Stop reading this post right now and go read Mark Lilla’s stunning NYT Mag article adapted from his forthcoming book. The past year has seen a horde of devout atheists — Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris — gathering arms against religion and its place in the civic sphere. But no matter how they title their books, Harris et al aren’t speaking to a Christian nation, but to a small subset of fellow thinkers. Lilla’s scholarship as summarized in this article feels like the scaffold for a bridge between the staunch secularists and the political theologists. Put him in a room with Reza Aslan, and you have the makings of a serious conversation, one that might begin to answer the question, “How do we live together?” Much better than this beautiful-but-doomed dialogue, at least.
Are you really still reading my rambling? GO READ LILLA. Then read No god but God. (Then read Rousseau’s “Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar,” which I’d never heard of until reading Lilla’s piece. It’s fantastic.) Then get into a conversation with an open-minded person on the opposite side of the secularist/theologist divide.
