The Contested Public Square: The Crisis of Christianity and Politics (Google eBook)

Greg Forster

InterVarsity Press, Jan 28, 2010 - Religion

Christian thinking about involvement in human government was not born (or born again!) with the latest elections or with the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979. The history of Christian political thinking goes back to the first decades of the church's existence under persecution. Building on biblical foundations, that thinking has developed over time.This book introduces the history of Christian political thought traced out in Western culture--a culture experiencing the dissolution of a long-fought-for consensus around natural law theory. Understanding our current crisis, where there is little agreement and often opposing views about how to maintain both religious freedom and liberal democracy, requires exploring how we got where we are. Greg Forster tells that backstory with deft discernment and clear insight. He offers this retrospective not only to inform but also to point the way beyond the current impasse in the contested public square.Illuminated by sidebars on key moments in history, major figures and questions for further consideration, this book will significantly inform Christian scholars' and students' reading and interpretation of history.

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Review: The Contested Public Square: The Crisis of Christianity and Politics

User Review - Goodreads

Book Opening: I'm opening this book with a political science graduate student here at FSU named Matt. Matt and I have talked about all sorts of different things in the past - from the Resurrection to ...

Review: The Contested Public Square: The Crisis of Christianity and Politics

User Review  - Brian Collins - Goodreads

Greg Forster's The Contested Public Square is a readable, informative, and engaging history of Christian political thought. Far from an academic treatise, Forster recognizes that the moral consensus ...

Contents

• WELCOME BACK TO BABYLON HOW PERSECUTION PERMANENTLY SHAPED CHRISTIAN POLITICAL IDEAS: 19
• THE WISDOM OF THE GODS THEOLOGY ENCOUNTERS PHILOSOPHY: 43
• CITIES OF GOD AND MAN AUGUSTINE FORMALIZES THE IDEA OF DUAL CITIZENSHIP: 62
• NATURAL LAW THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH DEVELOPS THE MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL IDEA IN HISTORY: 84
• REGIO VERSUS RELIGIO THE REFORMATION AND THE NATIONSTATE: 107
• ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM THE EMERGENCE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: 142
• AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN REVOLUTION AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY: 172
• THE FIERY TRIAL CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO TOTALITARIANISM: 209
• CONCLUSION: 243
• Index: 250

About the author

Greg Forster (Ph.D., Yale University) is director of the Program in American History, Economics & Religion in the Kern Family Foundation. He is the author of The Contested Public Square: The Crisis of Christianity and Politics (InterVarsity Press) and John Locke's Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge University Press). He has also contributed to the leading scholarly journals History of Political Thought, Political Theory, Religion & Politics, Education Next and Teachers College Record, and his articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Chronicle of Higher Education. He is also a senior fellow at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Contested Public Square: The Crisis of Christianity and Politics
• Author: Greg Forster
• Publisher: InterVarsity Press, 2010
• ISBN: 0830879099, 9780830879090
• Subjects: Religion / Religion, Politics & State