In this intelligent and important book Andityas Matos presents a thesis that is perfectly understandable and agreeable: politics cannot free itself from an implicit or explicit reference to religious transcendence. In this way, post-structuralist and post-colonial critical thought engages with political theology by seeking a non-authoritarian origin of politics, thereby bringing forth in this work a democratic approach to political theology, articulated in a compelling and innovative manner. Another noteworthy aspect is the author's critical attention to old and new forms of anti-democratic and foundationalist political theology, such as the sacralisation of politics and economics and the politicisation of religion. Against this, the author presents the idea of democracy as a way of life that embraces the transcendent dimension in order to avoid falling into structures of domination.

Carlo Galli, University of Bologna

Attacking the hubris of Western secularism, this book unmasks or 'decrypts' the politico-theological structures and ways of thinking that underpin our political experience. Matos gives us a remarkably clear and accessible genealogy of political theology, showing that we are not quite as secular as we thought. He also frees political theology from the conservative, sovereign-centred paradigm indebted to Carl Schmitt, showing how the interplay between religious and political modes of experience can lead to new ways of thinking about emancipation, building on decolonial, black, feminist, and even (post)anarchist perspectives. This is an exciting contribution to the study of political theology.

Saul Newman, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Political theology aims less to found power than to prevent the liberation of its constitutive “an-archy.” A supplement of theological transcendence being indispensable to any political community, any project of radical democracy must reassign it to its own ends. This is what this feminist and decolonial book, driven by the philosophical inventiveness of the Global South, demonstrates. Matos invites us to have “faith” in the “hidden people,” the heterogeneous and creative multiplicity that political theology “encrypts”-codes and perverts-in the form of a homogeneous and servile people. Everybody must read this invigorating call to disobey the religious and economic discourses that justify the world's unequal order.

Frédéric Neyrat, University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA