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Essays

Open Wide Our Hearts—The Ups and the Downs

The United States Catholic bishops’ recent pastoral letter on racism shows how racism has been woven into the history of the US, and is honest about the Church’s past complicity in that racism. It says less about how Catholics today can combat systemic racism, but offers hope for fruitful dialogues throughout the country.

Troubled Northern Ireland: Talking Walls, Open Wounds

Twenty years after the signing of the Good Friday peace agreement, partisan murals litter the landscape of Northern Ireland reminding all of the thirty-year civil war between Catholic and Protestant neighbors.

Devilish Diversions—Luke 4:1-13

The devil sought to divert Jesus from his mission in three different ways. Walking Christ’s cruciform way, we face the same temptations.

The Implicit Grammar of the Transfiguration—Luke 9:28–43a

The transfiguration reveals the implicit grammar of Jesus’ politics and political identity. This identity did not require a retreat to heaven, but confrontation and crucifixion in Jerusalem.

Subjectivity, Affect, and Exhaustion: The Political Theology of the Anthropocene

…placing the feeling of exhaustion as the central organizing principle hails a subject as experienced and expressed through divisions and differences

The Conversion of Hearts and the Sin of Racism

In Open Wide Our Hearts, the US Catholic bishops successfully describe how racism has historically been at the heart of American life, but the pastoral letter emphasizes personal conversion at the expense of structural transformation.

URGENCY: On Teaching in Crisis

What does thinking about affect mean for the politics of the religious studies classroom?

Do Not Fret—Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40

When we are tempted to anxiety in the face of the success of the wicked, the psalmist reorients us to the Lord.

Call for Proposals – Black Muslim Psychology Conference

The dialogue at the 2019 Black Muslim Psychology Conference will explore the impact of internalized oppression, notions of Black inferiority and assumptions of Islamic inauthenticity on identity, well-being and development of Black/African Muslims in the United States.

Blackface and White Comfort: Reading The Bishops’ Letter from Charlottesville

The US Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter Open Wide Our Hearts seeks to assuage white guilt rather than inspire a courageous stand against white supremacy.

PTN Dissertation Workshop Spotlight

The workshop provides grants to graduate students to attend the annual meeting and to participate in a half-day workshop, facilitated by senior scholars in the area of political theology.

Reading group: Frantz Fanon

Join a reading group sponsored by the Political Theology Network treating Fanon’s book Black Skin, White Masks.