Is Godless Europe the way of the future?

UChicago prof Mark Lilla has an outstanding review of British historian Michael Burleigh’s new book, Earthly Powers, coming out in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review (TimesSelect required for preview). I’ll admit it, public displays of faith make me uncomfortable. I felt a little queazy just reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent and religiously charged profile of Bush speechwriter ...

UChicago prof Mark Lilla has an outstanding review of British historian Michael Burleigh's new book, Earthly Powers, coming out in this Sunday's New York Times Book Review (TimesSelect required for preview).

UChicago prof Mark Lilla has an outstanding review of British historian Michael Burleigh’s new book, Earthly Powers, coming out in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review (TimesSelect required for preview).

I’ll admit it, public displays of faith make me uncomfortable. I felt a little queazy just reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent and religiously charged profile of Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson last month in the New Yorker. I guess that’s why European secularism has never really concerned me. But Lilla got me thinking when he asks, "[C]ontemporary Europe is the closest thing to a godless civilization the world has ever known. Does this place it in the vanguard of world history?" Read Lilla’s piece and then decide what you think is the right answer.

Either way, Lilla’s review is a powerful reminder that we need more religious thinkers to weigh in on radical Islam and the Global War on Terror. They’ve been starkly silent in the analysis that is supposed to help us, in Lilla’s words, "distinguish between those whose political programs are inspired by genuine faith, and those whose defense of religion is inspired by a reactionary utopianism having less to do with God than with redirecting the faulty course of history. In radical Islam we find both phenomena today, authentic faith and antimodern fanaticism, shaken together into an explosive cocktail." It’s time more religious scholars took to the popular media to help us understand why.

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