Advancing research into the political theologies animating the fast-changing global political order, from resurgent religious nationalism to decolonial theologies.

Upheaval is nothing new. It is part of modernity’s ethos that turning over traditional forms of living in the world is required to bring about “progress” in society. Rather than treat the current moment—where forms of political engagement that were thought to be marginal during much of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have reentered the public sphere—as marking revolutionary change, this research aims to treat the changes in our politics as contingencies that have histories that require investigation. The failing of the liberal international order to rein in maleficence—as evidenced in the wake of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Russia’s unprovoked attacks against Ukraine, and the US’s neocolonial policies across South America and the MENA region—and the simultaneous rise of new political imaginaries, require patient and sustained attention to the history of colonialism, nationalism, neoliberalism, and secularism. This research area aims to bring out the intersections of these different ideologies with religion and advance constructive research on imagining paths forward.