xbn .

Tag: Freedom

Why Does Political Theology Matter? William Cavanaugh and Vincent Lloyd in Conversation

How is the term “political theology” used today, and how does it add to our understandings of theology and politics?

Bound to Be Loosed from Bondage

Luke’s wordplay allows us to see this story as something larger than a particular Jesus event with a particular woman in a particular synagogue on a particular Sabbath. A one-off, straightforward healing event can be described without such wordplay. Through the creativity of his storytelling, Luke makes this moment a signal event, about a Daughter of Abraham and the work of the Christ. 

Freedom Shaped by Love

Freedom shaped by love is not a passive sentimental response to the world’s violence. It is the key to seeing clearly and moving beyond it. It disarms, dismantles, and disappears.

Law and Order Catholicism Inside the Settler Colony

Using the example of nineteenth-century “Americanist” archbishop John Ireland, and his boarding school initiatives in Minnesota, this essay demonstrates how the US Catholic Church came to behave as an American institution by seeking common ground with liberal ideals of freedom, while simultaneously embracing state policing and punishment against populations marginalized from the body politic.

“When shall we be free?” Conceptualizing Freedom in Orthodox Christianity

The primacy of the inner type of freedom can produce a withdrawal from the world or an attitude of passivity towards its frustrating circumstances, particularly when the believer searches for real freedom exclusively inside the self irrespective of the conditions that exist in the broader socio-political environment.

Preferential Option for the Poor Once More

“Seek ye first the political kingdom of God and all these things shall be given unto you.”

The Politics of Walking on Water—Matthew 14:22-33 (Amy Allen)

In the interaction between God’s establishment of circumstances and our free response to them, we see something of the way that God enables us to be more human.

The Politics of Agency—Acts 16:16-34 (Amy Allen)

In the account of the slave with the spirit of divination, Paul, Silas, the Philippian jailer, and his family we encounter dynamics of agency and constraint, of freedom and slavery. There are a number of surprising instances of human action within this narrative which nonetheless speaks powerfully of the power and activity of God.

A Response to the Responses, Pt. II: Nudging, Paternalism, and Human Agency

. . . A “nudge”—a term brought to public attention by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler—generally refers, in the policy world, to a small modification to an already existing “choice architecture,” some context in which we make decisions; the modification is meant to promote certain decisions over others, in a context where some such promotion is inescapable.