ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 develops the author’s theory of religious care modeled on the religious contestation in the writings and actions of Søren Kierkegaard. The author connects Kierkegaard’s application of neighbor love to transnational justice. Political care therefore becomes examined in the context of religion. The author contends that a substantive and ethically grounded notion of political care is only practical if it accounts for the possibility of religious resources for protest. Furthermore, the author argues that non-Christian religious frameworks ought to be attributed ethical agency in the same manner as Christian ethical subjectivity historically, namely through acts of contestation. The chapter argues that a progressive answer to the predicament of religious fundamentalism can be found in the writings of Kierkegaard, modeled on his rejection of Christendom or Christian nationalism. Chapter 6 engages Richard J. Bernstein’s argument on religion post-9/11 and considers in depth in the argument of Stephen Backhouse on Kierkegaard’s critique. The book concludes by analyzing Kierkegaard’s rehabilitated concept of Christian neighbor love as an attack on Christian nationalism. Chapter 6 demonstrates that such a form of religious care has inherent within it aesthetic and ethico-political resources by way of recent examples.
