For Bouteldja, though boundaries of identity are real and significant, they are also porous, and they must be made ever more so. In the event that “we” and “you” cannot get it…
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The Kingdom of God Has No Borders
by
Ebenezer Obadare
Imperialists in cassock?

It is one thing to write a good book. It is another thing entirely to write a timely book, and given the choice, most people would settle for the latter. Melani McAlister does not have to make this choice, for with the publication of The Kingdom of God Has No Borders, she has managed to achieve both. She has written an absolutely brilliant and totally absorbing book on American evangelicals at the precise historical moment when American evangelicals and evangelical politics have come under persistent academic and public scrutiny, perhaps the most intense and most searching in a generation. We all know why. This book has suffered a protracted gestation, and the world into which The Kingdom of God is released is, morally and politically speaking, arguably a radically different one from that in which the idea for the book was originally conceived over a decade ago. But I cannot imagine Professor McAlister complaining. Good things usually come to those who wait, and she must surely feel that all that time spent trying versions of different chapters on audiences at workshops, conferences, and public lectures, and importuning an endless list of interlocutors, is justified by the exquisite timing of its eventual release.
July 19, 2018
The Kingdom of God Has No Borders
The Kingdom of God Has No Borders—An introduction
July 19, 2018
The Kingdom of God Has No Borders is a historical study, but it can help us understand the role of evangelicalism in contemporary US politics in the wake of the election of…
July 19, 2018
Whites, Jews, and Us
On impasse and hypocrisy
July 18, 2018
Bouteldja’s book is a takedown of white supremacy in its cultural, economic, and political forms. Yet the white supremacy that Bouteldja demystifies is not an objective category but a relational one.
July 18, 2018
Book introductions
by
Tulasi Srinivas
The Cow in the Elevator: An introduction

In January 2009 I found myself helping three priests lure a reluctant cow into an elevator in the city of Bangalore, India. The cow’s handler and the priests pushed at her rear end while I held tempting ripe bananas in front of her. I wondered why the priests were attempting to shove the cow into the elevator, but in the whirl of shouting and pushing that was involved, I forgot my bewilderment and entered into the spirit of the exercise. Finally, we were successful. Having wedged the cow sideways into the elevator, we all rode upwards triumphantly. {. . .} In thinking about the care required to hoist a cow into an elevator to create a moment of wonder, I began to wonder: Could we eff the ineffability of wonder differently? What if wonder was not an act of God that “struck” one, but was a response to a deliberate conflation of events? Could wonder be deliberately pursued?
July 13, 2018
Whites, Jews, and Us
Love in dark times
July 12, 2018
Bouteldja’s “we” is resolutely impure, as is the “you” she addresses. And because it is impure, it is political. It recognizes that racialization has produced distinct brands of racism and of acting…
July 12, 2018
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