The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West
by Mark Lilla
Published by Vintage; Reprint edition
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Reviewed by Sara Porter
The Stillborn God by Mark Lilla doesn’t ask whether God exists or whether He is dead? It asks, who is He, why was he involved, and how do religious figures and politicians interpret him?
In this thought-provoking book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West, Lilla discusses the many facets of God as seen through the eyes of philosophers, authors, and religious leaders from the Enlightenment to the close of World War II all asking the same question if God exists, what kind of God is He?
Some of the more interesting theories in Lilla’s book are composed during the Enlightenment, especially by thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who see God as a distant type who allows people to make ethical decisions on their own. Lilla spends much of this chapter describing Rousseau’s book Emile, in which a young man is adopted by a tutor who takes a distant approach to his upbringing becoming a god-like figure to the boy. The idea of an Ethical God may seem odd to modern readers, but it allowed French Revolution-era intellectuals to give carte blanche to their actions (since a God wasn’t going to oppose them, just sit back and watch).
Much of the book centers around people using the ideas of God to achieve political means. In the chapter, “The Bourgeois God,” Lilla recounts philosophers like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes theories about the Protestant church, and how these theories inadvertently led to the idea of separation of Church and State.
Unfortunately, the philosophies are limited to only the end of World War II, particularly the chapter, “The Well-Ordered House,” which deals with the divisions between a peaceful God or a war-like God in the events of World War I. It is strange that the book would leave off to the end of World War II, since there are many modern religious thinkers and politicians who use religion for their means, but it makes for an interesting historical look at where our ideas of God may have surfaced.
Armchair Interviews says: Most interesting perspective.