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Michael Toy

Michael is currently a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington studying digital religion in New Zealand. He also serves as Public Theologian for the Student Christian Movement Aotearoa.

Essays

Everything, Everywhere, All in Lent

Sometimes, there are no cosmic answers to the cosmic questions around us. Jesus demonstrates that the answer to that question, ‘who are you?’ can only be lived out in relationality to the divine one moment, one temptation at a time.

A Case Against “Mission”

John the Baptist paves the way for a new ecclesiological model that pushes the church beyond a reproductive model of mission insistent on its own futurity. Embracing an ecclesiological ‘death drive’ can open doors to see the unexpected God-over-there within the present.

The End of a World is not the End of the World

Jesus’ saying about the destruction of the temple gives us a way to view human structures as the powers they are but also as provisional—as all human things are.

The Rupture of Desire: An Interview with China Miéville

The following is a small portion of a longer interview with China Miéville in the journal Political Theology.

Pussy Riot and the Church

This piece is from the Political Theology Network archives originally posted on August 23, 2012.

In Memoriam:                                                                      Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas and the Journey of Theology Toward the Future

The prominent Eastern Orthodox theologian Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas of Pergamon (Ecumenical Patriarchate) passed in Athens, on February 2, 2023.

Vulnerability

From Myanmar to Mariupol, from the streets of Memphis to the waves and winds of the Mediterranean Sea: resistance to violence takes many forms. So does political protest against precarity. At which point does the unavoidable vulnerability of the living condition come to expression as political agency? Can such precarious politics constitute or configure an alternative community?