David Hollinger writes:

The Stillborn God is a history of the emergence and a defence of ‘modern political philosophy’, as opposed to the ‘Christian political theology’ that came before it and has threatened again and again to reassert its dominance. Believers in the secular public sphere in the US are now on the defensive. Lilla promises to clarify the issues, and to provide a solid theoretical and historical basis for their debate, not only in the United States, but in Western Europe and beyond. ‘We have chosen to keep our politics unilluminated by the light of revelation,’ Lilla concludes on behalf of separationists, and ‘if our experiment is to work, we must rely on our own lucidity.’

(LRB 24 January 2008)

Knopf | hardback 334 pp. |ISBN: 9781400043675