Symposia

While the difficulty in neatly defining the field itself verges on notoriety, the pieces in this series offer accounts of affect’s appearances and tangible effects, and illustrate the value of thinking political theology in relationship to emotions, bodies and the non-linguistic .

To whom should we, working in political theology, listen, and how?

The recent criminalization of Latinx people has led to a “zero tolerance” deportation policy and consequent separation of children from their families. Can we shift the public discourse in order to preserve the basic dignity of all people?

Is public theology a worthy aim politically? Is public theology necessarily political? Is “the public” of public theology a unitary entity? Who are some paradigms of the public theologian? Can public theology speak in a milieu of deep pluralism? What are the publics of political theology?

What are the prospects and limits of confronting sexual violence from within political theology?

For this symposium, we asked our contributors to reflect on possible points of intersection between ecology and political theology.

What is at stake in invoking “love” in political spheres? When we claim that “Love Trumps Hate”, what vision of “love” are we championing? When and how is it valuable for activists and religious leaders to make recourse to the idea of “love”? What kind of obligations does “love” entail?

Truth be told, the world is much larger than we are able to remember.

What is the role of the public theologian in unveiling the racialized discourse of public theology itself?

For this symposium, we asked respondents to reflect on the question, “What are the political implications of naming a text sacred?”

These essays chip away at the patina that has built up around King’s figural representation in our collective political culture.