Theorizing Modernities Archives | Contending Modernities

The History of Secular Violence: An Interview with Thomas Albert Howard

Thomas Albert Howard and Joshua S. Lupo
August 12, 2026

The modern era has witnessed not only religiously inspired violence but also large-scale violence carried out in the name of secularist ideologies and projects.

Theopolitical Entanglements: Tisa Wenger Interviews Candace Lukasik on Martyrs and Migrants

Series: CM Conversations

Candace Lukasik and Tisa Wenger
July 28, 2026August 11, 2026

US racial formations produce a situation in which Copts are pulled simultaneously into Christian kinship and held at racial distance.

Imperial Hauntings: Candace Lukasik Interviews Tisa Wenger on Spirits of Empire

Series: CM Conversations

Tisa Wenger and Candace Lukasik
July 22, 2026July 22, 2026

Settler secularism aims to control religion and limit the spirits to their designated domain. But they can never entirely be contained.

Doing Theology After Gaza: Daniel Bannoura Interviews Mitri Raheb and Graham McGeoch

Dania Straughan
July 17, 2026

In decentering power from Western states and European modern frameworks, Theology after Gaza creates new alliances as people with similar struggles cohere around Gaza and Palestine.

Narrating the History of the American Anti-Zionist Jewish Left (Part 2)

Series: CM Conversations

Francesca Freeman and Benjamin Balthaser
July 1, 2026

The old oppositions between “secular” and “religious” Jewish life are breaking apart, at least on the left, and perhaps, were never really what we imagined them to be to begin with.

Narrating the History of the American Anti-Zionist Jewish Left (Part 1)

Francesca Freeman and Benjamin Balthaser
June 24, 2026

What does the history of American Jewish anti-Zionism look like if one puts left-wing social movements at the center of that story?

The Missing Link: Religious and Moral Transformation After Civil Conflict

Branko Sekuliċ
May 28, 2026June 3, 2026

The ethnocultural empathic turn names a pattern of transformation in which religious actors, institutions, and narratives shift away from the ethnoreligious production of boundaries and toward practices of public responsibility.

Hope as a Political Practice

Series: Symposium on Hope in a Secular Age

David Newheiser
May 12, 2026May 12, 2026

By sustaining affirmation while facing uncertainty, hope sustains social movements that resist authoritarianism with creativity and courage.

The Limits of Hope: Rethinking Ethics and Politics from the Ground Up

Series: Symposium on Hope in a Secular Age

Atalia Omer
May 4, 2026May 4, 2026

where people’s hopelessness is often also expressed in their hunger and marginalization, hope against despair means survival within, rather than transcendence of, the institutions and power structures shaping their predicaments of insecurity.

Cultivating Disruption: On Hope in a Secular Age

Series: Symposium on Hope in a Secular Age

Joseph Winters
April 22, 2026

I wonder if it is precisely the cultivated desire to persist (in a certain manner) that forecloses the possibility of rupture, abolition, and dissolution.

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