Stillborn God Religion Politics And The Modern West

This searching history of western thinking about the relationship between religion and politics was inspired not by 9/11, but by Nazi Germany, where, says University of Chicago professor Lilla ("The Reckless Mind"), politics and religion were horrifyingly intertwined. To explain the emergence of Nazisms political theology, Lilla reaches back to the early modern era, when thinkers like Locke and Hume began to suggest that religion and politics should be separate enterprises. Some theorists, convinced that Christianity bred violence, argued that government must be totally detached from religion. Others, who believed that rightly practiced religion could contribute to modern life, promoted a liberal theology, which sought to articulate Christianity and Judaism in the idiom of reason. (Lillas reading of liberal Jewish thinker Hermann Cohen is especially arresting.) Liberal theologians, Lilla says, credulously assumed human society was progressive and never dreamed that fanaticism could capture the imaginations of modern peopleassumptions that were proven wrong by Hitler. If Lilla castigates liberal theology for its naï veté , he also praises America and Western Europe for simultaneously separating religion from politics, creating space for religion, and staving off sectarian violence and theocracy. Lillas work, which will influence discussions of politics and theology for the next generation, makes clear how remarkable an accomplishment that is