Theology and the Soul of the Liberal State

Leonard V. Kaplan, Charles L. Cohen

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780739144312
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

Rising calls in both the United States and abroad for theologizing national agendas have renewed examinations about whether liberal states can accommodate such programs without either endangering citizens' rights or trivializing religious concerns. Conventional wisdom suggests that theology is necessarily unfriendly to the liberal state, but neither philosophical analysis nor empirical argument has convincingly established that conclusion. Examining the problem from a variety of perspectives including law, philosophy, history, political theory, and religious studies, the essays in Theology and the Soul of the Liberal State suggest the possibilities for and limits on what theological reflection might contribute to liberal polities across the globe.

Theology and the Soul of the Liberal State develops these issues under five headings. Part One explores "The Nature of Religious Argument" as it can inflect discussions of public policy, political theory, jurisprudence, and education. Part Two, "Theologies of the Marketplace," notes that theology can by turns be highly critical, neutral, or even inordinately supportive of market operations. Part Three, "European Perspectives," reviews and develops arguments from Abraham Kuyper, Karl Barth, and French post-modernists concerning how one might integrate theological discourse into the public sphere. Part Four offers Israel, Pakistan and Tibet as "Asian Perspectives" on how theology may comport with liberalism in recently created states (or, in the last case, a diasporic government-in-exile) where powerful religious constituencies make "secular" civil action extremely problematic. Finally, Part V, "Religion and Terror," probes the vexed relationship between conceptions of divine and human justice, where the imperatives of theology and state confront each other most nakedly. Collectively, Theology and the Soul of the Liberal State suggests that the liberal state cannot keep theology out of public discourse and may even benefit from its intervention,

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT
• 1 Naked in the Public Square: Depth of Commitment in the Liberal State Today
• 2 Social Contract in Modern Jewish Thought: A Theological Critique
• 3 Justices Story and Holmes in the Realm of the “Brooding Omnipresence”
• 4 Theology, Society, and the Vocation of the University
• II THEOLOGIES OF THE MARKETPLACE
• 5 St. Augustine, Markets, and the Liberal Polity
• 6 When Markets and Gambling Converge
• III EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES
• 7 A Theological Case for the Liberal Democratic State
• 8 Preserving the Natural: Karl Barth, The Barmen Declaration: Article 5, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics
• 9 Materialism and Transcendence
• IV ASIAN PERSPECTIVES
• 10 A Jewish and Democratic State: A Normative Perspective
• 11 In the Shadows of Modernity? Theology and Sovereignty in South Asian Islam
• 12 A Constitutional Analysis of the Secularization of the Tibetan Diaspora: The Role of the Dalai Lama
• V RELIGION AND TERROR
• 13 Grave Images: Terror and Justice
• 14 Compassion, Knowledge, and Power: A Tibetan Approach to Politics and Religion
• Conclusion
• About the Contributors