Why is it that sex is such a central part of American political life anyway? Why, when The New York…
Practicing sex, practicing democracy
Book blog
Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
Sex and the subject of religion
The current campaign within the Archdiocese of New York to canonize the radical activist Dorothy Day (1897-1980) offers a good…
What holds us together
In his response to my concern about whether “post-Durkheimian” is a viable category, Charles Taylor goes part way in answering…
Constitutional patriotism
Robert Bellah’s latest post poses clearly the issues that we’ve been agonizing over in Canada, and in a different way…
Framing the middle
From the opening pages, my historical antennae quickly began to quiver. Taylor’s book works in a space far removed from…
A case of heteronomous thinking
As a story, A Secular Age rivals Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (which curiously it ignores) and…
Liberal Protestantism the key
Lilla alludes to the fact that “in the Anglo-American orbit, a liberal theological outlook could grow up alongside a liberal…
Political theology & liberal democracy
The idea of modern liberalism depends decisively on a jettisoning of theology as a source for arguing about politics: If…
Two books, oddly yoked together
Mark Lilla's The Stillborn God feels like two books, oddly yoked together. One is a fascinating study, which traces a…
Going beyond
One of the main arguments of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is that people, at least modern secular Westerners, have…