Violence, Entitlement, and Politics

Steven G. Ogden is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University, Australia. He is interested in politics and religion, as well as issues around gender, power, and violence. Previous publications include The Church, Authority, and Foucault: Imagining the Church as an Open Space of Freedom (2017).

“Steven G. Ogden’s Violence, Entitlement, and Politics aims to ‘develop a theology on the transformation of violent subjects’ (15). And he succeeds admirably in developing such a theology at both individual and cultural levels of analysis. […] This book is likely to be of interest to scholars working in gender and masculinities, practical and pastoral theology, and social ethics. His work is highly relevant to anyone engaged in public theology and political advocacy at the sociocultural level as well as those in caring professions. His engagement with Foucault is relevant, clear, and likely to be accessible to those at graduate and doctoral levels. […] Ogden offers a work that will likely prove generative as theologians build on his contribution.”- Matthew S. Beal in Reading Religion“Ogden’s main themes address male violence in the home and in broader society while applying biblical theology as a solution. His particular focus on gender-based violence against women and his theological answer to the problem marks this work as an important addition to the literature on gender and religion. In Violence, Entitlement, and Politics: A Theology on Transforming the Subject, Ogden explains why violence is so prevalent in men and how his applied theology can address this violence for the improvement of society. […] Ogden does an excellent job weaving his themes of male-based entitlement violence and transformation into this book. The real strength of his argument lies in his clear explanation of how men are trained to be violent in the existing neoliberal systems at play in modern Western strongman politics.”- Sarah Porch-Lee in Religion and Gender

• 1 The problem of gender-based violence; 2 Theorizing violence, entitlement, and strongman politics; 3 Entitlement predisposing subjects toward controlling behaviour and violent actions; 4 Diverging trajectories: From Foucault and confession to transformation;5 A theology of transformation; 6 Transforming the subject; 7 6 January 2021: An epiphany of entitlement and the promise of transformation