralizing and counteracting crisis.

The communities live in a world at war and experience time in ways that enable and mandate their agency of witness in situations of overt violence—independent of state power. They therefore seem to vindicate John Howard Yoder’s theopolitical messianic vision, which now appears ambivalent. This dissertation engages Yoder in a critical manner.

Gustavo Gutierrez suggests that a messianic orientation conditions participation in linear (state-oriented) processes and contributes “to the nations” accordingly. This is because, for Gutierrez, there is much still to come in the messianic breaks. They set gradual eschatological processes in motion. In contrast with the messianic ruptures, movement toward wholeness requires engaging institutions and epistemic “others” in gradual time.

The interplay of the two eschatologies—messianic and gradual—grounds a flexible framework for peacebuilding that allows for change and variance in context. A key contribution is the framework’s flexible account of the state, attuned to debates about the emergence of the “religion” and “the state.” This dissertation testifies to multiple forms of power, freedom, and agency contributing to peace, and the moral worlds embedded therein. Foregrounding the entanglements of both theological and political worlds has the potential to make peacebuilding more strategic.