Sacvan Bercovitch, the literary theorist noted for his investigation of religion, literature, and politics in colonial America, characterized the “American Jeremiad” as a rhetorical invocation of America as exceptional and unique nation based on Puritan beliefs that God had chosen its denizens to settle in the new world, which they called the “new Jerusalem.” Since Bercovitch’s landmark book, The American Jeremiad (1978), the jeremiad has taken on competing iterations—the most debated of which has been the use of US foreign policy as a platform to fortify American exceptionalism throughout the globe and the jeremiad as the moral and biblical foundation of American civil and human rights activism. The dual role of the jeremiad is often ignored.

For instance, George Shulman’s 2008 book, American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture, offers an unparalleled analysis of the jeremiad’s tension in civil rights activism, where its influence is undeniable. Shulman traces the jeremiad through its shifting iterations. From the Hebrew bible’s tradition of prophecy to rhetorical devices deployed in late 20th-century American politics, Shulman convincingly argues for the inclusion of prophecy and prophets as legitimate epistemic categories through which to study history and American political philosophy.

James Bernard Murphy’s The Third Sword: On the Political Role of Prophets takes up that intellectual mantle. But it was published during a period fundamentally at odds with the context of Shulman’s American Prophecy, which saw an increasing national reckoning with the US “war on terrorism” in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. By contrast, Murphy is writing in an era of widening polarization and deepening political discord among the three branches of the nation’s federal government, which have spurred unprecedented political turmoil. Categories such as liberalism and democracy, once the nomenclature of civil society, today face fierce opposition from mainline politicians and populists alike. Murphy’s The Third Sword offers a reasonable antidote for upending political turbulence in favor of less fractious behavior. It is finely crafted for an audience less inclined to embrace prophets and prophecy as belonging to the general frameworks of Anglo-American political philosophy.

Murphy’s The Third Sword is a normative project, as he sets out the terms for the appropriate and inappropriate uses of prophets and prophecy. As he puts it, this is “a form of politics that is both important and neglected. The volcanic moral passions that upend our politics usually stem from some prophetic condemnation” (p. 4). His project assumes a commitment to secularism protects the First Amendment’s establishment clause. As such, religious categories can be generative when deployed to protect liberal philosophical principles, especially in moments when the church and state appropriate “coercive swords” to undermine political norms. For this reason, in part, Murphy argues for the presence of a “third sword” in civil society to mediate juggernauts that threaten the political fabric of the nation. “Unlike the coercive swords wielded by church and state, the prophet wields only the sword of the spoken word – a word, however, of such power that it threatens both thrones and altars, politicians and clergy (Ephesians 6:17),” Murphy writes. “The ‘sharp sword’ of the prophetic word cleaves the soul, dividing good from evil (Wisdom 18:16; Hebrews 4:12). A prophet demands that we decide about how to live: The sword of his word divides before and after” (p. 6). Murphy establishes a strong case for the political uses of prophets and prophecy as he distinguishes prophets from magicians and prophetic suffering from political malaise.

Against this backdrop, Murphy sketches a lengthy template for examining the ethical limits and political possibilities of exemplary prophetic leaders ranging from characters in the Hebrew Bible and philosophical giants like Socrates to Jesus of Nazareth, Joan of Arc, Thomas More and Martin Luther King, Jr. Prophets, he argues, possess three signature characteristics: political inquiry, political courage, and nonviolent resistance. Socrates is a case in point for understanding the obligations of citizenship. He models a key characteristic of the prophet—the capacity for ongoing questioning without collapsing into nihilism. He combined intellectual curiosity with humility. As Murphy puts it, “Socrates discovered that the primary obstacle to learning was not ignorance but arrogance; Socratic questioning aimed to create a personal crisis to defeat that arrogance” (p. 45). Jesus, in turn, chastised religious and political authorities for the sins of blasphemy or corruption. “By speaking his truth to the religious and political authorities, Jesus provoked mortal conflict with priests and kings, just as did his prophetic predecessors,” Murphy notes (p. 59). Thomas More’s lifelong commitment to monasticism informed his conscience and prophetic imagination, whereas Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolence informed his civil rights activism. Joan of Arc is the most unusual figure among Murphy’s examples. Unlike the male counterparts in Murphy’s typology, she is recognized for “her own shining example of piety, moral virtue, and fearlessness in battle inspired many of her men to conduct themselves accordingly” (p. 87). Her valor rests in her righteousness and her patriotism.

Murphy’s The Third Sword ultimately expands the conceptual resources for interrogating political philosophy by introducing new categories for examining justice and “moral crusades” in civil society. His “theory of prophetic politics” crafts a pathway for re-imagining justice in a civil society where justice is increasingly condemned as anti-intellectual. This book offers a theoretical signpost for radical politics, as opposed to a moral alternative and a mere extension of debates on utilitarianism and the social contract in the late 20th century. Murphy’s timely work therefore re-establishes the social and political utility of justice as a necessary term for prophetic inquiry. As he puts it, “A just society needs stable political and religious authority as well as prophetic challenges to that authority. Prophets cannot rule us or create good institutions; they can only remind us of the moral limits of states and churches” (p. 6).