Princeton's Mark Lewis Taylor has always worked at the intersection of the political and theological. Now, in this intense and exciting work, he explores in a systematic way how those two dimensions of human reality can be conceived anew and together. Taylor argues that the decline of political discourse, the justification of torture and preemptive war, mass incarceration, the misuse of religion to justify atrocity, and most especially the sheer weight of suffering in the worldall these developments urge us to reconceive theology itself. In conjunction with the latest insights of political theory, decolonial thought, and spectral theories in contemporary philosophy, Taylor suggests that the political is the context of the theological and a realm in which we can discern, beyond simple categories of transcendence and immanence, a transimmanence that is theologically illuminative and politically liberating.

The new edition of Mark Lewis Taylor's award-winning The Executed God is both a searing indictment of the structures of "Lockdown America" and a visionary statement of hope. It is also a call for action to Jesus followers to resist US imperial projects and power. Outlining a "theatrics of state terror," Taylor identifies and analyzes its instruments - mass incarceration, militarized police tactics, surveillance, torture, immigrant repression, and capital punishment - through which a racist and corporatized Lockdown America enforces a global neoliberal economic and political imperialism. Against this, The Executed God proposes a "counter-theatrics to state terror," a declamation of the way of the cross for Jesus followers that unmasks the powers of US state domination and enacts an adversarial politics of resistance, artful dramatic actions, and the building of peoples' movements. Heralded in its first edition, this new edition is thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded, offering a rethinking of what being a Christian is and how Christianity should act to bring about what Taylor terms "a liberating material spirituality" to unseat the state that kills.

In recent decades economic dislocation, immigration, new architecture, and other forces have transformed the physical, social, and even religious landscape of large cities. There gleaming skyscrapers tower over struggling ghettos, abandoned businesses mar upscale shopping areas, and tall-steeple churches sometimes languish where storefront mosques thrive. Exploring the religious significance of this new urban landscape, a group of theologians, members of the Workgroup on Constructive Christian Theology, traveled to select cities and found an exciting, vibrant, and multivoiced religious spirit at work. In these essays five leading American theologians delve deeply into the contemporary spiritual geographies of five cities, capturing, through a mix of personal and historical narrative, political analysis, and theological rumination, a sense of this new sacred space and the spirit aborning there.

Princeton theologian Mark Taylor analyzes right-wing Christian movements in the United States amid the powers of religion, politics, empire, and corporate classes in post-9/11 USA.The real gift of Taylor's book is his argument that this militant Christian faith must be viewed against a backdrop of the American political romanticism and corporatist liberalism of U.S. past and present. Taylor uses the best of cultural and historical studies, while deftly drawing lessons for American readers from theologian Paul Tillich's analysis of power and religion during the rise of fascism and nationalism in Germany of the 1930s.The result is an innovative framework for interpreting how Christian nationalists, Pentagon war planners and corporate institutions today are forging alliances in the U.S. that have dramatic and destructive global impact. Moving beyond lament, Taylor also leaves readers with a new romance of revolutionary traditions and a new more radical liberalism, revitalizing American visions of spirit that are both prophetic and public for U.S. residents today.

Christian theology needs to be reconstructed in light of recent and momentous intellectual changes, social revolutions, and steep pedagogical challenges. That is the conviction of many of North America's leading theologians whose close collaboration over several years bring us this exciting volume. Reconstructing Christian Theology introduces theology in such a way that readers can discern the relevance of historical materials, pose theological questions, and begin to think theologically for themselves. Further, like other projects of the Workgroup on Constructive Theology, this volume stems from a deep desire to model a credible, creative, and engaged contemporary theology. So each chapter tackles major Christian teaching, juxtaposes it with a significant social or cultural challenge, and then reconstructs each in light of the other. The result is an innovative and compelling way to learn how theology can contribute to rethinking the most pressing issues of our day.