![Sovereignty, the Exception, and the Question of Palestine](https://politicaltheology.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/divyanshi-verma-cOjTMy0yzbU-unsplash-600x450.jpg)
Whether through suits before the International Court of Justice, pro bono suits in American courts, appeals to the United Nations, or student-led civil disobedience movements on campuses all over the democratic world, Palestinians and their supporters are attempting to cause a miraculous rupture in the realm of positive law, not to further the arbitrary ends of power, but to further the just and lawful ends of Palestinian freedom.
![Decolonization at the Intersection of Political Theology and Settler Colonial Studies](https://politicaltheology.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2468981285_5b65187eba_o-600x450.jpg)
From the perspective of political theology, the presence of Indigenous peoples and settlers shaped by historical and ongoing settler colonial relations raises important political and religious questions about the possibilities and conditions of sovereign Indigenous existence and the (im)possibities and conditions of restorative or reconciled settler futures.
![When Faithfulness to God Hurts Our Neighbor](https://politicaltheology.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/mick-haupt-cuZllRxZrr8-unsplash-600x450.jpg)
Whatever our exegesis of scripture and tradition may suggest, it is imperative that we take into account the pain and damage our religious piety causes to others. Is our perception of divine instruction sufficient justification for actual injury (physical, psychological, and/or spiritual) to our neighbors?
![Gaza, Ukraine, and the Limits of International Law (Paul W. Kahn)](https://politicaltheology.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/gaza-destruction-600x600.jpg)
Since World War II, the primary ambition of international humanitarian law — the law of armed conflict — has been to insulate military violence from the civilian population. Military forces are required to identify themselves as such, by wearing clearly marked uniforms, and to discriminate in their selection of targets: They cannot deliberately attack noncombatants or infrastructure that has no military use.
![A Response to Jeffrey Bernstein re: “Zionism Unsettled”](https://politicaltheology.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/border-checkpoint-600x600.jpg)
I wish to thank Dr. Bernstein for his thoughtful and irenic response to “Zionism Unsettled” (hereafter, ZU). . . . ZU is indeed a hard-hitting document. It says things many people would rather not have discussed and calls out both Jewish and Christian Zionists for their contribution to the misery and suffering of the Palestinian people. Such a resource, which could be utilized at the congregational level, was sorely needed. The Israeli occupation began in 1967, when I was four years old. I’m now a grandfather, and yet it still continues.
![Diaspora, Relationality, and the Roots of Injustice in *Parting Ways*](https://politicaltheology.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/border-checkpoint-600x600.jpg)
Several of my friends joined a Facebook meme soliciting a list of the ten books that most influenced you. I thought myself too cool to participate, but if I had, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble would have been on my list. I devoured it one winter break when I was home from college. At the time, I was fascinated by the world of feminist theory to which Butler introduced me.
![Book Preview – Mapping Exile and Return, by Alain Epp Weaver](https://politicaltheology.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Mapping-Exile-and-Return-400x600.jpg)
What political theologies are embedded in and shape Zionist and Palestinian refugee mappings of space and place? This is the animating question of my new book, Mapping Exile and Return, which stems from my doctoral studies in theology at the University of Chicago and 11 years of work in the Middle East.