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Essays

A Guide to Not Giving Up

We asked the authors of two recent books on love to put their books in dialogue. Here, Love in Time author Fannie Bialek discusses Love Troubles by Federica Gregoratto.

Pilgrimage contra Utopia

Is the affective sense of meaning, purpose, and immanence a useful political horizon? Is this discourse of utopia something that we should seek to synthesize in religious or secular political contexts, even if its nostalgic historical reality is not born out in factual analysis?

Günther Anders as Prophet

When a prophet like Günther Anders speaks to us about the whole of what is happening in our time, when he does so with poetic urgency, we should sit up and pay attention to the dangers he names.

Can Translation Be Anticolonial?

Colonial languages need to be brought into conversation with indigenous languages in anticolonial or decolonial praxis. It is in the process of translation that colonized subjects begin to find themselves.

An Unrecognizable Jesus

It is not enough to only recognize and agree with the protests of needy mothers. It is now time to join with them until the world finally listens.

When Prophets Grow Weary

After the triumph of Mount Carmel, Elijah collapses under a broom tree and asks to die — not from failure, but from the deeper disappointment of a victory that never moved the throne. Reading 1 Kings 19 against today’s Christian nationalism, this essay argues that authentic prophetic faith is found not in wind, earthquake, or fire, but in the silence, rest, and companionship that sustain the weary for the long work of justice.

Jesus and the Economics of Scarcity

While even his closest associates would lean towards dismissing the people to fend for themselves, [Jesus] invites the community of the wilderness into a divine economy of care. Sharing, as a physical manifestation of that care, requires a suspension of the belief that scarcity is the only reality available in the moment of want.

The Hidden Kingdom

The reign of God may be hidden, but it invites participants to risk much—even everything, to know the joy and treasure inherent in this alternative way of life in the world.

New Methods, New Authorities, New Questions

Four scholars discuss their books published for the Transforming Political Theologies book series.

Absolution without Repair

The White House report on the Smithsonian is not a correction of the historical record but a theology of it, reviving the covenant grammar that once made conquest read as providence. Against its demand for absolution without confession stands the one act that actually costs: returning the dead.

Entwining Our Roots

Remembering that our current lives are being lived during the time of the kingdom allows us the humility to see each individual moment as being equally beautiful, equally meaningful, and equally essential to prepare for the harvest.