Christianity & Politics
Joshua Mitchell
Hertog Foundation | 2015
In this brief survey, we will consider the thoughts of a number of canonical authors who wrestle with Biblical religion. Augustine offers us the City of God and the City of Man; Hobbes tries to combine the two cities; Tocqueville asks that we separate religion from democratic politics in order to save both; Nietzsche encourages us to let go of Biblical religion in order that man himself may be saved.
We will read these works with a view to moving in three directions at once: inward, with a view to the meaning of the ideas themselves; outward, to other ideas in the canon that offer different paths; and outward, again, to the world around us, in the hope that what we are reading illuminates that world.
Hans Memling’s The Passion of the Christ, ca. 1471