Mark Lilla is Professor of Humanities and Religion at Columbia University. He was previously Professor at the Committee on Social Thought, 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.
"Sophisticated and compelling. . . . Could not be timelier."—The Wall Street Journal“Introduces the reader to one of the most important chapters in modern history.”—The New York Sun “A lucid book of great learning and shrewd insights into political and religious psychology.”—The Boston Globe"Provocative. . . . Adds nuance and complexity to the intellectual account we tell about the West's thinking on religion and politics."—The New York Times Book Review
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 Nazism's 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. (Lilla's 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 people-assumptions that were proven wrong by Hitler. If Lilla castigates liberal theology for its naivet, he also praises America and Western Europe for simultaneously separating religion from politics, creating space for religion, and staving off "sectarian violence" and "theocracy." Lilla's work, which will influence discussions of politics and theology for the next generation, makes clear how remarkable an accomplishment that is. (Sept. 14) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
"Sophisticated and compelling. . . . Could not be timelier."-The Wall Street Journal"Introduces the reader to one of the most important chapters in modern history."-The New York Sun "A lucid book of great learning and shrewd insights into political and religious psychology."-The Boston Globe"Provocative. . . . Adds nuance and complexity to the intellectual account we tell about the West's thinking on religion and politics."-The New York Times Book Review
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