Luke Bretherton

Luke Bretherton is Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Research Professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Before joining the Duke faculty in 2012, he was reader in Theology & Politics and convener of the Faith & Public Policy Forum at King's College London. His most recent book is A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live Well (Cambridge University Press, 2023). His other books include Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (2019); Resurrecting Democracy (2015), which was based on a four-year ethnographic study of community organizing initiatives in London and elsewhere; Christianity & Contemporary Politics (2010), winner of the 2013 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing; and Hospitality as Holiness (2006), which develops a constructive, theological and ecclesial response to pluralism in dialogue with broader debates in moral and political philosophy. Specific issues addressed in his work include euthanasia and hospice care, debt and usury, fair trade, environmental justice, racism, humanitarianism, the treatment of refugees, interfaith relations, secularism, nationalism, populism, church-state relations and the church’s involvement in social welfare provision and social movements. Alongside his scholarly work, he writes in the media (including The Guardian, The Times and The Washington Post) on topics related to religion and politics, has worked with a variety of faith-based NGOs, mission agencies, and churches around the world, and has been actively involved over many years in forms of grassroots democratic politics, both in the UK and the US. His primary areas of research, supervision, and teaching are Christian ethics, political theology, the intellectual and social history of Christian moral and political thought, the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, missiology, interfaith relations, and practices of social, political, and economic witness. He has received a number of grants and awards, including a Henry Luce III Fellowship (2017-18). He also hosts and writes the Listen, Organize, Act! Podcast, which focuses on the history and contemporary practice of community organizing and the role religion plays in forms of grassroots, democratic politics.