The Contested Public Square: The Crisis of Christianity and Politics

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 thechurch'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 weare. 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 momentsin history, major figures and questions for further consideration, this book will significantly inform Christian scholars' and students' reading and interpretation of history.

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 John Locke's Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge University Press) and has contributed to several scholarly journals. He is also a senior fellow at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.