Villanova’s Center for Political Theology is hosting a new blog stream here on the Political Theology Network’s website exploring “Literature and Political Theology.” But what does that mean? If political theology names inquiry into the entanglement between religious and political ideas (and practices, and feelings, and forms of imagination), how does literature enter the mix? Literary texts could be a site at which to explore the entanglement between the religious and the political – a site unlike others, or perhaps the paradigm for others. But perhaps literature, and the questions of the aesthetic that it opens, do more, pushing us to rethink what political theology is, what theories inform conversations about political theology, what methods guide political theology, and the public audiences of political theology.
The five editors of the “Literature and Political Theology” blog each wrote brief reflections on this set of issues. Together, they set the stage for the blog, signaling its expansiveness, its critical edge, and its attention to not only the good and the true but also the beautiful.
