In the face of ongoing religious conflicts and unending culture wars, what are we to make of liberalism's promise that it alone can arbitrate between church and state? In this wide-ranging study, John Perry examines the roots of our thinking on religion and politics, placing the early-modern founders of liberalism in conversation with today's theologians and political philosophers. From the story of Antigone to debates about homosexuality and bans on religious attire, it is clear that liberalism's promise to solve all theo-political conflict is a false hope. The philosophy connecting John Locke to John Rawls seeks a world free of tragic dilemmas, where there can be no Antigones. Perry rejects this as an illusion. Disputes like the culture wars cannot be adequately comprehended as border encroachments presided over by an impartial judge. Instead, theo-political conflict must be considered a contest of loyalties within each citizen and believer. Drawing on critics of Rawls ranging from Michael Sandel to Stanley Hauerwas, Perry identifies what he calls a 'turn to loyalty' by those who recognize the inadequacy of our usual thinking on the public place of religion. The Pretenses of Loyalty offers groundbreaking analysis of the overlooked early work of Locke, where liberalism's founder himself opposed toleration. Perry discovers that Locke made a turn to loyalty analogous to that of today's communitarian critics. Liberal toleration is thus more sophisticated, more theologically subtle, and ultimately more problematic than has been supposed. It demands not only governmental neutrality (as Rawls believed) but also a reworked political theology. Yet this must remain under suspicion for Christians because it places religion in the service of the state. Perry concludes by suggesting where we might turn next, looking beyond our usual boundaries to possibilities obscured by the liberalism we have inherited.

What happens when Christians must obey God rather than human authorities? In this book W. Bradford Littlejohn addresses that question as he unpacks the magisterial political-theological work of Richard Hooker, a leading figure in the sixteenth-century English Reformation, through the lens of Christian liberty. Book jacket.

Today’s wholesale lack of trust in our institutions is a problem with deep roots in liberalism, and it cannot be solved by tweaking a liberal paradigm in which different conceptions of the good create conflict that is resolved by a sovereign state without reference to a nonexclusive common good. Ultimately, the essence of liberalism is contained in the language of values which serve as wedges to divide people. Philip J. Harold takes this problem head-on with a thoroughgoing survey, reaching back to the early modern era, to uncover the nature of liberalism’s basic assumptions and diagnose its breakdown. As opposed to traditional liberal denial of a good superior to individual interest, Harold proposes a postliberal political philosophy able to understand the common good as friendship and social trust built up by loyalty. While critiquing values language, Harold also addresses the concept of sovereignty and the invention of morality as its supplement, the inappropriate distinction between the empirical and the transcendental, the true nature of the secular and the sacred, the necessarily symbolic expression of the common good, and the false conceptualization of religion and politics.

What is the nature of affections such as joy, compassion, sorrow, and shame and what role do they play in politics? While political experience is replete with affectivity, the affective dimension of political experience has typically been under-conceptualised in political theory. Joshua Hordern argues that Christian political theology and contemporary theory of emotions have resources to respond to this challenge and, in so doing, to offer diagnoses and remedies for the political alienation and democratic deficit which trouble contemporary political life. Hordern contends that affections have a cognitive aptitude whereby they become enduring features of shared political reasoning. In conversation with Martha Nussbaum, Jürgen Habermas, Roger Scruton, Oliver O'Donovan and other political thinkers both classical and contemporary, his argument interrelates affections with memory, moral order, death, suffering, virtue, neuroscience, familial life and national identity. In contrast to dualisms which would separate reason from affection and theology from politics, Hordern describes the way that affections' role in politics is shaped by the eschatological commitments of political thought. Through close attention to Deuteronomy, Luke and Acts, Hordern considers the role of affections in institutions of political representation, law and healthcare. Over against post-national visions which underplay locality in human identity, the account of political affectivity which emerges suggests that civic participation, critical patriotic loyalties, social trust and international concern will be primarily galvanised by the renewal of local affections through effective political representation. Moreover, churches, shaped by the affective vision of their Scriptures, are to embody the joyful, hopeful affective life of the Kingdom of God and thereby offer renewal to social and political experience at local, national and international levels.

An American patriot in occupied territory, Mercy finds herself falling for an enemy officer. Will she choose her country or her heart? Mercy Hayes never intended to return to Philadelphia while the redcoats occupy her home—until her cousin needs her. Mercy holds her nose—literally and figuratively—to come back to the city to help, trying to forget her last moments in the city and an encounter with a certain handsome enemy captain. Captain Lawrence Rogers knows that His Majesty’s troops cannot win the war unless they can sway the hearts and minds of Americans. But when Mercy Hayes joins him in Lord David Beaufort’s household, there’s only one heart Lawrence only cares to win. Lawrence and Mercy find themselves drawn to one another even while their loyalties threaten to tear them apart. Can these star-crossed lovers find a way forward together, or will the war come between them forever?

The Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, also called the Age of Reason, was so named for an intellectual movement that shook the foundations of Western civilization. In championing radical ideas such as individual liberty and an empirical appraisal of the universe through rational inquiry and natural experience, Enlightenment philosophers in Europe and America planted the seeds for modern liberalism, cultural humanism, science and technology, and laissez-faire Capitalism This volume brings together works from this era, with more than 100 selections from a range of sources. It includes examples by Kant, Diderot, Voltaire, Newton, Rousseau, Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Paine that demonstrate the pervasive impact of Enlightenment views on philosophy and epistemology as well as on political, social, and economic institutions.

As recent headlines reveal, conflicts and debates around the world increasingly involve secularism. National borders and traditional religions cannot keep people in tidy boxes as political struggles, doctrinal divergences, and demographic trends are sweeping across regions and entire continents. And secularity is increasing in society, with a growing number of people in many regions having no religious affiliation or lacking interest in religion. Simultaneously, there is a resurgence of religious participation in the politics of many countries. How might these diverse phenomena be better understood? Long-reigning theories about the pace of secularization and ideal church-state relations are under invigorated scrutiny by scholars studying secularism with new questions, better data, and fresh perspectives. The Oxford Handbook of Secularism offers a wide-ranging and in-depth examination of this global conversation, bringing together the views of an international collection of prominent experts in their respective fields. This is the essential volume for comprehending the core issues and methodological approaches to the demographics and sociology of secularity; the history and variety of political secularisms; the comparison of constitutional secularisms across many countries from America to Asia; the key problems now convulsing church-state relations; the intersections of liberalism, multiculturalism, and religion; the latest psychological research into secular lives and lifestyles; and the naturalistic and humanistic worldviews available to nonreligious people.