Vincent Lloyd

Professor of Theology and Religious Studies

Director, Center for Political Theology

Villanova University

I research and teach about the philosophy of religion, religion and politics, and race. I was previously a faculty member at Syracuse University and Georgia State University. My CV is here. My e-mail address is vincent.lloyd[at]villanova.edu.

Joshua Dubler and I wrote a book about religion and mass incarceration - Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons - exploring the way that shifting understandings of justice and law (in politics, religious communities, and inside prisons) authorized exponential prison growth in the United States. We tell stories that are intended to make possible alliances between secular prison abolitionists and social justice-minded religious communities.

My book Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination  was published by Yale University Press in 2022. This book examines the moral vocabulary of Black Lives Matter, with chapters organized by hashtags: Black Rage, Black Love, Black Family, Black Futures, and Black Magic. I have tried out some of the ideas in essays:
The End of the World: Reflections from Black Activism
The Work of Mourning and the Privilege of Black Death
Human Dignity is Black Dignity  

I am part of the editorial collective of the journal Political Theology (academic journal). I serve as Staff Director of the Political Theology Network (public-facing website). I also co-edit the book series Transforming Political Theologies, published by Routledge, with Judith Gruber and David True.

I am vegan. I live with a partner, a daughter, and a pit bull in Philadelphia's Powelton neighborhood. My two favorite musicians are Nicole Reynolds and Kimya Dawson.  

Here are a few public-facing essays I've written:

• Think Prison Abolition is Impossible? It Once Felt Inevitable (with Joshua Dubler)

• Black Religion as Black Radicalism (and podcast discussing article)

• The Radical King Is the Religious King (On Martin Luther King, Jr.)

• Mass Incarceration is Religious (and So Is Abolition), with Josh Dubler

• The New Politics of the Sacred

• On Black Christian Public Intellectuals - Part 1 and Part 2

• Overview of Black Natural Law at Immanent Frame; Symposium at Syndicate

Books I've Written

• Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination (Yale University Press, 2022) (publisher page)
• Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons, with Joshua Dubler, (Oxford University Press, 2019) (publisher page)
• In Defense of Charisma (Columbia University Press, 2018) (publisher page) (podcast interview) (blog post)
• Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology (Fordham University Press, 2017) (publisher page)
• Black Natural Law: Beyond Secularism and Multiculturalism (Oxford University Press, 2016) (preface) (publisher page)
• The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology (Stanford University Press, 2011) (overview) (contents) (introduction) (publisher page)
• Law and Transcendence: On the Unfinished Project of Gillian Rose (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) (publisher page)

Collections I've Edited

• Anti-Blackness and Christian Ethics, with Andrew Prevot (Orbis, 2017) (web site) (publisher page) (reflections from 2020)
• The Religious Ethics of Labor, with Fred Glennon (Special Issue of Journal of Religious Ethics, June 2017)
• Race and Secularism in America, with Jonathon Kahn (Columbia University Press, 2016) (publisher page) (Introduction)
• Is the Postcolonial Postsecular?, with Ludger Viefhues-Bailey (Special Issue of Critical Research on Religion, April 2015)
• The Beauty of Charisma, with Dana Lloyd (Special Section of Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2014)
• Sainthood and Race: Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh, with Molly Bassett (Routledge, 2014) (publisher page)
• Marcuse After Secularism (Special Issue of Telos, 2013) (information)
• Race and Political Theology (Stanford University Press, 2012) (publisher page) (introduction)
• Secular Faith, Co-Edited with Elliot Ratzman (Special Issue of Soundings, 2009; expanded edition from Cascade Books, 2010) (publisher page) (overview) (contents)

(photo, by Clare Huang, on the cover of Law and Transcendence)