Religion & Law

Philpott on "The Stillborn God"

By Rick Garnett

My friend Dan Philpott (Political Science, Notre Dame) has this review, over at The Immanent Frame (a really good blog), of Mark Lilla's, The Stillborn God.  Here's a bit:

The idea of modern liberalism depends decisively on a jettisoning of theology as a source for arguing about politics: If there is one claim to which Lilla returns again and again from different angles, this is it. So if there is one phenomenon that most decisively calls Lilla?s argument into question, it would be a positive relationship between traditional, orthodox political theology and key features of liberal politics, especially separation of religious and political authority and religious freedom. To the degree that such a relationship is found, it weakens the case that liberalism ? particularly, its separation between religious and political authority, freedom of religion, etc. ? depends crucially on a divorce from political theology. But in fact, ample evidence exists that traditional political theology has contributed vitally to incubating, sustaining, and expanding liberal democracy, in thought and in practice, before, during, and after the early modern religious wars. Unquestionably, political theology has also begotten the bizarre, the violent, and the illiberal. But its positive contribution is large enough to raise serious doubts about Lilla?s thesis. . . .

My point here is only to demonstrate historically a strong symbiosis between traditional Christian political theology and the idea of modern liberal democracy. If such a symbiosis indeed exists, then does it not sharply call into question Lilla?s contention that the rise of modern liberalism depends precisely on a great separation between traditional political theology and political thought? . . .

The story of Catholicism corroborates the finding. Lilla ignores this story, which he justifies in a footnote (see page 12) saying that the Church was hostile to modern society until the twentieth century. Of course, there is much truth to that. But even in the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church by and large prospered in America (despite outbreaks of anti-Catholic prejudice) and came to accommodate the American church-state relationship on a provisional if not deeply principled level. . . .  [P]ope Benedict XVI himself has credited the Enlightenment with promoting the dialogue that brought the Church to embrace human rights and democracy. But when it did embrace them, it did so on the basis of its own theology and tradition of thought ? a possibility that Lilla does not adequately recognize. . . .

Full post as published by Mirror of Justice on January 23, 2008 (boomark / email).