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Essays

Demonology

[S]ituating demonology more fully in its religious and theological contexts furnishes resources that not only nuance understandings of movements for whom demonization is central, but also recontextualize discussions of core political theological concepts, including sovereignty, power, economy, subjectivity, and freedom.

Mountain Theology

The transfiguration stories in scripture, and their mountains, are not places of answers. They are places of raw honesty about our own limits. They are places where words give way to water that flows where it will, to sustain life. They are places of confronting grief and loss. They are places of silence. And these mountains are places to wonder at the mystery of the God who created us to need each other and this earth.

Marie-Thérèse Lacaze and “The End of Promised Lands”

This essay traces the story of Marie-Thérèse Lacaze, a French woman whose experience of Catholic communal life in solidarity with the poor and disenfranchised in Palestine eventually led her to denounce both the state of Israel and the Catholic Church as unjust institutions failing to live up to the ideals on which they were founded.

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.”

Critical Race Theory

CRT is a framework or an approach to understanding the way racism is foundational to systems of judicial, political, social, cultural, religious, and theological power.

The Politics of Scripturing—Matthew 5:21-37

Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount unsettles many biblicist ways of understanding Scripture. It may even be better to move from speaking of ‘the Scriptures’ as a noun, to speaking of ‘Scripturing’ as a verb.

Corita Kent and “A Sort of Growing Up”

This essay presents some historical sources for tracing and understanding Corita Kent’s departure from Catholic religious life and the institutional Catholic church. This effort to make sense of Corita’s spiritual trajectory sheds light on wider trends in Post-Vatican II U.S. Catholic life.

The End of This World Portends the Birth of a New One

We are left with the possibility that this time of revelation can not only visibilize the harm that colonial relations have wrought but also enable a resurgence of counter practices and lifeways that actively build a new world out of the ashes of this one.

PTNCON23: Call for Seminar Streams

The Political Theology announces its 2023 conference and invites proposals for seminar streams.

Natality

In this short essay, written from my perspective as a Jewish feminist, I draw together a plurality of engagements with natality to engender new conversations in political theology.

Nostalgia and Politics

Embodying the best of the prophetic tradition, the text encourages us to consider that religion, in fact, does have functions: liberation, feeding the hungry, inviting vulnerable strangers into our homes, and undoing injustice.

Mary Daly and “Boundary Living”

Despite her rejection of Catholicism as irredeemably patriarchal, this essay explores Mary Daly’s complicated relationship with her theological past. Daly offers a vision for “boundary living” — where institutional disaffiliation creates a space for creatively reclaiming and reconstructing the tradition.