Using the theological work of Karl Barth as a resource for present-day inquiry, the contributors in this volume discuss the complex interconnections between the religious and the political designated by the term theo-politics. Speaking from various political and cultural contexts (Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People's Republic of China) and different disciplinary perspectives (Protestant Theology, Political Sciences, and Sociology), the contributors address contemporary challenges in relating the religious and the political in Western and Asian societies. Topics analyzed include the impact of diverse cultural backgrounds on given theo-political arrangements, theological assessments of political power, the political significance of individual and communal Christian existence and the place of Christian communities in civil societies. In their nuanced discussions of these topics, the contributors neither advocate for a privatized, apolitical understanding of the Christian faith nor for a religious politics seeking to overcome modern processes of differentiation and secularization. Critically engaging Barth's theology, they examine the Christian responsibility in and for the political sphere and reflect on the practice of such responsibility in Western and Asian contexts.

What does a theologian say to young preachers in the early 1930s, at the dawn of the Third Reich? What Karl Barth did say, how he said it, and why he said it at that time and place are the subject of Angela Dienhart Hancock's book. This is the story of how a preaching classroom became a place of resistance in Germany in 1932 - 33 -- a story that has not been told in its fullness. In that emergency situation, Barth took his students back to the fundamental questions about what preaching is and what it is for, returning again and again to the affirmation of the Godness of God, the only ground of resistance to ideological captivity. No other text has so interpreted Barth's "Exercises in Sermon Preparation" in relation to their theological, political, ecclesiastical, academic, and rhetorical context.