Political Devotions

Political Devotions

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Galatians & the Voting Rights Act
Paul teaches the Supreme Court about balancing—and honoring—covenants
 • Bryce Tolpen
No Kings & the coming community
Even in small towns, we finally appear to ourselves
 • Bryce Tolpen
The paradox of hypocrisy
A dialogue on public suspicion
 • Bryce Tolpen
Designing for public freedom
John the Baptist can lead city planners off the grid
 • Bryce Tolpen
Binding and loosing as Arendt’s twin faculties
Jesus gives us the keys to the public realm—and a covenantal basis for political theology
 • Bryce Tolpen
Power & money switch polarity
How our oligarchy is giving way to authoritarianism
 • Bryce Tolpen
Arendt: ICE's tactics create police states
ICE's lawlessness mirrors methods used in interwar Europe's mass deportations
 • Bryce Tolpen
The invisible poor
Jesus & John Adams on poverty and public life
 • Bryce Tolpen
Babel's bricks & the Bible's stones
Community building in an age of conformity
 • Bryce Tolpen
Which neighborhood was neighbor?
Emerson, Jacobs & Jesus on creating "a nation of friends"
 • Bryce Tolpen
Let bowling leagues run the show
"Functional representation" supports civic engagement
 • Bryce Tolpen
The world God so loved
A necessarily political John 3:16
 • Bryce Tolpen
Covenants
How to renew America's covenants
0 Kings: the Bible's book on human sovereignty
Tribalism vs. covenantal kinship
America's strong, medieval Constitution
Be ye politically perfect
Diversity
Turning tracks into public space
The Pike: the power of humanity's kinship
Make nature artificial again
Trading privilege for small miracles
Envoys extraordinary
Eschatology
Theodicy and the Odyssey
The three lives of Betty Lanier
The victory processions of Napoleon, Hitler, Titus & Christ
The laying off of hands: a liturgy
Public life "for such a time as this"
Exiles
At the cathedral: truth to power
Father Abraham's lit crit
At several removes: pilgrimages that deepen into political exile
A liturgy for hosting strangers
Freedom
The church as disruptive public realm
It’s time for Thomas Jefferson's village-states
Jesus, passive resistance & mutual aid
Your conception of God might affect your politics
Tyranny's freedoms
Visibility
A liturgy for walking the streets
How redistribution became the Founders' orthodoxy
No "male and female"
The good trouble with shame
Public space wants place

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Weekly devotions explore the Bible's own explorations of justice and public space. Nurture your public life with your friends and fellow strangers.
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Political Devotions
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