The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West by Mark Lilla
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A history of the debate (putting it very mildly) in the West on the proper role of religion in politics. Lilla uses the Great Separation to name the period, beginning with Hobbes, in which the idea that religion and politics should be separate began to take shape and recounts the different thinkers who advanced this idea that eventually came to be the default assumption in the West. But, as Lilla shows, this idea was never inevitable and is not now irreversible. The “Stillborn” in the title refers to an early 20th century attempt by liberal thinkers and theologians in Germany to bring politics and religion back together. Though it never took hold and was swept away by the events of the second world war, it demonstrates how a religiously-infused politics will always be a “live” idea.