xbn .

Search: the Politics of Scripture

Pope Leo XIV at One Year

Three contributors reflect on Pope Leo XIV’s first year.

Daniel Bensaïd and the Islamic Headscarf Controversy

As an indicator of national frustrations, the headscarf crystallizes the collective hysteria of a declining power that clings to its dreams and its extinct splendor.

Freedom of Religion, the American Way

I will explore the covenantal relationship between statehood and religion and its implications for freedom of religion for religious institutions unaffiliated with white Christian Nationalism.

Remembering Eduardo Mendieta (1963-2025)

Mendieta was an erudite, critical, generous, and compelling bridge-builder between critical theory, religion, and other fields who signals a path forward.

Born Anew into God’s Expansive, Inclusive Love

God’s love nullifies every hierarchy based on ancestry and ethnicity, since birth does not determine status in the eyes of God. With equal measure it rejects the idea that some are above accountability and some do not deserve justice.

Blood, Pleasure, Antiblackness

This essay is part of a book forum on Immaculate Misconceptions by Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones.

The Redeeming Potential of Childhood

Everywhere, adults laugh at children for their giddy games, whereas they are blind to the ways in which their pretend play shapes every aspect of their lives and leads to exploitation and injustice. Human experience, particularly the experience of the youngster – where the ground of the soul and the ground of God come together in an overflow of light, constitutes the basis for the radical immanence of God within the world.

Benjamin, Jewish Law, and the End of Capitalism

Benjamin argues that the violence of law emerges from its governing force and therefore from its ability to bind or impose itself. To this extent, the objective of my intervention is to frame a form of normativity that not only does not entail a binding power but that prohibits it as well.

The Vulnerability of True Power

Eventually, we all need others, leaving cooperation, humility, and patience the only lasting realities of human access to power. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that power can abandon any of us, at any moment – even and especially on a debate stage, in full view of the entire planet. We all forget this lesson at our peril.

The Night Is Far Gone

“Ideology asserts that something other than Jesus Christ awakens one from the world’s stupor, but no other force is adequate to the task.”