Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528

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Critical Perspectives on Accounting
j our nal home page: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ cpa
A review of the emergence of post-secular critical accounting and a
provocation from radical orthodoxy
Ken McPhail
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 8 July 2010
Received in revised form7 November 2010
Accepted 11 January 2011
a b s t r a c t
Pala Molisas (2011) spiritual reections on emancipation and accounting are important,
not just because of the specic question they pose to critical accounting about the place
of spiritual transformation in human emancipation, but because the crux of his argument
sits on the arc of a more generally identiable intellectual turn with which the critical
accounting community has yet to fully engage. This commentary critically engages with
Molisas attempts to spiritualise the critical accounting project. Firstly, the paper positions
his arguments specically within the broader context of theological perspectives emerging
within critical and interdisciplinary accounting research. It is argued that Palas perspec-
tive both helps constitute a eld of religious accounting enquiry and also shifts that eld in
a new direction. Secondly, the paper critically appraises Molisas methodological engage-
ment with the religious traditions and texts that form the basis of his arguments and the
subsequent revelation of love as a key criterion for a spiritual and emancipatory account-
ing practice. The third section of the paper draws on this critical commentary to introduce
an emergent theological and philosophical movement known as Radical Orthodoxy in an
attempt to provoke further debate and discussion on the limited kinds of spiritual and
religious perspectives that have thus far characterised this emergent eld.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In the conclusion to A Spiritual Reection on Emancipation and Accounting, Molisa (p. X) reects on the purpose of his
paper as follows:
I wrote this paper [because] I wanted to explore and to point to some of the ways in which spiritual transformation
is absolutely vital and unavoidable to the task of human emancipation that the critical and social accounting projects
[pursue]. . . I wanted to write a paper where I had the chance to openly explore the interconnections between spiri-
tuality, critical theory, political economy, ethics, and social change all issues that I amconcerned about and which
are central to the critical and social accounting projects. This is partly because I wanted to address the lack of papers
that place spirituality as central in accountability discourse.
This attempt to link spirituality and accounting sounds both incredulous and a little strange. In fact it probably sounds as
weird as those seminal attempts by Puxty, Briloff, Cooper and Tinker to connect the word accounting with politics. Certainly
what Palas paper promises is no less paradigmdisrupting. Yet Palas attempt to spiritualise the critical accounting project
is perhaps even more incredulous than these earlier efforts to politicise accounting because by now we were all supposed
E-mail address: K.McPhail@latrobe.edu.au
1045-2354/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.007
K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528 517
to be secular atheists and far too enlightened to believe in any of this religious mumbo jumbo (see Carter, 1993). But as
Eagleton contends, most religious sceptics have bought their atheismon the cheap,
When it comes to the NewTestament, at least, what they usually write off is a worthless caricature of the real thing,
rooted in a degree of ignorance and prejudice to match religions own. It is as though one were to dismiss feminismon
the basis of Clint Eastwoods opinions of it. It is withthis ignorance andprejudice that I take issue . . . If the agonistic left
cannot afford such intellectual indolence when it comes to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, it is not only because
it belongs to justice and honesty to confront your opponent at his or her most convincing. It is also that radicals might
discover there some valuable insights into human emancipation, in an era where the political left stands in dire need
of good ideas. (Eagleton, 2010, p. xi).
Eagleton therefore proposes that religious caricatures are set aside and that the left seriously engages with Holy scrip-
tures and religious traditions in order to discover in them, valuable insights into human emancipation. Molisas paper is
important because it is motivated by a similar kind of questioning and undertaken with the requisite seriousness for which
Eagleton calls.
Yet it is not just the political left that are looking to religion for new ways of talking about the human condition. As we
head out the other end of (post)modernity,
1
it is impossible to miss the broader religious turn
2, 3
that has taken place more
generally (Bond, 1998; Weidner, 2010). For example, Manoussakis (2006; see also Bond, 1998; de Vries, 1999) discusses
the religious turn in continental philosophy; Weidner (2010; see also Jackson and Marotti, 2004; Pecora, 2006) describes
New Historicisms focus on the role of the religious, particularly in relation to the evolution of capitalism, as a (re)turn to
religion, and Minow(2001) talks about a religious turn in professional ethics, commenting that,
even a casual observation detects surging interest in the specic relevance of particular religions to professional
practices and the general pertinence of religion to public debates. Take the law review literature. Attention to reli-
gion and professional practice always occupied specialized religious journals, such as The Catholic Lawyer, but now
mainstreamjournals are in the business. When Thomas Shaffer and Robert Cover wrote in the early 1980s connecting
religion and the work of lawyers, theirs were rare voices. But it is not unusual now to see religious sources-ranging
fromthe Talmud to papal teachings-cited in lawreviewfootnotes.
Of course all this god talk as Minow (2001) calls it, takes many different forms within this broader turn, from Der-
ridas irreligious theology of difference in the continental turn, to more traditional religious positions within elements of
the professional turn. However, all are marked by an attempt to non-trivialise the religious in contemporary life and as such
challenge one of the most persistent master narratives of twentieth-century thought: the idea of a progressive secular-
ization of the West and a disenchantment of the world, (Weidner, 2010). The reasons behind the re-emergence of the
religious and its connection with late capitalism are also complex. Minow (2001) for example hints towards a connection
with a crisis in capitalism and neo-pluralism. But at least part of this turn is predicated on a realisation not only that in
a postmodern sense religion is no more foundationless than science (Jacobs, 2006), but that a radical denunciation of the
religious in the name of freedomthreatens not religion, but freedomitself. Zizek (2005)
4
explains,
Intheverylast pages of Orthodoxy, Chestertondeploys thefundamental Hegelianparadoxof thepseudo-revolutionary
critics of religion: they start with denouncing religion as the force of oppression which threatens human freedom;
however in ghting religion, they are compelled to forsake freedom itself, thus sacricing precisely that which thy
wanted to defend the ultimate victim of the atheist theoretical and practical rejection of religion is not religion
(which, unperturbed, continues its life), but freedom itself allegedly threatened by it: the atheist radical universe,
derived of religious reference, is the gray universe of egalitarian terror and tyranny. (Zizek, 2005, p. 53)
1
Of course the extent towhichit is possible totalkabout what lies after postmodernismwithout invokinga verymodernsense of progress andprogression
into a future that makes the past meaningful is problematc (Long, 2003). Given that postmodernity questions assumptions of progress, it is difcult to
talk about after postmodernity in a way that neither rejects nor accepts modernity. As Vattimo (quoted in Long, 2003: 127) explains, postmodernity is the
dissolution of the category of the new.
2
Due to limited space I treat the spiritual and religious as being distinct but related concepts in Palas work. Some would of course argue that there is a
difference between the two, that it is possible to be religious and not spiritual, while others might argue that it is possible to be spiritual and not religious.
Indeed there is a hit in Palas work that he views (organized) religions as distorting the truth about spirituality. However Palas use of the phrase religions
and spiritual traditions throughout the paper would seemto justify this approach.
3
The phrase religious turn is a broad phrase that is intended to convey a general increase in what Minow calls, god talk rather than the turning
towards a particular religion, although it does encompass the renewed assertion of specic religious positions.
4
Of course Zizek also turns this charge back onreligionitself. Yet as Milbank (2009) comments inhis debate withZizek inThe Monstrosity of Christ, Paradox
or Dialectic? What is ironic in Zizecks project is that he insists that Christianity alone articulates a universal logic, but does so in an atheistic mode. This
renders him, of course, far nearer to orthodoxy (as he acknowledges) than all those craven, weal, sentimental theologians, doused in multiple tinctures
of mauvaise foi, who claimto believe in some sort of remote, abstract, transcendent deity and who yet compromise the universal claims of Christianity in
favor of mystical relativism, glorication of hypostasized uncertainty and practical indulgence in the malignly innite air-shuttle of mindless dialogue.
Zizek is a militant atheist, however as with Derrida, this dos not preclude the invocation of the religious. Zizek offers a Hegelian reading of Christianity (see
his chapter Building Blocks for a Materialist Theology. In A Parallax View).
518 K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528
It is thereforeimportant topositionMolisas argument withinthebroader panoplyof current intellectual trends. Thepaper
is important, not just because of the specic questionit poses tocritical accounting about the place of spiritual transformation
in human emancipation, but because it sits on the arc of a more generally identiable intellectual turn with which the critical
accounting community has yet to fully engage. Palas concern to explore the interconnections between spirituality, critical
theory, political economy, ethics, and social change, is a concern that is reected in a signicant post-secular religious turn
(see Bond, 1998; Weidner, 2010). This turn is precipitated not just by an attempt to nd in religious traditions, valuable
insights into human emancipation as an alternative to the gray universe of liberal egalitarianismbut also, by an attempt to
reconcile Christianity with the fundamental ontological and epistemological conclusions of postmodernity (see for example
Bond, 1998; Davis, 2009; Davis et al., 2005). It is therefore important to situate Palas work within this broader intellectual
turn, not only because it provides his attempt to spiritualise accounting with credibility, but also because it helps to orient
Palas basic contentions within this broader eld and, subsequently, to subject themto critique.
There is therefore a considerable body of scholarship within the professional; historical; philosophical; political and
theological elds on the emergence of post-secular critical thinking and it would perhaps have been useful if Molisa had
engaged a little more with this literature in order to orient his specic claims. However, the paper also overlooks some
of the earlier attempts within the eld of accounting to engage with spiritual and religious traditions and more speci-
cally to connect spirituality to accountability. Palas aim to, address the lack of papers that place spirituality as central
in accountability discourse, and his subsequent exploration of established spiritual and religious traditions perhaps over-
looks the connections between spiritual traditions and accounting already developed within this small body of accounting
scholarship. For example, the 2004 special issue of Accounting Auditing and Accountability on Theological Perspectives on
Accounting (see Davison, 2004; Gallhofer and Haslam, 2004; Jacobs and Walker, 2004; Kreander et al., 2004; McKernan
and Kosmala MacLullich, 2004; McPhail et al., 2004; Tinker, 2004) and the subsequent special section on the sacred secular
divide in 2005 (see Berry, 2005; Hardy and Ballis, 2005; Irvine, 2005; Jacobs, 2005; see also Lehman, 2004; McPhail et al.,
2005), attempted to engage with the small body of work on accounting, accountability, spirituality and the religious and
advance scholarship in the eld. They shared Palas objective, of trying to bring [the] spiritual dimension more explicitly,
more consciously, into our academic discourse (Molisa, 2011). Aspects of this body of work touch on the kinds of issues
with which Pala is interested. The editorial to the special issue commented:
Our initial motivations in undertaking the editorship of this special issue were therefore twofold. First, we were
interested in what answers could be offered to the questions can theology and accounting be intellectually linked?
and what would a theological take on accounting look like? The second motivation was to seek to stimulate research,
which drewfromdeep religious concern, other than the undoubted and impressive Islamic scholarship which already
exists within accounting. We have been greatly stimulated on the second of these two motivations and whilst we are
a lot closer to answers on the rst motivation we await further literature on and around these issues in the future
with considerable interest. (McPhail et al., 2004, p. 324325).
Moving on from Laughlin (1988, 1990) and Booths (1993, 1995) seminal work on accounting in religious institutions,
the special issue attempted to drawout a more theological perspective on accounting. Palas paper represents some of this
further literature, along with a few papers that have been published since (McKernan and Kosmala, 2007; Shapiro, 2009).
To engage with this literature is to help locate Palas arguments and demonstrate howthey advance thinking in relation to
accounting, accountability, religion and spirituality. Of course situating Palas paper within the broader narrative space of
work that might loosely be construedas being about the spiritual/religious, is a political manoeuvre initself. It is a manoeuvre
that seems commensurate with the thrust of Molisas convictions, because, with the publication of this paper it may nowbe
appropriate to talk in terms of an emergent eld of theological enquiry within the critical and interdisciplinary accounting
community.
The reminder of the commentary is structured as follows. The rst section provides a brief overview of the papers that
are beginning to constitute a eld of theological enquiry into accounting in order to place Molisas paper within the broader
context of developments within critical and interdisciplinary accounting research. The question here is whether and how
Palas work advances this eld of study. Section two provides a brief critical engagement with the paper based on some of
its key elements. Section three draws on this critical commentary to introduce an emergent theological and philosophical
movement known as Radical Orthodoxy and in doing so provides some speculative comments on where we might go from
here.
2. Brief overviewof an emerging eld
One slight criticismof the paper is that it could have engaged more with the extant body of work on religion, spirituality
and accountability that already exists within the eld of accounting scholarship
5
(see also Calkins, 2000; Cowton, 1990;
Oslington, 2000 for examples fromeconomics, business ethics and ethical investment). This section therefore briey situates
the paper within this eld in order to assess whether and howit differs fromand advances prior research in this area.
5
These comments are restricted to the discussion of Christian Theology while recognising the much broader literature on Islamic accounting.
K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528 519
Laughlin (1988, 1990) and Booths (1993, 1995; see also Faircloth, 1988; Swanson and Gardner, 1986) seminal work on
accountingandreligionprimarilyfocusedonthefunctionof accountingwithinreligious institutional contexts andcontrasted
what was perceived as the secular function of accounting with the sacred objectives of religious organisations. This early
work presented the secular nance and accounting function as separate to the sacred function of the church. Booth (1993)
for example contends,
The sacred and secular divide, therefore, separates the legitimate part of the church fromthe profane support activ-
ities. Accounting is seen as a support activity, and is thus profane. It is regarded as an irrelevancy to the life of the
organization and only tolerated to the extent that it supports the sacred.
This specic observation was presented by Booth as a general principle, applicable in all religious contexts. He promotes
it as a, framework for accounting research on religious organizations. Likewise, Laughlin (1988) also presents the sacred
secular divide as, symptomatic of all religious organizations. Laughlin and Booths work is therefore important to the extent
that it provided a paradigmfor conceptualizing spirituality and accountability that was adopted in a number of subsequent
studies (see for example Booth, 1993; Lightbody, 2000; Parker, 2001, 2002). This paradigm sets up the kind of disconnect
between accountability and spirituality that is of concern to Molisa. The reason for this disconnect is in part related to the
methodological and ideological assumptions underpinning the research. Laughlins work on the Church of England draws
heavily on Durkheimand Mircea Eliade and consequently, the religious is placed rmly within the sociological sphere. The
assumption here, that spiritual and religious traditions should be construed in sociological terms is, however, evidence of the
kind of pervasive secularismof modernity that would seemto stand at odds with both Eagletons call, and Palas attempts
to, engage with religious and spiritual traditions on their own terms.
However, a more recent tranche of literature has begun to question this assumed dichotomy and has presented a more
unied perspective on spirituality and accounting at the heart of religious communities. This literature tends to place more
emphasis onthe spirituality of the communities being studiedand, as such, looks for intra-narrative perspectives oncommu-
nity practices of accountability. Kreander et al. (2004) for example, present a reviewof church ethical investment based on
a closer integration of church doctrine and nancial investment practice. Their study found an attempt to align the strategic
use of stock market investment with the communitys doctrines of creationism, agapism, stewardship and witness, among
other things in a way that linked to the spiritual identity of the account giver. As Kreander et al. (2004) comment,
We suggest that the doctrines of stewardship and agapismat the heart of the church ethical investment movements
theology, represents a mode of accountability that may, in part, be concerned with shaping the moral identity of the
account giver. (Kreander et al., 2004, p. 416)
Jacobs and Walkers (2004) work on the Iona community similarly indicates how practices of accounting for time and
money are intermingled with the spiritual values of that religious community. These practices are again seen to be based
on the communitys doctrinal basis in the New Testament and the perceived need to use time and talents protably. As
Jacobs and Walker note, accounting functions as a core aspect of both spirituality and communality (see also Berry, 2005;
Irvine, 2005). Quattrones (2004) study of the Society of Jesus, however presents a more nuanced reading of the relationship
between accounting practice, spiritual beliefs and socio-political expediencies. He explains that,
The development of accounting and accountability practices within the Society of Jesus from the 16th to the 17th
centuries cannot be reduced to an economic explanation that views themmerely as tools for measuring and allocating
economic resources thereby explaining the formation of hierarchies. Rather, their development and renement were
tightly linked to the absolutist ideology of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Counter-Reformation, conceived of
here as a complex work of compromise among theological, religious, political, institutional, and social instances.
(Quattrone, 2004, p. 647)
This body of work therefore emerges inresponse to what is perceivedto be the overly dichotomous separationof account-
ing and the sacred. They provide more nuanced specic examples (particularly in the work of Jacobs and Walker, 2004;
Kreander et al., 2004; Quattrone, 2004) of interconnections between spirituality, political economy, accounting and social
change and one would imagine that these instantiations of spiritual accounting practice would be useful for Palas objectives.
Laughlin and Booths seminal studies have therefore led to a body of work that explores the spiritualized practice of
accounting. However, while the research mentioned thus far focuses specically on religious institutions,
6
another strand of
literature is beginning to engage more directly with the relationship between accounting and (manifestations of) religious
theology. Specically this approach has drawn on Liberation Theology and what one might call negative theology. Gallhofer
and Haslam(2004) for example drawon liberation theology in order to further their emancipatory accounting project. Like
Pala, they call for a newaccounting spirituality, one based on justice. They want accounting to become, the soul of justice,
by prioritizing social welfare and public interest.
Yet perhaps the most theological of accounting studies to date have come fromMcKernan and Kosmala. Their 2004 work
for example, draws on Paul Ricoeurs theological reections on the divine relationship between love and justice in order to
6
This might be a legacy of Burchell et al.s (1985) invocation to study accounting within the contexts in which it is found.
520 K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528
challenge the emerging accounting justice of equivalence (an eye, for an eye) with a superabundance of love. Pala is right to
note that love is rarely mentioned within our critical discourse, however it is not completely absent and one would imagine
that McKernan and Kosmalas theological exploration of love and justice could inform Palas own attempts to investigate
the inseparability of love and law. In their 2007 paper, McKernan and Kosmala explicitly state that they intend to use
religious thought to informaccounting, and in particular to explore the apparently insoluble requirement, or aporia, within
accounting for justice on the one hand and regulation on the other. However, the religious reading they invoke is heavily
inuencedby the work of Jacques Derrida andthe religious turnwithincontinental philosophy that attempts to take religion
beyond God and develop an ideology of faith that is post-religious (see for example, Ricoeurs essay Religion, Atheism, Faith;
Ricoeur, 1974).
This brief reviewis by no means exhaustive, however it may be sufcient to establish rstly that Palas work contributes
towards what is emerging as a post secular eld of religious accounting enquiry that in different ways is concerned with
the spiritual dimension of accountability. Palas aim of exploring the role of spirituality in accountability discourses sits
within the emergent post-secular narrative space within accounting scholarship that engages with religious institutions,
ideas and texts. Laughlin and Booths early work, followed by the special issue of Accounting Auditing and Accountability
Journal on Theological Perspectives on Accounting; a special section of Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal on
the Sacred Secular Divide, together with a number of pieces published outside these special issues and this special issue of
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, is indicative of an emergent eld. However, the review also serves to chart the focus
within this emergent eld from the function of accounting within religious institutions to more normative engagement
with theological ideas. While it would seemthat dimensions of Palas arguments could have beneted formthis literature,
particularly his focus on love and law, perhaps the more important issue is whether his work contributes something newto
the development of this emergent eld.
Palas work is important because it takes this eld in a new direction. It provides a new paradigmatic approach to
(re)connecting accounting and accountability with spiritual and religious traditions which is quite different fromLaughlin
andBooths sociological paradigm; Galhoffer andHasslams liberationist paradigmandKosmalaandMcKernans postmodern
paradigm. Of course there is a danger here of mis-representing Pala, but it may be possible to capture the prominent
characteristics of his position by way of a pluralist
7
Spiritual Psychology paradigm.
However, as aspects of contemporary theology begin to enter the accounting discipline, there has as yet been little
critical engagement with these emergent perspectives more generally. The following section critically explores Palas paper
in particular and the subsequent section draws on the emergent Radical Orthodoxy perspective to critique the kind of
paradigms that have begun to emerge within the eld of theological perspectives on accounting more generally.
3. Critical engagement with the paper and the position
This section focuses specically on Molisas paper and in particular critiques the way the religious or spiritual sphere is
constituted and subsequently applied to critical accounting praxis. As there is not the space to systematically engage with
the various propositions which Pala develops in the paper, for example, Being and Now, this section focuses rstly on the
methodological approach to spirituality from which these notions are derived and secondly it critiques the way in which
spirituality is subsequently linked to a praxis of love. This section therefore raises a methodological point and a point of
application.
3.1. The methodology of spirituality
Methodologically the paper raises some important questions about the extent to which the established spiritual and
religious traditions provide a basis for developing anunderstanding of what spirituality anda spiritualisedcritical accounting
might mean. Palas arguments draw on a number of religious traditions and are based on a set of propositions which
themselves drawon interpretations of some sayings of Jesus, St Paul, Buddha and so on. We get a hint of the methodological
engagement with these traditions fromthe following quotation,
The task we face, in this light, therefore, is to begin to engage these traditions to discern some of the insights they
might have for creating strategies to realize enlightenment, for helping us to awaken. The value of drawing on a mystic
such as Tolle is that he helps us to realize that if we look beyond their surface differences we nd that many of them
share common insights about this process of awakening and strategies for helping people to awaken. (p. X)
There are two issues here, rstly the way the paper engages with specic teachings or doctrines and secondly Molisas
engagement with what a religious tradition represents more generally.
In relation to individual teachings, Pala attempts to make a distinction between some original pure form of spiritual
enlightenment and a subsequent historical distortion. He says,
7
As he says in the introduction, I have not rigidly held to any one particular theoretical perspective or philosophical worldviewbut have instead allowed
my intuition to guide me in terms of the spiritual traditions and teachers I drawon and howI see interconnections between spirituality, philosophy, politics,
economics, and social change when forming my arguments. (p. X).
K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528 521
One of the challenges people face in learning fromthese awakened teachers is that often they were misunderstood
by their contemporaries and by subsequent generations and so their teachings, although both simple and powerful,
became distorted and misinterpreted. Over the centuries many things were added that had nothing to do with the
original teachings and which completely occluded their transformative power. Some of these teachers were ridiculed,
reviled and killed, others were made into gods rendering these original teachings, which pointed the way out of
collective insanity, a part of the insanity. This can be seen, for instance, in the way in which religions have become
divisive rather than unifying forces. In a very fundamental sense, true spirituality (consciousness that has no ego)
unites, it does not divide. (p. X)
The implication here is not just that religious traditions and institutions interpret Christ but more critically that they
fundamentally distort the essence of his teaching. However, Pala, proceeds to tell us what Jesus really meant, a truth
established, merely by reference to Tolle. For example [my emphasis],
This, if Tolle is anything to go by, is why Jesus said I amThe Way, The Truth, and The Life; he was speaking about
the Christ essence, pure consciousness itself, that is in every human being; that is every human being, connecting
themwith every being, with the one Life itself, the Source, the formless, the unmanifested (Tolle, 2004, p. 104). It is
also, to carry on in this vein, why Buddhists call Zen the pathless path. (p. X)
Similarly in his account of the blind beggar, he comments,
In this light, according to Tolle, when Jesus said Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs will be the kingdom of
heaven what he meant was those who were free of inner baggage, who had no identications who were poor in
spirit were the ones who would be able to discover the kingdomof heaven that incredible joy, aliveness, love
and inner peace that comes with being aware of Being, which is ultimately who they are (Matthew5: 3 cited in Tolle,
2005, p. 43). (p. X)
This seems a little problematic. In engaging with the established religious traditions howdoes one establish what Jesus,
or Paul, or Mohamed meant? In relation to the blind beggar for example, this beatitude
8
is part of a discourse generally
termed the Sermon on the Mount and secondly it refers to a systematic concept, the kingdom, that appears throughout
both the Old and New testaments. The kingdom is like Marxist superstructure or Foucauldian genealogy, not in essence
but in type. It is a structuring concept. Structuring, that is, to a systematic body of ideas. It is a structuring concept of the
Gospel. The point here of course is not necessarily that what Jesus meant can be more clearly ascertained through a more
comprehensive engagement with the text (of a specic sermon) or the structuring concepts (like the kingdom) that have
subsequently been brought to the text, perhaps by what emerges as the institution of the church, only that establishing
meaning is more problematic than Pala seems to convey and this perhaps requires some further clarication. McKernan and
Kosmala MacLullichs (2004) deconstructive reading of Christs teaching on love for example provides an entirely different
way of engaging with the impossibility of the meaning of Christ.
Pala again provides us with further insights into the grounding of his reading of Christ in a reference to Tolle (2004) in
footnote 2, where he says,
Misuse in this context is when people use the concept without ever having experienced the reality, the dimension
of Life that this term points to. By misuse, Tolle means that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of
the sacred, the innite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knewwhat they are talking
about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs,
assertions, and egoic delusions, such as My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false, or Nietzsches
famous statement God is dead (Tolle, 2004, p. 13).
However as we have seen, Palas insistence that this is what Jesus meant, would seem to fall foul of the same kind of
egoic delusions. It is a claimthat is based on doctrine, beliefs about the nature of Being (for example, fromthe quote above,
that Being is unity) and it is also a claimthat is made froma privileged position, a move that Molisa does not allowto anyone
else. On what basis are we then to negotiate competing claims about what Jesus really meant?
The second methodological point relates to how these individual sayings are subsequently combined into a unied
systemof spirituality. The awakened thinkers, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus Christ, Krishna, Mohammed and Ramana Maharshi,
are all made equivalent, presumably based on some normative pluralist viewof these traditions. Returning to the concluding
section on the insanity of denominational religious claims, Pala comments,
This can be seen, for instance, in the way in which religions have become divisive rather than unifying forces. In a
very fundamental sense, true spirituality (consciousness that has no ego) unites, it does not divide. (p. X)
This is a common argument, and one with which it is hard not to sympathize, however it is difcult to reconcile this
criticism with the language of moral or community division that pervades the texts from which Pala draws. For example
Jesus says (Luke 12:52)
8
The Beatitudes refer to those blessings fromJesus annunciated in the Sermon on the Mount.
522 K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528
Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. Fromnowon there will be ve in one family
divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son
against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and
daughter-in-lawagainst mother-in-law.
The point here is that a broader reading of the religious texts on which Pala draws (apparently via Tolle) would seemto
construe the spiritual in an equally agonistic and conciliatory way. We shall return to the agonistic potential of the religious
traditions whenweconsider theRadical Orthodoxmovement below. However, onewonders whether makingthesedisparate
positions equivalent removes the radical nature of their specic claims andthe challenge that they represent tothe prevailing
hegemony. In his comparison between the disruptive potential of Islamand Christianity, Tinker (2004) for example, implies
that religion is at its most radical when it is at its most literal. There is a broader issue here that relates to the progressive
potential of agonistic (see for example Laclau (2007) and Mouffe (2000)) as opposed to pluralistic orientations towards the
possibility of emancipation. As Long (2000, in Shakespeare, 2007) comments in relation to the feminist liberation theologian,
Rosemary Ruether.
She assumes she can sift it for what is useful to her ends and reject the bits that dont t. Her criterion for this is not
specically Christian. It is that familiar idea of freedom a freedomwhich is detached fromhistory, community and
obedience to revelation. In the end, Long claims, Ruether tries to pick and choose concepts fromthe tradition based
on the criterion of usefulness (i.e. what she can use in the cause of freedom). The result is that tradition functions as
an inert storehouse of ideas activated through human will (Shakespeare, 2007, p. 19)
By contrast both MacIntyre (2007) and Milbank, whose work we shall consider below, for example, place heavy store on
the idea of traditions in the post secular turn.
3.2. Critiquing the application
Based on his methodological engagements with the enlightened thinkers and sacred texts, Love emerges as the primary
injunction. Pala wants to introduce love into the discourse of critical accounting. He says,
one of the things that strikes me ever since I really began thinking about the spiritual dimensions of accounting is that
the value of love is almost completely absent in our discourse. Solidarity, which is perhaps the termin our discourse
that comes closest to it, but love itself is hardly ever mentioned let alone discussed. (p. X)
Love is subsequently introduced via two different applications. Firstly, in an apparently psychoanalytic shift, we are
instructed to love ourselves. Pala explains,
this ethics of love does not start with the Other (as there is no Other) but with the Self. It holds that you cannot love
anyone else unless you rst love yourself and this means going beyond egoic self, the ever-needy little me, to
nding the Self within that is already whole, already perfect, already complete, where we can feel or realize that all
others are One, which in turn allows us to love all others as One. While the poststructuralists are right in noting that
our language can never capture the Truth which is always preconceptual and beyond discourse they overlook that
we can know the Other by getting in touch with our own essence, our Being, since we can feel Being even when we
cannot understand it intellectually and at this level we all are One. (p. X)
However, love is also seen to be related to justice as it is systematised in law. Here the nature of love and justice are
explored and Pala concludes that,
some ways of behaving are so vital to human ourishing all round, or injurious to it, that we need to hedge them
around with laws, principles and obligations (Eagleton, 2004, p. 144). But the point is, they are more the scaffolding
of the good life and not ends in themselves. Any thriving society, for instance, needs a lawagainst unjust killing. And
what distinguishes the value of this lawis not so much its clarity or precise application but the vital nature of what it
safeguards and promotes vital, that is, fromthe viewpoint of fostering an abundance of life (Eagleton, 2004, p. 145).
The problemis therefore not with having obligations and prohibitions but rather with identifying morality with the
obligations and prohibitions rather than with the thriving which is what love is all about. Love and law are, in this
sense, inseparable. (p. X)
Pala is engaging with big topics here that have prompted considerable thought and debate across many disciplines. At
issue is howwe are to conceive of society and whether social relationships are to be based on a traditional Hobbsian fear of
the other or a love of the other. In relation to the later, one might have expected a little more engagement with the work
of Bauman (1993, 1996). And one would also have expected a greater engagement with some of the literature introduced
above, in particular McKernan and Kosmalas (2007) Derridian study of the aporia, within accounting, for justice on the one
hand and regulation on the other.
There is perhaps also greater scope for clarity on the kind of love being discussed here. Kreander et al. (2004), for example
have written about agapism from a Christian perspective, and of course within the sphere of critical theory, Marcuse has
employed a Freudian reading of Eros as the organising principle for social relationships. Here, basic sexual instincts are
K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528 523
suppressed on account of society. The Marquise de Sade reminds us that Love can of course be oppressive. Pala is also critical
of some of the critical accounting tendency to draw on Bourdieu. He contends that viewing life as a contested struggle for
Capital, overlooks that there are ways of interacting with other people that are cooperative, that are nurturing, that are
inclusive that are in short loving. However, I do not think that Bourdieus world is a world without love or cooperation.
Rather his point is that expressions of love will be different within different class contexts.
Yet despite the initial psychoanalytic shift, the discussion of Jesus, Paul and Mohammad seems in the end to lead us to a
familiar Marxists or environmentalist conclusion. In the end spiritual perspectives become equated with Marxs dialectical
critique of political economy. Pala comments,
such a view of ethics translates into practices such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting the sick.
This viewof ethics is based on the insight that ethics is more than simply formally observing or recognizing the other
but practicing loving the other. An accountability framework based on such a materialist view of ethics, therefore,
would need to be one that takes into account not only peoples inner consciousness but also their situatedness and
participation in the material practices and social processes that make up society that are the externalized expression
of our collective consciousness. And one of the features of such an evaluative framework would have to be its ability
to make visible the structures of inequality and exploitation (expressions of egoic consciousness) and the destructive
consequences their reproduction produces not only on societys others (the anawim, the proles, the women, the
children, the indigenous, and so on) but also on the well-being of society as a whole. Interestingly, this is exactly what
a reexive and socio-historical framework such as Marxs dialectical critique of political economy is designed to do
and its lack of use in social accountability practices is one indication of just how far we have to go if we are to put
love at the centre of our academic discourse. (p. X)
Finally, in bringing his perspective to bear on the practice of accounting, Pala asks,
Have we even begun to discuss, for instance, the sorts of accounts that brings about inner change? Have we begun
to discuss the kinds of accounts that can make readers present? Have we discussed whether or not our accounting
interventions and engagements have helped to bring people into the Now? (p. X)
Arrington and Francis (1993; see also Schweiker, 1993; Shearer, 2002) have of course reminded us that all forms of
rendering an account bring about inner change and some of the work on conscientisation within the literature seems to
resonatewithPalas call for critical accountingtobecomemoreengagedinchangingconsciousness (seefor exampleThomson
andBebbingtons, 2005) useof PauloFriereinreconceptualisingthefunctionof environmental reportingandShapiros (2009)
work on the relationship between emancipatory accounting and religious education). Palas paper undoubtedly generates
some interesting questions in relation to critical accounting praxis, however, one is left wondering just howdisruptive this
kind of spiritualised version of critical accounting really is. One may have expected a greater engagement with the religious
texts themselves, perhaps withthe erotic love of the Songof Solomonwhichpresents Christ andthe Churchinerotic embrace,
or with the violent love of Paul. Apart froma tangential reference to the authors own experiences of walking the way of the
cross there is little reference to or engagement with the Cross, or the paradox of its violent love (see the debate between
Zizek and Milbank in The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox of Dialectic, edited by Creston Davis, 2009). The point is that despite
the prospect of radically alternative perspectives evident at the outset of Molisas paper there seems to be a reversion to
relatively secular interpretations of the dynamic of love both in relation to the self and society rather than a more radical
attempt to confront critical accounting with the more supernatural spiritual space occupied by enlightened teachers. If we
were to draw on these traditions we might have expected to see some reference to the Spirit of love, or the primacy of the
Churchas (supposedly) aninstantiationof Gods love or, Prophecy, Prayer, Worship, andthe Eucharist as being fundamentally
acts of socio-political rebellion against the secular, transformative and radically constitutive of other possibilities, or at least
as having a role in transformation. It is to the radical potential of orthodoxy that the following section nowturns.
4. Provocations fromradical orthodoxy
Thus far this commentary has sketched out the emerging eld of post secular accounting enquiry in order to situate Palas
paper and clarify the specic contribution it makes. The second section critically appraised his methodological engagement
with the religious traditions and texts that form the basis of his arguments and the subsequent revelation of love as a
key criterion for a spiritual and emancipatory accounting practice. This penultimate section sketches out aspects of John
Milbanks work
9
and the Radical Orthodox movement
10
with which he is associated. This specic stream of contemporary
theological thought is introduced for three reasons. Firstly, it adds further clarity to the specic methodological critique
of Palas pluralist form of spiritual psychology and his engagement with religious texts and traditions. Secondly, however,
Radical Orthodoxy is also explicitly critical of the sociological, liberalist and postmodern positions that have informed the
9
See Milbanks Theology and Social Theory (1990) and Milbanks Radical Orthodoxy (1999).
10
It would be wrong to present radical orthodoxy as having a specically dened position. Pickstock for example comments, radical orthodoxy is bound
together not by shared ideology but rather by an agreement over major themes and broad directions, as well as by a common style which combines
orthodoxy with interdisciplinary engagement.
524 K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528
post-secular engagement withaccounting thus far. The argument here is that Palas spiritual psychology, like the sociological,
liberalist and postmodern paradigms that precede it, is another easy revisionism (Zizek, 2005) that skirts around the
claims of orthodox spirituality. Finally, Radical Orthodoxy is introduced in order to provoke further debate on the kinds of
alternative post-secular enquiry that might possibly lead to new and more radical, critical perspectives on accounting and
more emancipatory forms of accounting practice.
The remainder of this section focuses not so much on the entire range of propositions associated with Radical Orthodoxy,
many of which are both difcult
11
and problematic, but rather with the spirit of discontent with which it is underpinned
and the spiritual commitment it pursues, a spirituality that is quite different to that espoused by Molisa. Those associated
with the Radical Orthodox movement (for example John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward) are motivated
rstly by a dissatisfaction with the way theological narrative is being used within the broader religious turn and secondly,
by a commitment to return to and revitalize orthodox Christian beliefs. However, what marks this particular movement as
distinctive from traditional orthodoxy is a parallax commitment to combine both postmodernism and orthodox Christian
beliefs into some reconciled proposition (Pickstock, 2001).
Radical Orthodoxy is therefore critical of the way theological narrative has been deployed within Liberation Theology.
Milbank for example contends that, Liberationtheology is guilty, for all its protestations, of reducing the content of salvation
to a quasi-Marxist concept of liberation. (Milbank, 1990 quoted in Shakespeare, 2007, p. 15). While Bell, for example (in
Shakespeare, 2007, p. 80) agrees that the Church should be pitted against capitalism, he is concerned that the liberationists
adopt too many of the methods and ideas of their oppressors. They shoot themselves in the foot, because secularism and
the state (as conceived in modernity) are part of the problem, not the solution. From a Radical Orthodoxy perspective
therefore, Gallhofer and Haslams (2004) appeal to liberation theology, conates and limits a Christian theological view of
justice with what is essentially a modernist idea of justice and secular idea of God. Salvation is made equivalent to freedom
fromoppression. As Webster (2005, p. 688) comments, To argue that our conception of God is determined by the historical
situation[as inthe case of liberationtheology] is to agree withradical secularity inabsolutizing the temporal process, making
it difcult to distinguish between theology and ideology.
However, Radical Orthodoxy is also critical of the more recent forms of negative theology associated with the work of
Jacques Derrida
12
found in McKernan and Kosmalas (2007) work (see Collins, 2001; Pickstock, 2001). Their concern with
this postmodern irreligious theology is that it so eviscerates theology that it can be lled with almost anything (Jacobs,
2006). As Jacobs (2006) comments,
The problem with this is obvious: on the level of content nearly everything is compatible with the hollowed out
structure of religion. The framework can be lled with nearly anything. As a result, theology risks making God too
strange and far away. Moreover, such a negative theology can be labeled as neo-conservative; for there can no longer
be any content-lled anticipation of the eschaton.
Thereis, accordingtoJacobs (2006), noeschaton, noemancipation, nohopeof ruptureandeternal good, inthepostmodern
negative theology of Derrida.
13
Ward similarly contends, Derridas questioning is a movement in the continual expansion
of aporia itself: promise, hope, the yes hover as never to be realized, but nevertheless necessary regulative ideals. The hope
can never be enjoyed as such and the aporetic with its tyrannous demand for innite responsibility can only be endured.
(Ward, 2001, p. 285).
It is against these secular and irreligious views of spirituality (of which Palas is a type) that Radical Orthodox theologians
have attempted to re-appraise the role and value of religious tradition and provide the spiritual with some orthodox content
(Jacobs, 2006).
14
Shakespeare (2007) for example, suggests that radical orthodoxy continues in the counter-enlightenment
tradition of Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, the reformed theologian who called theology back to its specically Christian roots
in the free self-revelation of God in Christ, in light of the liberal failings to confront Nazism.
15
Radical Orthodoxy therefore
sets itself as challenging the sterile egalitarianismnoted by Zizek in the introduction, calling theology back to its orthodox
Christian roots in the light of liberal and postmodern failings to confront Capitalism.
Milbank claims that much of this contemporary theological reection comes from a pervasive secularism (which he
traces to Duns Scotious and then Kantian metaphysics), which sought to dene the limits of rationality and the boundary at
which God begins. A secularismwhich ironically nds its apotheosis in Derridas differance. Long (2003, p. 127) explains that
with Kant, the conditions of possibility of knowledge are located in our ability to transcend the objects of our knowledge.
Yet if deconstruction removes the security of any critical standpoint, including Palas, the question remains what is left
after deconstruction? (Long, 2003). For Derrida, the answer is differance,
16
which conceives of the divine in terms of the
11
Part of the debate for example has involved the exploration of the Incarnation of Christ in relation to Heideggers distinction between Being and beings.
12
Derrida once commented that it was strange how as an atheist, My atheism gets on well in churches, all the churches, do you understand that?
Quoted in Caputo et al. (2001).
13
Derrida has caused a ssure within the theological eld with Cupitt and Caputo for example taking inspiration fromhis work. This is a rich and nuanced
area.
14
Radical Orthodoxy promotes traditional Christian doctrine as normative (Shakespeare, 2007).
15
Radical Orthodoxy would see itself as following in the counter-Enlightenment trend and continuing in the spirit of the likes of Kierkegaard and Hamann
(Shakespeare, 2007).
16
Both Zizek and Milbank agree that Derridas position is joyless.
K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528 525
specular surface, the space within which things appear (Long, 2003; 138). The unknowable source of everything. John
Capputo helpfully equates differance with a kind of structurally essential faith. He explains, The operative distinction for
Derrida is not between faith and philosophical reason but between a more deeply lodged structural faith, more determinate
and determinable, and the determinate faiths of concrete Mesianisms
17
(Caputo et al., 2001, p. 296). Milbank however
represents this free play of endless difference and never-resolved aporia as in reality still the hell of pointless solitude
(Milbank in Creston (ed.), 2009).
In Theology and Social Theory Milbank therefore wants to reinstate theology as the master science and, reclaimthe world
by situating its concerns and activities within a theological framework (Jacobs, 2006). The contention here is that no aspect
of the world can be known apart fromGod (Shakespeare, 2007). While this position is not entirely dissimilar to Derridas, the
polemical and critical manoeuvre of radical orthodoxy is to insist that it is the Christian tradition specically that is able to
overcome the eternal deferral of postmodernity.
18
As Long (2003, p. 131) explains, Radical Orthodoxy nds in Jesus Christ
the proper name that makes possible a difference, that is not tied to the violent metaphysics of difference. Bell (2005, p. 200)
similarly contends, that only Jesus saves. The good news is that in Christs offering of himself, a political ontology unfolds,
a line of ight is opened up beyond the depredations of capitalist organisation. The exclusivity of the Radical Orthodox
claimis obviously contentious and stands in contrast to Palas liberal, pluralistic approach to the religious traditions. Yet as
Shakespeare (2007, p. 60) points out, Christian theology demands faith in the uniqueness of its own story. A contention
that traditionally at least, has applied to faiths more generally.
Rather than undermining faith in religious narrative, Radical Orthodoxy draws on postmodern philosophy as a basis
for reasserting the value of Christian narrative as a source of radical opposition to the prevailing secularism(Shakespeare,
2007). Postmodern implications for knowing and knowledge are taken seriously, in the sense that grand narratives can no
longer be defended on the basis of a metaphysical foundation. However Milbank, Pitstock and Ward question whether this
necessarily means that it is no longer possible to defend a specic master narrative and that the only alternatives are liberal
pluralismor postmodern pastiche. Shakespeare (2007, p. 55) explains,
Once we accept this, however, we start to understand that the way is opened for particular world-views to tell
their story of reality without embarrassment. If secularismis just one more story, it cant have the last word. So the
Christian story can once more be heard. Postmodern scepticism clears away the prejudices of the enlightenment
against anything which is not a self-evident, almost mathematical truth.
Their point is that despite the contemporary breakdown in traditional meta narratives, the meta narrative of liberal
capitalism becomes ever more colonizing (Jacobs, 2006). However, it colonizes not because it is more rational, but rather
more attractive, or desirable. Jacobs (2006) explains that once,
the distinction between faith and reason comes into play: we are aware that we can no longer found our stories upon
reason itself; but this does not prevent us fromhaving faith in it, and this nowon the basis of the inherent attractivity
of the story. Applied to the Christian narrative: this narrative, like all others, is essentially a ction. This is for Milbank
the harsh reality which a post-Nietzschean theology should confront: Christianity is metaphysically no more founded
than other narratives. However, this does not mean that the situation for theology becomes hopeless. It is theologys
assignment now to convince us that the Christian story (as a story) is a better one than all other stories; moreover
that it is the best one. (Jacobs, 2006)
Milbank also calls on theology to resist the temptation to drawon external secular theory in order to understand reality.
He commends an intra-textual approach to understanding the reality of the Christian story and in doing so presents a
challenge to the continuing tendency within the accounting literature to defer to socio-philosophical theory in order to
understand Christian text (for example through the use of Eliad in some of the work introduced above). While aspects of
this approach can be seen within Jacobs and Walkers attempts to articulate an understanding of spiritual accounting within
the Iona community or Kreander et al.s articulation of the theological accountability behind the Church of Scotlands ethical
investment practices, Milbanks contention is much more radical than this. His argument is that the Christian text should
not be applied within the small pockets of practice that secular metaphysics has separated out as the religious, for example
the Jesuit community or the Iona community, but that there is no religious sphere because there is no secular sphere. As the
master narrative, all reality is understood fromwithin Christianitys own text (Jacobs, 2006). Jacobs explains,
Linguistic utterances are no longer taken as cognitive propositions, but have to be read within the larger framework
of the story. For it is precisely the story in its entirety which now presents reality to the adherents of the story.
Theologically speaking, the world becomes absorbed within the biblical story. The biblical story is thus constitutive of
the world, and not the other way around, at least for those who belong to this particular narrative tradition. (Jacobs,
2006)
17
Caputo goes on to explain (2001: 297), The promise is not made by some identiable somebody about a specic ontical content but is embedded in
the event of language, where language, which calls upon us, calls to us, and makes us promises, is taken to have a certain prophetic or messianic character.
18
As I intimated in footnote 11 above, part of this claimis related to the specic way in which aspects of orthodox theology, like the incarnation, are seen
to mitigate against some of the assumptions of postmodernity.
526 K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528
Ward similarly argues, Theology doesnt just give facts meaning that were themselves knownwithout theology (Long,
2003, p. 130).
Yet if narratives like these cannot be rationally determined, to what shouldthey appeal? Milbank explains If my Christian
perspective is persuasive, then this should be a persuasion intrinsic to the Christian logos itself, not the apologetic mediation
of a universal human reason. So the Christian master narrative simply has to be told, and in its telling there is an invitation,
the story invites us to become part of it (Shakespeare, 2007, p. 57). Shakespeare (2007) explains, There is no way of
rationally proving it to be true by some criteria alien to it. It has to be an attractive, compelling way of understanding the
world. Milbanks positionthereforetakes MacIntyres propositions about therelationshipbetweenlanguageandcommunity
to a more radical conclusion (Shakespeare, 2007). Again Shakespeare (2007, p. 56) explains,
Narrative theology has been around for some decades. It is closely related to post-liberalism, because it rejects the
idea that one can do away with the myths and stories of religion in order to nd a universal truth behind them. Stories
are not just decoration. They are necessary, because we give meaning to our life by telling stories about it. In stories
we can do justice to the nature of human life, to time, relationships and to the growth of character and virtues.
Milbank (in Shakespeare, 2007, p. 57) concludes, Secular reason cannot be refuted, but only out-narrated, if we can
persuade people for reasons of literary taste that Christianity offers a much better story. He comments (Milbank,
2009),
In narratological terms, as Zizek correctly argues, even the metonymic ow of story (including a historical story) is
possible, not because it contains an innite plenitude of meanings this would undo story, as Finnegans wake tends
to indicate but not demonstrate, since it remains a story but rather because it always contains two stories which
always have to do with a metonymic interplay of cause with effect: something happens because one persons story
gets entangled with an others
It is important not to miss the radical nature of the opposition that underlies these arguments and it is worth stressing
againthat this critique is aimednot only at contemporary postmoderntheological inections, but also at the failings of liberal
pluralism(Cheetham, 2006; Insole, 2004). As Zizek
19
comments Christianity and Marxismare the only real meta-physical
alternatives to liberalism. (Surin, 2005, p. 260)
As Jacobs (2006) noted above, at least one small aspect of theologies task of out-narrating secular alternatives and
convincing us that the Christian story (as a story) is a better one than all other stories; moreover that it is the best one,
involves the return and re-presentation of orthodoxy. Chesterton (2006) comments, People have fallen into a foolish habit
of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy humdrum and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as
orthodoxy. The contention by those like Chesterton is that orthodoxy is (or at least has become?) subversive. This is a radical
venture that Zizek (2005), in his critique of Chestertons work, nevertheless equates with Lenins search for a truly authentic
Marxism. He says.
how much less risk and theoretical effort, how much more passive opportunism and theoretical laziness is in the
easy revisionist conclusion that the changed historical circumstances demand some new paradigm. . . . Recall the
deadlock of sexuality or art today: is there anything more dull, opportunistic, and sterile than to succumb to the
superego injunction of incessantly inventing new artistic transgressions and provocations, the performance artist
masturbating on stage or masochistically cutting himself, the sculptor displaying decaying animal corpses or human
excrement. (Zizek, 2005, p. 46)
He concludes,
one cannot but admire Chestertons consistency: he deploys the same conceptual matrix, that of asserting the truly
subversive even revolutionary character of orthodoxy. (Zizek, 2005, p. 46)
The Radical Orthodoxy movement has its obvious difculties and these multiply as one progresses beyond the rather
supercial treatment it has received in this short introduction. For example, there is little distinction between the Christian
story and Milbanks Christian story, although this is no more or less problematic than Palas own attempts to tell us what
Jesus really meant. As Caputo (2001, p. 302) explains,
The idea of the tradition is a ction, already a very violent and radical forshortening and simplifying of what is handed
down to us, of what we are handed over to. The whole idea of the one history itself. . .the one tradition needs to be
contested at its root. . . this means that conservatives who want to cleave to what is handed down to us, let us say, to
the best that has been said and written, have already made a liberal use of the tradition and have undertaken a series
of risky choices. They may think, for example, that what is best is found among the Fathers of the church, a view
19
Although not directly associated with Radical Orthodoxy, debates between Milbank and Zizek have contributed towards the shape and direction of the
movement (see for example The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic by Zizek and Milbank). Davis and Riches (2005: 22) also comment on how the
revolutionary implications of Christianity that have recently attracted the scrutiny of Marxists, like Alain Badiou, Salvoj Zizk, Antonio Negri and others.
K. McPhail / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 22 (2011) 516528 527
that will not be share by all. They have sorted through the multiplex of tradition and sorted out just what it is that the
tradition is saying, just which of its many voices are the best and hence are worthy to be heeded and responded to.
The parameters of orthodoxy are not therefore easily dened and in the end Milbank may give up too much ground
by accepting the postmodern critique of all knowledge. Yet as critical accounting edges towards its own post secular turn,
Radical Orthodoxy does represent a challenge to the likes of Gallhofer and Haslam(2004), McKernan and Kosmala (2007),
McKernan and Kosmala MacLullich (2004) and now Molisa (2011) in relation to the way in which the religious is invoked.
As Zizek noted above, it may be easier to engage with the religious through some new paradigm whether liberalism,
postmodernism or spiritual psychology, however this may in the end, remove its radical potential to provide a basis for
human emancipation.
5. Conclusion
This commentary has attempted to place Molisas arguments within the broader context of theological perspectives
emerging within critical and interdisciplinary accounting research. It has outlined a few points of critique and, based on
these observations, has introduced an emergent theological and philosophical movement known as Radical Orthodoxy in
an attempt to provoke further debate and discussion on the kinds of spiritual and religious perspectives that have thus far
characterised this emergent eld.
As the post secular eld of accounting research emerges and begins to shift fromaccounting in religious institutions to
a more direct engagement with spiritual and religious traditions, various theological positions have been adopted, form
liberation theology to negative theology with hints of a spiritual psychology perspective in Molisas latest contribution.
However, as yet there is little serious critique within the critical accounting literature of these readings. Neither is there any
critical engagement with the radical possibilities of a more orthodox Christian master narrative. While aspects of the Radical
Orthodox position are obviously problematic, it does however provide one basis for critically engaging with the work that
has emerged to date, while proposing an alternative more orthodox but postmodern theological reading of the prospect of
a more emancipatory accounting.
Yet while it may be possible to debate the way that Molisa has engaged with religious traditions and applied the sub-
sequent view of spirituality to accounting practice, there can be little debate about the paradigm disturbing nature of the
question he has posed. As broader intellectual trends take a religious turn, what would an accounting look like that was
truly centered on spirituality?
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