State of Change: Concept Metaphor of Pauline Principalities and Powers for a Political Theology of Peacebuilding

This essay responds to the need for a constructive account of the state that does not over-determine religious community-state relationships in peacebuilding scholarship and practice because experience and historically embodied stances towards the state defy affirmations about the state that produce a static formula. It offers a concept metaphor rooted in the three-fold eschatological reality of the state at home in a world of pluralism that emerges from reflections on fieldwork in Colombia. The metaphor stresses the need to break the state's claim to ultimacy as the initial movement of engagement that allows for redemptive transformation. The notion of the state as a dynamic process is consistent with the stance Colombian communities have embodied in an ever-changing environment of conflict and peace.