Covert Magisterium: Theology, Textuality, and the Question of Scripture

The Christian church in America stands at a crossroads. It can continue to follow the path of incarceration, or it can choose the path of abolition and liberation.

For too long, the church has been a site of violence and exclusion, despite its language of love and redemption. David Dault offers a timely and provocative analysis of an unspoken crisis affecting all forms of Christianity, particularly in the American context. In the wake of rampant sex abuse and a leadership increasingly wedded to the interests of right-wing and reactionary politics, the rise of covert mechanisms of authority and decision making threaten to undermine what little trust remains in the leadership. The Covert Magisterium offers a fresh analysis of theological identities, hinging on the choice between a Christianity that defines itself through forms of incarceration, and a Christianity that sets itself on the path of abolition, inviting believers to become (in the words of the late Pope Francis) "the dignified agents of their own destiny." The book concludes with a vision of the synodal magisterium, a process of decision-making in which everyone, especially the "least of these," has a voice.