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Kyle Lambelet

Kyle Lambelet is Assistant Professor in the Practice of Theology and Ethics at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. He teaches and researches at the intersection of political theology, religious ethics, and social change. His first book ¡Presente! Nonviolent Politics and the Resurrection of the Dead (Georgetown University Press, 2019) explores the moral and political dimensions of nonviolent struggle through an extended case study of the movement to close the School of the Americas. His current research examines the apocalyptic dimensions of talk about climate change, and how apocalyptic political theologies can offer resources for pastoral and political engagement in the midst of endings. His research has been published in the Journal of Religious Ethics, Political Theology, Social Analysis, and the Journal of Anglican Studies.

Symposia

Disciplinary crossings

Why are anthropologists and theologians drawn to each other? What are they seeking?

20 years, 3 Questions

To commemorate twenty years of the journal Political Theology, we asked a variety of scholars, including those in the Political Theology Network’s editorial collective, to reflect on where the field has been, where it is, and where it is going.

Reconsidering Public Theology

Is public theology a worthy aim politically? Is public theology necessarily political? Is “the public” of public theology a unitary entity? Who are some paradigms of the public theologian? Can public theology speak in a milieu of deep pluralism? What are the publics of political theology?

The Figure of King

These essays chip away at the patina that has built up around King’s figural representation in our collective political culture.

Emerging Crisis of Neo-liberalism

We delve into the theoretical and politico-theological genesis of the crisis of neo-liberalism.

500 Years of Reformation(s)
Tradinistas: A New Catholic Socialism?

In a post published on Friday, I discussed a recently established group, the Tradinistas, who seek to wed a traditional Catholicism with socialism. In that post, I began an assessment of the Tradinistas’ attempt at a Catholic socialism to date, which I will continue in this post.

The Politics of a General Assembly

Serving as a commissioner is both an honor and a butt-numbing burden.

Narrating Catastrophe

It would be a mistake to suggest that the apocalyptic is just one thing. It is a fecund tangle of symbols, practices, beliefs, and narratives. Yet, as the catastrophes of our times confound our capacities of narration, there may yet be resources in these troubling archives of worlds’ end.

The Politics of a General Assembly

Serving as a commissioner is both an honor and a butt-numbing burden.

Essays

Whose apocalypse?

The world of extractavism must end, whether by our own agency or by the collapse of the system it unsustainably supports. “Transition is inevitable, justice is not.”

Join a virtual stream of the PTN conference April 8-9, 2022

Can’t make it to Arizona for the PTN Conference in person? Join the Climate Change and Apocalypticism stream virtually.

Wisdom’s Judgment

Wisdom’s words of judgement are not for others; they are for us. Wisdom has called and we have refused. She has stretched out her hand, and we have not heeded.

Where Does God Dwell?

By spiritualizing place, and thereby transmogrifying place-based identities into racialized ones, Christianity cooperated with the machinations of settler-colonial capitalism in its world-making project. Thus, returning to a consideration of land as one location of God’s action is basic work for any political theology that aspires to move in a decolonial direction.

Reasoning about (Non)violence in the Hong Kong Protests

It is not always clear what we mean by violence or nonviolence, though, like pornography, we assume, we’ll know (non)violence when we see it.

Being ¡Presente! An Interview with Diana Taylor

“What can we do when apparently nothing can be done, and doing nothing is not an option?” Theologian Kyle Lambelet and performance theorist Diana Taylor discuss the challenge and possibilities of presence within systems that seem to allow no alternative.

PTN managing editor transition

Outgoing editor Kyle Lambelet welcomes Wonchul Shin as the new managing editor for the PTN website.

Viral Sovereignty

In the face of COVID-19, we do not have the capacity to breathe, much less decide.

We’re hiring!

The PTN seeks to hire a managing editor to organize people and content across the network.

Contextual crisis analysis

The question for us, and for the field of political theology, is how do we wish to live in the end?

Submit now! 2nd Annual Essay Contest

What should hold the field of political theology together? Or, is asking such a question merely an attempt to consolidate hegemony?

2nd Annual Essay Contest

What should hold the field of political theology together? Or, is asking such a question merely an attempt to consolidate hegemony?

Join the team!

Want to play a role in shaping the future of the Political Theology Network? We’re hiring!

The End is Nigh!

What would it mean to take apocalyptic talk as a sign of the times: as revealing, uncovering, and disclosing something basic about the cosmos? Could such talk be the beginnings of an eco-apocalyptic political theology?

From Social Work to Social Change

It is through our own wounds that we’re called into the work of transformation.

Commemorating James Cone

The founder of Black Liberation Theology, the Rev. Dr. James Cone died on April 28, 2018. We asked scholars, religious leaders, and activists around the Political Theology Network to share their brief reflections on the passing of this scholar, pastor, visionary, and prophet.

Palestine and Political Theology Event

The journal Political Theology will host an event on “Palestine and Political Theology” April 4 at 2pm eastern.

Anti-Black Original Sin and the Unnarratable Catastrophe of Modernity

For Afropessimism, the World is the katechōn, rather than a particular institution within it. The language of the katechōn as the “restraining power” facilitates how the structure of anti-Blackness is not only a structure of domination and gratuitous violence, but also the foreclosure of a more radical mode of what Wilderson calls gratuitous freedom—which is precisely freedom from the World.