Search: the Politics of Scripture

Amidst today’s solemn gatherings, plaintive recollections, and lachrymose tributes which will honor the thousands murdered on 9/11, we should also pause and contemplate the cost of American “justice.”

So now these chopped-apart verses stand in our textual memory as a testament to a moment when our movement was frightened by the logical conclusions of its own radical claims.

From a political perspective it becomes vital then to stave against the self-imposed silence the brothers experienced and to hear clearly the voices of those we have cast into the pits of the earth.

A Reflection on Romans 8:26-39, Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Bensaïd critiques political theology while defending Derridean sovereignty—itself theological—and the distance between the two theologies is short.

“Balthaser’s history is a helpful necessity. Without it the obligation has no shape, no lineage, no proof of its own non-marginality. But memory cannot be the ground of the obligation, only its occasion.”

The Politics of Atheism Symposium sheds light on atheism’s emancipatory force. With a commitment to immanence, atheism can provide a counterweight to the pervasive appeals to God or other transcendent ideas used to legitimate systems of domination.

As we enter a new election season with our polarized political communities occupying different epistemologies and worlds, it remains an open question what it will look like for us to cultivate a better politics. We are caught in a riptide, being pulled further apart with few resources at our disposal for anything other than the zero-sum game we’ve inherited. The Jonah story, however, offers a different kind of political imagination, where God confronts and offers grace to enemies by putting them into contact with one another. This multi-layered grace introduces moral complexity and political uncertainty, but it also opens the door to a world not entirely determined by scarcity and competition.

The capacious and eternal love of God is neither a verifiable fact nor an opinion, but a theological truth-claim, staked on trust in Jesus as a credible witness. Christians who believe in such love should be wary of both the politics of condemnation and the politics of purity.

The following conversation between Jashodhara Sen and Kanu Halder took place on May 24, 2022. The discussion focuses on Halder’s research with the Matua, in which Halder evaluates Matua progressivity and political consciousness.

The irony of American populism is that the very anti-authoritarianism and community building that contributed much to American vibrancy and that are bequeathed to evangelicals by history and doctrine may under distress turn to self-protective, us-them defense.