The message of John the Baptist challenges our complacency about sin, an attitude that pervades and perverts our entire life as a society.
There seems to be, then, a road not yet taken by political theologians in North America and Europe: to participate with Arab thinkers in the work of writing comparative political theologies that decolonize knowledge and seek a more just alternative to the world as it stands.
The nearness of God inspires communities to work for justice, for the Son of Man as a co-pilgrim participates in the struggles of the creation.
Agonistic practices of lively contestation constitute a practical way to love enemies and thereby to do public theology.
In a hateful political climate, it’s easy to feel defeat. However, Daniel 7 teaches us that God is present in the midst of oppression and intervenes as a liberator God. We must join in this liberation to defy feelings of defeat.
It seems that only a certain kind of public theologian, touting a certain kind of theology, is recognizable to the religiously unaffiliated as being, well, religious.
We have been led astray by those who invoke religion to undergird their own social, political, and economic power. When we find ourselves enthralled to their apparent grandeur, we, too, will find the world beginning to crumble around us.
The vocation of the public theologian is to testify to their faith and in doing so to further the good news of Jesus in all our publics. At the same time, the aim of this public theological discourse ought not be to colonize other publics for Christianity.
In her very presence, the widow performs the political act of bringing to light oppression and injustice. Our task is to learn how to see her.
Join PTN on Saturday, November 17 from 7:30-10:30 pm at the Atrium Alcove in the Embassy Suites (1420 Stout St., Denver; just one block from the Convention Center) for our annual reception.
To be a public theologian does not mean to do theology for everybody. It is not a matter of speaking from the particular to the universal, but of dwelling within multiple, overlapping particularities and finding theological meaning there.