The Stillborn God begins as a book about two chess games. Part of the book explains, in all too cursory…
The rules of the games
The Stillborn God
In the second book forum hosted on The Immanent Frame, scholars from various disciplines engage in a critical discussion of Mark Lilla’s book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West.
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…
Political theology & liberal democracy
The idea of modern liberalism depends decisively on a jettisoning of theology as a source for arguing about politics: If…
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…
Our historical Sonderweg
My thanks to all those who have taken the time to respond to The Stillborn God, with sharper comments than…
The forces unleashed
Just what or who or where is religion for Lilla himself? Is the problem really the Bible—that, in addition to…
The last prophet of Leviathan
Lilla turns aside to the small cadre of the Enlightened who see the story for what it is....“We” turns out…
A review in three parts
“The world of today is torn asunder by a great dispute; and not only a dispute, but a ruthless battle…
The other shore
For Lilla, Westerners are the exception because we live on what he calls “the other shore.” Civilizations on the “opposite…
A cautionary tale?
It would have been enough for Lilla to frame this book as an explanation of the genealogy of bourgeois protestant…