Jacob’s biography is not a blueprint for activism, but perhaps a helpful model for what the church looks like in a world of empires, or at the very least a reminder that power can exist outside of prescribed structures. The story of Jacob empowers the marginalized to secure their own justice while reminding of the importance of confronting empire directly.
By subverting familial connections, Jesus is not undermining ties of affection but dismantling the social and economic security that comes with them, while simultaneously expanding the meaning of relationality.
Mapping normative rhythms and their interruptions, recovering voices and paths of antagonism, conjuring counter-plagues: these are the critical imperatives for the riotous times of the present.
By reimagining belonging as Jesus did—focusing on relationship rather than societal status—we are called to open the doors of God’s family wide, embracing the diversity of God’s creation with love, dignity, and grace.
The grass seemed greener in Orthodoxy, I’ve realized, because my yearning for authenticity and escape reflected a structural lack embedded in late capitalist dystopia… Today, it seems to me more honest to learn to live with this lack, than to imagine that any faith, flag or folkway can fully fill it.
We consider our friends those who can keep a secret and help us stop feeding our inner monsters.
Is tranquility possible in an era of political emergency?
This blog post investigates and problematizes a certain narrative strategy in the historiography of Malabar rebellion, in which “war” (“yudham”) and “riot” (“lahala” or “mutiny”) were configured on the model of “politics” and “religion”. The post asks what kind of sovereign formation was imagined in such a narrative strategy and why it needs to be addressed.
Specifically, in Banerjee’s work, the sovereign is at once a figure that was used extensively for conjuring anew political and ethical communities and a bridge (or more accurately a plurality of local constructions) for forming, ironically, a non-monarchical Indian nation-state.
“We should think of queer humanitarianism as a theological project. It suffers from a messianic complex.”
From Myanmar to Mariupol, from the streets of Memphis to the waves and winds of the Mediterranean Sea: resistance to violence takes many forms. So does political protest against precarity. At which point does the unavoidable vulnerability of the living condition come to expression as political agency? Can such precarious politics constitute or configure an alternative community?