Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar: The Significance of His Political Theology for a Public Theology in Myanmar

This article pays particular attention to the three themes in Barth's macro-political theology and their contextual significance for a micro-political theology for Myanmar. First, I explore Barth's renewed doctrine of political Lordship in response to the traditional doctrine of two kingdoms. Second, I examine his hermeneutics of the dialectical relation between church and state and the ethical role of the church in the sociopolitical situation in the light of his theological document of the Barmen Declaration against the evil of Nazism and the errors of the church. Finally, I seek to show how Barth's political theology and liberation theology are convergent and divergent in their synthetic goals of transforming unjust rulers and liberating the oppressed, reforming and renewing the ethnic church, and establishing an embracive and reconciled community in Myanmar.