Jonathan VanAntwerpen is program director for theology at the Henry Luce Foundation. Originally trained as a philosopher, he received his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-editor of a series of books on secularism, religion, and public life, including Habermas and Religion (Polity, 2013), Rethinking Secularism (Oxford University Press, 2011), The Post-Secular in Question (NYU Press, 2012), The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (Columbia University Press, 2011), and Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2010). VanAntwerpen was the founding director of the SSRC's program on religion and the public sphere, and in 2007 he worked with others to launch The Immanent Frame, serving for several years as editor-in-chief.
Race and gender may have been the most visible currents in the 2008 presidential primaries, but what really unsettled the political waters was a riptide of religion, and perhaps we could call Reinhold Niebuhr Barack Obama’s theologian. Parts of The Irony of American History are time-bound, but Neibuhr does sketch an existential drama that is born of the human condition. He appropriates the ideas of tragedy, pathos, and irony to portray three enduring theories of human nature and destiny. With Abraham Lincoln as his exemplar, the preacher casts his lot with irony.