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Essays

What Pope Leo’s ‘Call to Disarmament’ Means for Dialogue, Just War Theory—and Possibly LGBTQ+ Issues

Pope Leo’s call for disarmament goes so far as to claim that Catholic teaching on just war theory is outdated and needs to be replaced by dialogue and diplomacy. Could the same be said for Catholic teachings on sex and gender?

Spectacle Capitalism and Dazzling Theory

Tonda’s book bears many fruits, but vernacular religion might reveal a different spiritual drama at work in late capitalism than the one the book provocatively stages.

Do We “Miss” God?

A Christianity fashioned in the image of white national belonging cannot hold the fullness of the church.

Angels and Demons and the US Military (Oh My!)

What if life was so confusing and so difficult because we stand at the center of some cosmic conspiracy that divides every aspect of reality into theological categories of good and evil?

Where Does Race End and Theology Begin?

Biko Mandela Gray talks about race, radicalism, and religion, and Assata Shakur, with Atiya Husain

PTNCON27: Call for Seminar Streams

The Political Theology Network is hosting our sixth in-person conference, which will be held in Nashville, TN, from April 29 to May 2, 2027. Would you like to coordinate a thematic stream?

You Must Change Your Life: On Moving Saints

We asked Aaron Hollander and Sonia Velázquez to reflect on each other’s recent books. Here, Hollander explores the intersection of hagiography, aesthetics, and politics.

Before I’ll Be a Slave: Isaiah’s Vineyard and the Politics of Counterfeit Righteousness

Isaiah 5:1–7 opens as a love song and closes as a verdict, judging a vineyard not by its structural industry but by its ethical fruit. Reading Isaiah’s brilliant wordplay through a womanist hermeneutic and the Civil Rights freedom song tradition, this essay names the counterfeit fruit of a contemporary Christian nationalism that calls violence just, elevates a flawed man to the status of savior, and labels empathy a sin—and asks who is still listening for the desperate cry (tse’aqah) beneath the nationalistic noise.

God, Blood, and Memes

When Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene compared Donald Trump to Jesus Christ, she wasn’t just being provocative. She was revealing the political logic that holds Trumpism together…and, as subsequent events would show, its limits.

You Must Change Your Life: On Moving Saints

We asked Aaron Hollander and Sonia Velázquez to reflect on each other’s recent books. Here, Velázquez explores the intersection of hagiography, aesthetics, and politics.

So That the People May Drink

Scripture invites those who thirst today, such as those traversing the Sonoran desert in the hope of a liveable existence, to raise their voice in protest, to insist that their human value be recognized. And it invites those of us who have plenty to amplify that complaint, to set aside the anxieties of those seeking to maintain lopsided power and position, and partner with the Divine.

Broad Chest, Weak Knees

Narendra Modi’s strongman persona rests on a paradox: he must be both an ordinary man of the people and an extraordinary figure above ordinary politics. Farmers and students have repeatedly exposed the fragility of that exceptional claim.