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Tag: Political Theology

When Prophets Grow Weary

After the triumph of Mount Carmel, Elijah collapses under a broom tree and asks to die — not from failure, but from the deeper disappointment of a victory that never moved the throne. Reading 1 Kings 19 against today’s Christian nationalism, this essay argues that authentic prophetic faith is found not in wind, earthquake, or fire, but in the silence, rest, and companionship that sustain the weary for the long work of justice.

Hospitals for the Healthy

Jesus presents himself as a physician, and offers one of his most programmatic statements of ethics. The sick need a doctor, not the healthy. Why then does church seem designed for the already well?

Spirituality, Politics, and the Other

This essay is part of the Discourses in Spirituality Round Robin.

The First Modern Political Theologian?

Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy reveals how religion became not a check on power—but its strategic lifeblood.

Religion and Public Life

Luke Roberts introduces the essays in the symposium on Religion and Public Life.

An Introduction to Walter Benjamin and Theology

We asked a diverse array of scholars to share their reflections on Walter Benjamin and the role that theology plays in his thought, as well as the strengths and limitations of his approach to theology at various stages of his work.

Negating the Common Good

On Democratic Disagreement as Ethical Formation

Negative Political Theology as a Way of Life

Whenever someone tries to become an absolute sovereign, to make oneself “King” or “God”, such an act of sovereignization brings about the de-sovereignization or in-sovereignization of everyone else.

There is Power in Negative Political Theology

Negativity cuts against a politics of nostalgia (which seeks to conserve the imagined glories of the past) and apocalypse (which rejects the world as irredeemably compromised)

How to Transform Political Theology

From Colombia to South Africa, from a decolonial stance to trauma theory, these scholars have offered polysemous approaches to the political as well as the theological.