What Is Political Theology?

Three cutting-edge thinkers offer different approaches to political theology, summoned up from a wealth of wide-ranging and impressive research. They open up new horizons for the discipline, showing the breadth and complexity of political theology while breaking the grip of the European canon that goes all the way back to Carl Schmitt. What Is Political Theology? will attract the attention and earn the respect of readers across disciplines and generations. – John D. Caputo, author of What to Believe? Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical TheologyPolitical theology—or politics tethered to ultimate concern—is inescapable. The authors of this powerful and necessary book take this observation down fresh paths, proposing a series of approaches to political theology for a new generation. Recommended for anyone in search of new ways of conceiving of, and responding to, the drive to mastery that characterizes modern politics. – Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, author of Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United StatesIn lucid and urgent prose, Bretherton, Lloyd, and Napolitano, each in their different ways, make a quietly groundbreaking case for doing political theology today. What Is Political Theology? is a rich resource, protean and inspiring, gathering energy from diverse fields and archives, a model of politically engaged interdisciplinary dialogue. – Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, author of Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in US LawAt a time when the fractures in our common democratic life in the West are becoming ever more rancorous and divisive, we need a mode of political theology that offers us clarity without sacrificing depth, passion without jettisoning reason, and commitment without myopic partisanship. Written by three of the leading theorists in the field, What Is Political Theology? is a must read for our troubled times. – Anthony G. Reddie, professor of Black theology, University of Oxford

Luke Bretherton is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University. His books include Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (2019).

Vincent Lloyd is professor of theology and religious studies and director of the Center for Political Theology at Villanova University. His books include Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination (2022), and he is an editor of the journal Political Theology.

Valentina Napolitano is a professor and Connaught Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her books include Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church (2016).