Comparative Political Theology

Catalog description

This directed study explores the emerging field of Comparative Political Theology by examining how different religious and philosophical traditions think about sovereignty, law, authority, and liberation. While the course begins with influential Western voices such as Spinoza, Hobbes, Schmitt, Weber, Barth, and Benjamin, it does so in order to place them in conversation with contemporary theorists—including Agamben, Asad, Butler, Mbembe, and Wynter—who raise new questions about power, secularism, race, and political belonging. The study also broadens the conversation beyond Christian and secular frameworks by engaging Islamic political thought (Khomeini, Shariati, Hallaq), Jewish approaches to political theology (Arendt, Levinas, Taubes), and liberationist or postcolonial thinkers such as Dussel, Biko, Mahmood, and Tanner. Drawing on insights from Marxism, feminism, Black studies, and decolonial theory, this directed study aims to develop a clearer sense of how theological ideas continue to shape political life in different contexts, and to give me the grounding I need for future research at the intersection of politics and theology as well as state and religious sovereignty, supremacy, and MRB.