Submitting to Journal Of Political Theology: What Actually Happens
I've been working with this journal space for a while now, both as a reader and as someone who's submitted work to it. Let me walk through how the process actually works, what they're looking for, and where people tend to get stuck. The Journal Of Political Theology publishes at Duke University Press. Their editorial scope sits somewhere between continental philosophy, critical theory, and theological inquiry. They are not interested in straightforward argumentative essays that just apply a known framework to a new topic. They want work that actually does something — reconfigures the question, brings previously unconnected materials into tension, or reveals an angle nobody has really looked at before. Submission goes through Duke's portal. You'll need a complete manuscript and a cover letter. Standard formatting is close to Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. Footnotes over endnotes. Single-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman, one-inch margins. The abstract should be around 150 words and genuinely describe what the piece argues, not just what it covers. I've seen too many abstracts that read like book reports.
What Gets Accepted (And What Doesn't)
Here's the thing about this journal that doesn't come across in the submission guidelines: they have a very specific intellectual temperament. The work they publish tends to be philosophically rigorous, theologically literate, and willing to engage with thinkers like Agamben, Marion, Lacan, Weil, or Benjamin without treating them as reference points to lean on. If your piece treats sovereignty or the sacred as a metaphor, you are probably not the audience they are looking for. They want the concepts to do actual work in the argument, not decorate it. Common pitfall I see repeatedly: people write pieces that are 80 percent literature review and 20 percent conclusion about why the literature needs more theological engagement. That's not the bar here. The journal expects the theological and political dimensions to be constitutive from the first page. Another blind spot: the interdisciplinary boundary matters a lot. A political theory piece that doesn't engage theology substantively will miss the mark. A theology piece that ignores the political consequences of its claims will also miss. The journal exists at that intersection, so you need to be comfortable on both sides.
Peer Review Reality
Review times vary. From my own experience and from talking to people who've gone through it, you should expect anywhere from three to eight months for a first decision. The review process is double-blind. Reviewers are typically scholars working in adjacent areas — political theology, continental philosophy, critical religion studies. They tend to be quite thorough because the subfield is small and the conversations are ongoing. One edge case I ran into personally: my first submission had a footnote section that was longer than the actual essay body. The reviewers flagged this immediately. What happened next wasn't a rejection — they asked me to trim the notes and restructure. I cut the footnotes down to roughly a third of their original length and moved some of the material into the main text. The revised version took about six weeks to come back. The key insight here is that the journal values argumentative economy. Long digressions in notes signal that the writer isn't confident the main argument can stand on its own.
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Writing for This Venue
If you are trying to write something that fits this journal, start by reading three recent issues cover to cover. Pay attention to what the published pieces actually do rather than what you imagine they should do. Notice how the introductions are usually quite short — sometimes just a paragraph or two — and get straight into the conceptual work. These are not long-winded exploratory essays. Also pay attention to the word count. The sweet spot for articles is roughly 6,000 to 8,000 words including notes. Book reviews are different, usually 1,000 to 1,500 words. Special projects or forum responses might run longer, but standard submissions should respect the space constraints. One counterintuitive point that I think matters a lot: the journal actually favors pieces that take on a specific problem or text rather than broad survey essays. A tightly focused reading of a single passage, arguing something precise about sovereignty and the sacred in, say, a chapter of Paul or a section of Agamben's Homo Sacer, will often fare better than a 7,000-word overview of political theology in the contemporary moment. The depth over breadth approach is more reliable here.
After Acceptance
Once accepted, the production process at Duke is generally smooth. You'll get proof copies and have about a week to catch typos. The journal tends to publish issues quarterly. If your piece is part of a special theme or forum, timelines shift based on the guest editor's schedule, so keep that in mind if timing matters for your tenure review or graduation requirements. There's no open access fee required for standard submissions, though Duke offers an open access option if you or your institution wants to make the piece freely available. The standard subscription model covers distribution.
When This Journal Is Not the Right Fit
Be honest about whether your piece actually belongs here. If your work is primarily empirical, quantitative, or focused on institutional analysis in a way that doesn't engage with theological or philosophical concepts, you might be better served by journals like Politics and Religion, Church History, or Critical Research on Religion. The Journal of Political Theology has a specific register, and writing against that register usually means more revision cycles than you want. Similarly, if your theological commitments are confessional in orientation — meaning the piece is written from within a particular faith tradition's doctrinal framework and aims to strengthen that tradition rather than interrogate its political implications — this is probably not the venue. The journal operates from a critical, secular-academic standpoint even when the subject matter is theological. I've also seen people submit historical pieces about medieval political thought without engaging the contemporary theoretical conversation. Those tend to sit uncomfortably in this journal. If you're doing historical work, make sure you're actually talking to current debates in the field, not just presenting historical scholarship.
