COMING TO JUDGMENT: METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECCLESIOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY AND POLITICAL THEORY LUKE BRETHERTON Introduction The relationship between how we think about and act in relation to God and how we think about politics and act politically is a perennially fraught one. However, the modern study of theology and politics has tended to operate in separate spheres, although in recent years, with what could be called the post-secular turn, these spheres have increasingly over-lapped. Religion and politics, once viewed as academically distinct areas of concern, are now seen as intertwined, both in theory and practice. 1 The work of Jürgen Habermas is but one example of a philosopher recognising the importance of religion and religious categories for the development of generative political thought that is able to address central dilemmas of contemporary human existence. However, as Ola Sigurdson notes, what post-secular philosophers “have in common is that their use of religion and/or theology is not very interested in religious phenomena, communities or experiences, but rather in the resources for philosophy and politics that might be found in religion.” 2 Sigurdson argues that such inattention to the actual embodiment of religion is deeply problematic for theology as it replicates modernity’s marginaliza- tion of religion to the private, the internal and the subjective and contradicts central theological commitments, notably the incarnation. As Sigurdson Luke Bretherton King’s College London, Education & Professional Studies, Franklins-Wilkins Building, Waterloo Road, London SE1 9NH, UK luke.bretherton@kcl.ac.uk Modern Theology 28:2 April 2012 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN 1468-0025 (Online) © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd