Synopses & Reviews
Religious passions are again driving world politics. The quest to bring political life under Gods authority has been revived, confounding expectations of a secular future. In this major book, Mark Lilla reveals the sources of this age-old questand its surprising role in shaping Western thought.
The story could not be more timely. Most civilizations in history have been organized on the basis of a political theology – a myth or revelation about the correct ordering of society. Yet due to a crisis in Western Christendom nearly five hundred years ago, a novel intellectual challenge to political theology arose in Europe. By portraying religion as an expression of human nature, not a divine gift, modern Western thinkers found a way to free politics from Gods authority and build barriers against destructive religious passions.
But the temptations of political theology are always present, even in the West. As Lilla vividly shows, the urge to reconnect politics to religion remained strong and took novel forms in modern European thought. By the Second World War a forceful political messianism had arisen, justifying the most deadly ideologies of the age.
Making us question what we thought we knew about religion, politics, and the fate of civilizations, Lilla reminds us of the modern Wests unique trajectory and what is required to remain on it.
About the Author
Mark Lilla is Professor of Humanities and Religion at Columbia University. He was previously Professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. A noted intellectual historian and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics and G. B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern. He lives in New York City.
Author Q&A
Q: How would you define the term political theology?A: A political theology describes the nature of the good society, based on a divine revelation. It can be contrasted with political philosophy, which does without revelation.
Q: Explain the importance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the dialog of religion and politics in Western thought.
A: Rousseau's importance lies in his argument that human beings have a defensible need for religion, and that when religion is rationally and morally reformed it ennobles us, rather than debases us. This thought convinced many in nineteenth-century Europe that reformed religion could be reconciled with modern politics, and played a necessary role in the functioning of the state.
Q: Tell us why you call America’s relationship to religion and politics a miracle?
A: There simply is no other example of a healthy, powerful democracy whose citizens are not only believers, but believers in messianic, ecstatic faiths. Their faiths give them ample reason to ignore the limits of constitutional government, and even resort to violence, but somehow we remain within the bounds of our system of government.
Q: Why were the Founding Fathers of this country so hopeful to assert that a theory such as ours could work —in your opinion does it work, will it work in the future?
A: The Founders made a wager that if Protestant sects were given a constitutional right to assemble they would not want to risk that liberty by imposing their faith on others. They hoped for a general disarmament, and they got it. What the Founders could not anticipate was the influx of Catholic immigrants in the 19th and 20th century, nor that eventually they, too, would accept the bargain. Nor could they have anticipated Muslim immigration.
Q: Do you think the events of September 11th have changed our relationship to religion in this country?
A: It obviously has, but perhaps not enough. We remain terribly provincial about the challenge of political theology, exaggerating the danger in the US and underestimating its power in the rest of the world.