The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics,
and the Modern West (Vintage) by
Mark Lilla
A Great But Fragile Political Experiment
A brilliant account of religions role in the political thinking of the West, from
the Enlightenment to the close of World War II.
The wish to bring political life under Gods authority is nothing new, and its
clear that today religious passions are again driving world politics,
confounding expectations of a secular future. In this major book, Mark Lilla
reveals the sources of this age-old quest-and its surprising role in shaping
Western thought. Making us look deeper into our beliefs about religion,
politics, and the fate of civilizations, Lilla reminds us of the modern Wests
unique trajectory and how to remain on it. Illuminating and challenging,
The Stillborn God is a watershed in the history of ideas.

Personal Review: The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the
Modern West (Vintage) by Mark Lilla
Mark Lilla wrote this book for the heirs of what he calls the Great
Separation: the modern West's attempt to distinguish religious questions
from political ones once and for all. This is the West's most ambitious
political experiment. The trouble, according to Lilla, is that we in the West
have forgotten that it is indeed an experiment, that in trying to think through
political questions atheologically, the West is the historical exception rather
than the rule. Because of this forgetfulness, "we find it incomprehensible
that theological ideas still inflame the minds of men, stirring up messianic
passions that leave societies in ruin. We assumed that this was no longer
possible.... We were wrong" (3).
So Lilla sets out to remind us of the long, prestigious, and powerful legacy
of political theology in the West. He marches quickly through the rise of
Christianity (and its "accidental" acquisition of an Empire) up to the first
attempt at the Great Separation by Thomas Hobbes (chs. 1 and 2), then
more slowly through a few major thinkers who wrestled with the
consequences of that attempt: Locke and Hume (ch. 3), Rousseau and
Kant (ch. 4), Hegel (ch. 5), the 19th century liberal Protestants and Jews
(ch. 6), and finally the re-emergence of both Christian and Jewish political
theology in, above all, Karl Barth and Franz Rosenzweig (ch. 7). In the
beginning, Hobbes intended to disavow religion entirely, seeing it as
merely an expression of humanity's incessant fearfulness, inevitably
leading to violence. But religion gradually regained a foothold in political
thought, first in the negative form of "freedom of conscience" and later in
the more positive form of an "enlightened" religiosity. After Rousseau, who
wrote in Émile about the need for religion (shorn, of course, of any
particularistic dogmatism) to encourage the natural expansiveness of the
human soul, appeals to the positive social contribution of religion,
especially Protestant religion, became much more common.
This renewed (though severely qualified) approval of religion emboldened
19th-century liberal Protestants and Jews in Germany to reassert their
religion's politico-cultural significance, while cautiously avoiding any
serious social critique. The fatal consequence of this sideways-step back
toward political theology, says Lilla, was to have "left the faint odor of
revelation hanging over its celebration of modern political and cultural life,
implying it had been divinely blessed" (249). Once that social order began
to crumble after the First World War, therefore, the condemnation of its
"stillborn God" was basically fated also to take religious form. In the overtly
theopolitical rhetoric of Franz Rosenzweig and Karl Barth, sharply critical
of the liberal attempts to accommodate themselves to late modern German
society, it suddenly and disastrously appeared possible once again to urge
political decisions on the basis of some perceived revelation. An intensely
apocalyptic fervor had been reawakened. Political theology had been
reborn. And though neither Barth nor Rosenzweig would ever have
countenanced the atrocities of the Nazi regime, their political theological

ambitions, on Lilla's telling, only encouraged "a new and noxious form of
political argument, which was the theological celebration of modern
tyranny" (278).
All this, in brief, is the powerful and terrible intellectual legacy of which Lilla
sets out to remind us, lest we lose sight of the immense fragility of the
West's grand experiment. We must not take the separation of religion and
politics for granted. We must not forget the captivating power of political
theology.
Although this book falls victim to the oversimplification characteristic of
most all popular histories of ideas, and readers more knowledgeable about
a particular figure will find plenty to quibble about (especially, I think, on the
theological figures), even Lilla's mistakes can be instructive. He writes with
unrivaled interpretive and analytical clarity, all the more impressive given
the complexity of the figures he discusses.
For More 5 Star Customer Reviews and Lowest Price:
The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Vintage) by Mark Lilla 5
Star Customer Reviews and Lowest Price!