In an interview with Nathan Schneider, historian of ideas Mark Lilla explains how he ended up writing a book about political theology, what blogging on The Immanent Frame did for the book, and why he’s reading very selectively these days.
How did you find your Immanent Frame experience? I enjoyed having people well known in the field responding quickly to what I wrote. What was also good is that they knew I’d get to respond to them as well. They had to develop what they thought were their strongest arguments and not make ad hominem attacks.
Was the discussion productive? Very productive, especially the exchanges with José Casanova. I saw him in Washington after our exchanges, and both of us were saying, “Isn’t it great we could do this?” He had misunderstood just what the book was about, and I had misunderstood what he was driving at. Blogging about it led to a quick, mutual clarification. A little bit of that happened with Chuck Taylor as well.
Read a transcript of the interview.
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.
