9/11 and the Question of Religion
The attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon threw the debates over the definition of “religion” into a stir. Though religion was obviously a central factor in the events...
View ArticleLetters from the Road: Lenin and Spiritual Booze
In ‘Socialism and Religion’ from 1905, Lenin famously wrote: Religion is opium of the people [опиум народа, opium naroda]. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown...
View ArticleThe Sacred IS the Profane, Part 1–Russell McCutcheon
[Part 2 will be posted tomorrow, Wed., May 1] In the Spring of 2007 I presented a public lecture on the politics of the category “religion” at the University of Calgary’s Department of Religious...
View ArticleBook Preview – Religion and Sustainability, by Lucas Johnston
[Lucas Johnston, Assistant Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies at Wake Forest University, previews his book, Religion and Sustainability: Social Movements and the Politics of the...
View ArticleThe Religious Practice of Everyday Life in Antiquity
As part of my study of subsistence survival – the resilient and basic element of the sacred economy of ancient Southwest Asia – I find that I also need to deal with the role of religion or the sacred...
View ArticlePolitical Theology and Islamic Studies Symposium: A potential collaboration...
In the coming weeks, the Political Theology blog will be hosting a symposium on Political Theology and Islamic Studies, bringing together reflections from a number of leading scholars at the...
View ArticleBook Preview – A Book Forged in Hell by Steven Nadler
Writing in May, 1670, the German theologian Jacob Thomasius fulminated against a recent, anonymously published book. It is, he claimed, “a godless document” that should be immediately banned in all...
View ArticleBook Preview – The Modern Spirit of Asia, by Peter van der Veer
[Peter van der Veer (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen) previews his new book, The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India...
View ArticleBetween Religion and Politics: Towards a Model of Translation
How might the relations between (radical and especially communist) politics and religion be understood? Over against the dominant but troubled models of secularisation and the absolute, determining...
View ArticleSaint Iosif: Stalin and Religion
...Stalin is unique among world communist leaders in at least one respect: he studied theology for five years at the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary, the training college for priests in the Russian Orthodox...
View ArticleThe Cloister and the Chamber: In search of Australian political philosophy...
For decades now, we seem to have been living in “end”: the end of history, the end of ideology, the end of theory. Parties nominally of the left (“New Labour”, “Wall St Democrats”) joined those of the...
View ArticleUniversalism versus Multiculturalism – The Crisis of Liberal Democracy in the...
Within a few days following the shock of the terrorist assault on, and wanton slaughter of the staff of, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the deeper crisis of Western liberal democracy—the...
View ArticleReligion: Idealism or Materialism?
From a Marxist perspective, is religion an idealist or a materialist phenomenon? Is it secondary or can it be a primary feature of human existence? The initial answer seems obvious: it is idealist and...
View ArticleThe Middle East and the Unintended Consequences of Our “Willful Ignorance”
The words that may turn out over time to have many of the same ominous undertones as Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” was uttered this past week by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the...
View ArticleThe Political Theology Syllabi Project: Devin Singh
This course was conceived as a way to introduce undergraduates to the conversation about religion and politics in Western tradition. I wanted to give them a broad historical overview, with in-depth...
View ArticleQUICK TAKES – How Will The Iranian Nuclear Framework Affect The Religious As...
In this week’s edition of QUICK TAKES on current and newsworthy issues involving religion and theology by POLITICAL THEOLOGY TODAY, we query two of our contributors on what it really means now that the...
View ArticleQUICK TAKES – Saudi Blogger’s 1000 Lashes Is Less About Religion and More...
The brutal punishment of 1000 lashes for a Saudi blogger for criticizing the country’s clerical establishment, suspended after global protests by human rights activists and some (largely European)...
View ArticleAnti-Extremism and Its Discontents – Why David Cameron’s Policies Should...
The Conservative government in the United Kingdom is cracking down on violent extremism. In a July keynote speech PM David Cameron unveiled the government’s five-year strategy for tackling what he...
View ArticleThe Politics of Religious Naming – Why We Need To Be More Honest About The...
The politics of religion in America in the Western world over the last several decades is really the politics of naming. The most fundamental question of the politics of naming boils down to the...
View ArticleRodeo in the Rain – American Politics and Religion in the 2016 Presidential Race
Every July when I was a kid, my dad hauled my brother and me all the way from Southern California to the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo in Wyoming. It was (and still is) a bona fide festival of...
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