In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life by Luke BrethertonAllen CalhounResurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life Luke Bretherton cambridge: cambridge university press, 2015. 492 pp. $36.99Political theology is having to redefine itself in a world in which the market is often more powerful than the nation-state, and cultural identity more a product of neighborhoods and societies than of nations. (...) In Resurrecting Democracy, elaborating arguments developed in his earlier volume, Christianity and Contemporary Politics, Luke Bretherton joins arms with theologians of public life such as Eric Gregory and Charles Mathews who seek to engage this new political landscape.Relishing the scandal of the particular, Bretherton devotes the first 176 pages of Resurrecting Democracy to recounting the history of broad-based community organizing (BBCO), presenting it as the story of a politics of common life. Bretherton introduces the term “consociational” to refer to “mutual fellowship between distinct institutions and groups who are federated together for a common purpose” (6). This opening grows from the duplex goal of the founder of modern community organizing, Saul Alinsky: to refuse the subordination of social relationships to “political or economic imperatives” and to enable “ruled and rulers to arrive at political judgments together” (21). Bretherton presents the work of London Citizens as an exemplification of this approach and as praiseworthy in eschewing the Rawlsian “translation between ‘public reasons’ and ‘private’ religious languages” (83). This “politics” takes seriously “the moral and social dimensions” of life. “Neighborliness” rather than “civic friendship” drives politics; neighborliness does not try to suppress conflicts.The modern nation-state, according to Bretherton, represents a triumph of the universal over the particular in substituting “simple space” for medieval “complex space.” Reintroducing lost forms of association into political philosophy requires a recovery of Aristotle and of participatory democratic politics, the dignity of labor, and “the re-embedding of market relations in social and political relations of reciprocity” (263). In short, democratic politics needs enough moral conviction to sustain the regard for others that is necessary to a common life but not so much as to produce terror and totalitarianism.Bretherton’s focus on the particular is refreshing, but as the argument progresses, philosophy decouples from its instantiation in community organizing. The reader is left wondering why Aristotle, Jeffrey Alexander, and Hannah Arendt—rather than Alinsky—are doing all the heavy lifting. Nor is it easy to [End Page 210] discern how consociational politics contributes to the functioning of the state. Is the point that, if the state has made room for groups to form a life together around common goods, it has done its job? Further specification of the goods produced by consociational politics would be needed to answer this question. Many goods are not realistic goals of democratic politics and, therefore, not objectives on which we can build a common life. The suspicion lingers that the providing of “law, roads, and electricity” (86) is all that is left to the state.In a particularly instructive section, Bretherton contrasts BBCO with “communities of interpretation.” The goal of the latter is to make an “out-group” into an “in-group.” BBCO, in contrast, draws in-groups and out-groups together. However, the substantive question remains as to how much of a democratic society’s work can actually be accomplished if this is made the base model of political activity. BBCO may shift the question from how we speak in public discourse to what we can talk about in public discourse, but how different will the society be that has made this shift? Bretherton’s goal may simply be more modest—to suggest that a vision of groups working together toward any common goal is in itself a significant contribution to contemporary democratic societies.Allen CalhounUniversity of AberdeenCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Culture of Engagement: Law, Religion, and Morality by Cathleen KavenyAllen CalhounA Culture of Engagement: Law, Religion, and Morality Cathleen Kaveny WASHINGTON, DC: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 320 pp. $98.95 / $32.95It is encouraging to read a book on the intersection of religion and law from an author as conversant with both fields as is Cathleen Kaveny. Reworking a number of columns that she wrote for Commonweal magazine, (...) Kaveny offers her concept of a "culture of engagement" as an alternative to America's polarizing culture wars. She builds a vision of engagement—typified by Pope Francis's emphasis on the church's need to "encounter" all human beings—that welcomes the influence that religious traditions and the broader culture and its laws can have on each other.Kaveny notes two ways in which the Roman Catholic tradition is particularly well situated to engage American culture and law. First, both American common law and the Catholic moral tradition use forms of "casuistry" to connect general rules with particular situations. Second, Catholic reluctance "to draw sharp lines between the pure and the tainted" can supply a salutary alternative to the Puritan tendency toward "prophetic indictment" (16).In part 1, Kaveny argues that law has both pedagogical and pragmatic qualities. In part 2, she describes the nation's struggle to balance governmental interests and religious liberty in the context of the contraception mandate in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. She faults the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for elevating the law's pedagogical role over its pragmatic function in their attack on the mandate. She herself leans toward pragmatism; she assumes that exceptions to laws of general applicability should apply only "in the most extreme cases" (116) and that the government—not the religious claimant—should determine when exceptions apply.Kaveny also suggests that the bishops would do well to pay greater attention to the common good, as "it reflects the moral consensus of the community, which is accurately reflected in our democratic process of lawmaking" (90). Development of the grounds for this optimistic linking of a moral consensus and majority rule to the common good would have been an interesting addition to the book.Part 3 is the heart of the work, exploring ways for American society to "move beyond a culture war mentality" (120). Kaveny resists the assumption that public discourse in a society torn by culture wars is served by pitting secular and religious voices against each other. She hopes instead for persuasion based on natural law. One is left wondering, however, how persuasion based on natural law could happen in America's ideologically diverse culture. [End Page 201]Part 4 explores the effect of America's ideological pluralism on discussions among American Catholics. Kaveny describes how the church's sexual abuse scandal has fed the growing sense of disconnection between church teaching and the expectations of the Catholic laity.Part 5, a series of essays on difficult ethical controversies, hints at what interaction between the American and Catholic traditions might look like. Kaveny advocates "reframing the question" and hints at what reframing the contraception question might look like (221).Some of the book addresses specifically Catholic questions. It is valuable in that respect. Its scope extends beyond any one religious tradition, however, as it offers a picture of engagement between equals: the American legal tradition and Catholic moral teaching. Nevertheless, Kaveny makes it clear that this sort of engagement can succeed only if the American legal community understands its need to reflect changing social values and the Catholic hierarchy moves away from insisting that "error has no rights" and toward acknowledging that people do have rights even when they are in error (257).Allen CalhounPhD candidate, University of AberdeenCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Equity and efficiency -- A society within a society -- Thomas Aquinas : the interplay of natural and positive law -- William of Ockham : repudiation of power and wealth -- Martin Luther's redistributive theology of the Lord's supper -- John Calvin and the challenge of inequality -- Triumph of the economy.