A Theology of Loyalty

Mona Siddiqui, OBE, is Professor of Religion and Society at King's College London and a leading commentator on religious matters in the United Kingdom and beyond. She has published widely in the fields of Islamic law and ethics and of Christian-Muslim relations. Her book Human Struggle (Cambridge University Press, 2021) was based on her 2016 Gifford lectures, delivered in the University of Aberdeen, and she edited A Theology of Gratitude (Cambridge University Press, 2023, the prequel to this volume) with her co-editor Nathanael Vette. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nathanael Vette is Lecturer in New Testament, Gender and the Arts at King's College London. He too has published on Christian-Muslim relations, and his related scholarly interests include early Christianity and ancient Judaism. His previous books are Writing with Scripture (Bloomsbury 2022) and – co-edited with Mona Siddiqui – A Theology of Gratitude (cited above). He is a member of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.

• Introduction Tom Greggs and Nathanael Vette; Part I. Loyalty and God: 1. Puzzles of loyalty Jennifer A. Herdt; 2. Loyalty in Islam: from the theological primacy of the divine to the complexities of its practice Martin Nguyen; 3. Loyalty in Sufism Atif Khalil; 4. 'All the gods have gone forth': temples, loyalty and the limits of theodicy Nathanael Vette; Part II. Loyalty and Society: 5. The stripping of the ceilings: political loyalty in the post-Constantinian age William Storrar; 6. Loyalty, religion, and secularisation: Herman Bavinck and Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje James Eglinton; 7. When loyalties collide: queer theological betrayals Linn Marie Tonstad; 8. 'A plague on both your houses': on loving beyond loyalty Rachel Muers; 9. Loyalty in early Christian-Muslim history: extrapolations from the Manṣūrs of early Islamic Syria Samuel Nwokoro; 10. Loyalty or solidarity? being a friend to the church Victoria Turner; 11. Reconsidering Josiah Royce's philosophy of loyalty: meaning, community, and memory Joshua Forstenzer; Conclusion: a conversation with Cornel West Cornel West and Mona Siddiqui; Afterword Mona Siddiqui; Select bibliography; Subject index.

'The theme of loyalty is well chosen in our current social and political context, and its complexity comes through powerfully both in the volume as a whole and in some very compelling individual contributions.' Susannah Ticciati, Professor of Christian Doctrine, King's College London