The Unexceptional Church: An Exploration of Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben and Karl Barth

This essay brings Karl Barth’s ecclesiology into conversation with Carl Schmitt’s political theology of the sovereign exception and Giorgio Agamben’s genealogy of the state of exception. Against the fascination with sovereignty and exceptionality in political theology, it explores how Barth’s understanding of the church points toward a community that does not ground itself on the exception—an ‘unexceptional’ church.