The Problem with Grace

This book develops a post-secular, post-sectarian political theology, taking that burgeoning field in a new direction. With his bold suggestion that political philosophy must begin with political theology, Vincent Lloyd investigates a series of religious concepts such as love, faith, liturgy, and revelation and explores their political relevance by extracting them from their Christian theological context while refusing to reduce them to secular terms. He assembles an unusual canon of thinkers "too Jewish to be Christian and too Christian to be Jewish"―Simone Weil, James Baldwin, Franz Kafka, and Gillian Rose―to aid him in his explorations. Unique in its serious attention to both theological writing about politics and the work of academic philosophers and theorists, The Problem with Grace deepens our understanding of political theological vocabulary as a way back to the everyday world. Politics is not about redemption, but about grappling with the ever-present difficulties, tragedies, and comedies of ordinary life.

Vincent Lloyd is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Faculty Associate of African American Studies at Georgia State University. He is the author of Law and Transcendence: On the Unfinished Project of Gillian Rose (2009) and editor of Race and Political Theology (Stanford, forthcoming).