The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Hardcover)

by Mark Lilla (Author)
Key Phrases: polit ical theology, divine nexus, theolo gians, The Ethical God, The Bourgeois God, Great Separation (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred 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 naïveté, 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)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Political science begins in the wars-of-religion-devastated seventeenth century with Hobbes' treatise Leviathan, with its theory of the state based on philosophical, not theological, reasoning, sanctioned by humans, not God. After outlining the political implications of the three different conceptions of divine-human relations, Lilla begins with Hobbes, too, and the "Great Separation" between God and earthly authority that his thinking inspired. Humans being by nature disputatious, barely had desacralized politics got off the ground than the Romantic philosophers Rousseau and Kant argued to bring God back to ground statecraft ethically. A later Romantic, Hegel, subsequently made the ethical political God downright salvific, at least for the bourgeois Protestant state (with eventually dire consequences, thanks to such teleological ideologies as Nazism and Communism). Cultural critic Richard Weaver's famous dictum ideas have consequences seems to be the leitmotif as Lilla traces the imperiled life of the nontheological polity that Hobbes first formulated, that was realized tacitly in England during the eighteenth century and explicitly by the U.S. Constitution, and that has been adopted by most of the West despite successive attempts to weaken or destroy it for God's sake. Riveting, engrossing reading, even though it is history-of-philosophy. Olson, Ray

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (September 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400043670
• ISBN-13: 978-1400043675
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #78,988 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely book explores unholy marriage of religion and politics, October 21, 2007

By	Roy E. Perry "amateur philosopher" (Nolensville, Tennessee) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla, Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, has written a cogent history of "political theology" (the unholy marriage of church and state, religion and politics).

Although Lilla deals briefly with Judaism, and mentions Islam (just barely), he concentrates on Christendom and its conflicted theology, which has often led to heated controversies, doctrinal schisms, and religious wars.

Here a puzzling paradox emerges: why does a Christian doctrine that blesses the peacemakers and considers the lilies of the field too often inspire racism, intolerance, fanatical hatred, and violence?

At the heart of Christianity, Lilla explains, there is a conceptual confusion, an ambiguity found in dogmas such as the Trinity, which leads to a bifurcation of Christian perspectives between "already" and "not yet." While some theologians emphasize the "there and then" (a transcendent God and a future redemption in heaven), others emphasize the "here and now" (an immanent God and a present redemption on earth).

Such conceptual divergence has important implications for political theology. While some believers advocate an ascetic withdrawal from the mundane world by retreat into monasticism, passively and patiently awaiting the Second Coming of Jesus, other believers call for political activism, faith initiatives, militant resistant against an evil empire, or a longing for an apocalyptic Armageddon. Such a mentality may advocate and welcome a Christian theocracy--an abolition of the "misguided" separation of church and state.

For the philosophically minded, The Stillborn God is a rare treat. Lilla gives a lucid analysis of the religious, moral, and political thinking of philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel.

Lilla's explication of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) stands at the epicenter of The Stillborn God. Indeed, asserts Lilla, Hobbes's "great treatise Leviathan (1651) contains the most devastating attack on Christian political theology ever undertaken," and established the agenda for nearly all subsequent Western political philosophy.

Hobbes's "godless, atheistic materialism" argued for "The Great Separation"--the complete separation of church and state, and favored the steady withering away of the church. His radical proposal caused a storm of protest and subsequent thinkers sought to undo or minimize the "damage" he had wrought.

Lilla's portrayal of Immanuel Kant is also intriguing. Kant, the author of Critique of Pure Reason, is often considered to be the paragon of philosophical rationality. However, Kant wrote, "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge [that is, to show the limits of reason] in order to make room for faith." By doing so, he smuggled the concepts of God, the soul, and immortality back into philosophical discourse. Kant was, in effect, a covert theologian who "legitimatized" Christian dogma, sneaking it in by philosophical hocus-pocus.

Secular humanists (or simply humanists, for all true humanists are secular) believe with the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras that "man is the measure of all things" and that when religion seeks to "call the shots" in political life, it becomes, in the words of John Calvin, "a plant so corrupt that it is only capable of producing the worst of fruit."

Lilla, therefore, praises the wisdom of our founding fathers who created a government based on a balance of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and on a separation of church and state. He warns, however, that our felicitous experiment in democracy will not inevitably survive, but is continually threatened by an insidious political theology.

Sinclair Lewis warned, "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." The whole tenor of Lilla's work is in agreement with such an assessment; it is a cautionary tale warning us that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

The Stillborn God is an impressive and powerful volume that should be read by every intelligent, thinking person. It's a timely work with important lessons for our 21-century world.

Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He was previously Professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. A noted intellectual historian and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, he is the author of The Restless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics and G. B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern. He lives in New York City.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars TRACING THE INTRINSIC CONTRADICTION, November 7, 2007

By	Kerry Leimer (Makawao, Hawaii United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

There are many excellent books exploring the internal flaws of organized religion, but "The Stillborn God" steps outside those problems and delineates the way in which the tenets of Christian and Jewish faith contradict and impede humanity's progress towards the rule of law. Lilla surveys the philosophical innovation of Hobbes and the later contortions of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and others' attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable, ultimately leading European thought up to the marvel known colloquially as "World War II". Less sensational than recent books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, Lilla adds the historical and philosophical ballast the others lack. An excellent and demanding read, Mr. Lilla should now be encouraged to produce an executive summary of his latest book for our government's current administration.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The History of the Great Separation, November 28, 2007

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

With books about atheism doing well in bookstores (like Christopher Hitchens's _God is Not Great_ or Richard Dawkins's _The God Delusion_), believers might worry that a book titled _The Stillborn God_ (Knopf) offers more of the same. This is not the case. The book's subtitle, _Religion, Politics, and the Modern West_, gives a bit better picture of its subject and theme, but does not make its content completely clear. Mark Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia University and frequent contributor to the _New York Review of Books_, has written a book about the separation of church and state, but you won't find here references to Thomas Jefferson or the U.S. Constitution. This is a broader and generally Eurocentric view of how theology became pried apart from politics, a process that has taken many centuries. We take for granted now that there is something inherently wrong with a government that imposes or favors one church's belief system, and we are aghast at governments who imprison or suspend rights of citizens simply because of their religious beliefs, but that was, at one time, the way all governments operated. There are plenty of Americans who feel that church and state are too separated now, but there are fewer who would insist that the government ought directly to sponsor particular church movements. The concept of what Lilla calls "the Great Separation" was long in coming, and as he tells the story, it was brought about by influential thinkers; if they had not taught in just the way they did, perhaps we would not have managed the separation at all. It wasn't inevitable. Lilla's is a serious tome which will be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates a historic explanation of this particularly important way we have come to regard both religion and politics.

Lilla explains that different conceptions of the Christian God and of the Trinity caused conflict and even bloody religious wars in Europe through the 1500s, so that theologians, and more especially philosophers, began to question whether there should even be a political theology. Lilla nominates 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes as the most important questioner of the issue. He insisted that questions about God could more practically be viewed as questions about human behavior, and that if there were any religious revelation, it had to be filtered by the human mind, perceptions, and passions, including the search for power. The intellectual separation of politics and religion had begun. John Locke and David Hume took Hobbes's ideas and built many of the concepts on which liberal democracies are founded, including that the power of government be limited and shared, and government be unable to interfere or advocate religious ideas or practice. There was reaction against this sort of thinking from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hegel, and Kant. The German liberal theology promoted Protestant bourgeois society as the highest type of moral life to which humans could aspire. The Bible was symbolic, not inerrant, and the German Protestantism derived from it was held to be essential to public life.

World War I destroyed the bourgeois smugness. Advocates of liberal Protestantism (and liberal Judaism, too) supported the initial German war effort. This led to disillusionment afterwards, the "stillborn God" of the title. It also led, after the war, to a theology that could be incorporated into totalitarian states, both Nazi and Communist, and thus again to religion bound up in worldly battles, the sort of cycle that Hobbes was trying to get us to emerge from. Lilla's is a limited history. He does not mention America's Christian conservatives, many of whom want the nation to support Christianity more openly, and some of whom are interested in turning the country over to an overt theocracy. He also does not mention the lack of church-state separation that such Christians find horrifying within some Islamic countries. Lilla's book is, however, a lucid reminder that despite the clamor of fundamentalists, the separation of theology from politics (however partial it might be) was a process that began centuries ago, not with the formation of the ACLU or "activist judges". It also is a welcome recognition that we are the fortunate heirs of philosophers and societies which understood that neither citizens nor government nor religion prosper when politics and religion are officially combined.