Theology and policing

This article assesses the notion of “policing” in John Perry and Joanna Leidenhag’s Science-Engaged Theology to consider the contemporary practice of theological inquiry as a theoretical endeavor. Drawing on their construal of science-engaged theology, which involves a twofold resistance towards “authoritarian” tendencies of asserting theology as the queen of the sciences as well as modernity’s “border police” who seek to exclude religion and theology from public discourse, this essay suggests that Perry and Leidenhag’s vision for science-engaged theology not only brings to light one of the ways theology is sometimes deployed as a political mechanism for policing but also how theology itself can perhaps even be considered an act of “theological de-policing.”