From Deus to Demos: Rethinking the Religious Architecture of Modern Governance through Political and Economic Theologies in Agamben

This article examines the entangled relationship between theology and modern governance through the lens of Giorgio Agamben’s account of political and economic theologies. Engaging with Agamben’s works, such as Homo Sacer and The Kingdom and the Glory, the study analyses how Agamben draws on Carl Schmitt’s analysis of political theology to reconstruct genealogically discourses on political theology and economic theology. The article claims that through his account of economic theology, Agamben highlights the theological and religious foundations that have informed and shaped modern capitalist, economic, and political structures. Unlike Schmitt who focuses only on divine sovereignty, Agamben also analyses and puts emphasis on divine economy and providence. In doing so, he does not only confirm the thesis of the secularisation of political concepts but also provides a new critique of modernity dominated according to him by managerial and dispersed model of governance. However, I claim that the current global context, increasingly marked by the resurgence of authoritarianism, populism, and the normalisation of emergency rules, challenges Agamben’s thesis of dispersed managerial governance and re-asserts political theology itself not as a shadow of the past, but as the governing logic of the present, which may be described as “authoritarian governmentality.”