Over the last several decades, theories of secularization have been subjected to a series of withering assaults. Within philosophy, the attack has focused on liberal secularism. Qua liberalism, the critics argue, it is not neutral as to the good. Qua secularism, moreover, it is not really liberal vis-à-vis religion. Prominent liberals such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas responded by revising their positions. Meanwhile, historians and social scientists were mounting a major challenge to secularization theory. Some questioned linear narratives of religio-political differentiation, as in the hoary claim that the “wars of religion” led to a “separation of church and state.” Others questioned the hypothesis that modernization leads to secularization qua religious decline, pointing to the stubborn persistence of religiosity in modern and modernizing parts of the world. These criticisms led some prominent secularization theorists, such as Peter Berger, to publicly recant their earlier views.

In recent years, a number of prominent social scientists have circled the wagons to defend secularization theory. Ronald Beiner's new book pursues a kindred aim: it develops a neo-classical defense of liberal secularism. The argumentative strategy is negative and indirect. Rather than arguing for liberal secularism he mostly argues against what he sees as the only alternatives: “theocracy” and “civil religion.” And rather than focusing directly on liberalism, he organizes his analysis around the concept of “civil religion” à la Rousseau. He argues against it, on the grounds that it is inherently unstable as a mode of political thought and, by implication, as a mode of political practice as well. Beiner contends that liberal secularism is to be preferred to theocracy because it places politics above religion, and to civil religion, because it disentangles the religious from the political. Beiner's liberalism is thus classical insofar as it seeks a clear separation of church and state; and it is neo-classical insofar as it abandons pretentions to neutrality. Liberalism first arose in opposition to religion, he says, and the more religion is diminished, the more liberalism will prosper.

A few words about the organization and method of the book: Beiner's approach is dialogical, rather than propositional, and hermeneutical rather than historical. Beiner develops his position by bringing the canonical figures of modern philosophy into a sustained conversation with each other, as if they were historical contemporaries assembled around a seminar table. In Part I, for instance, Rousseau open the debate, Machiavelli responds, Rousseau rejoins, Hobbes jumps in, and Rousseau concludes. Later chapters draw in Montesquieu, Maistre, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, among others. Beiner wants to engage the texts, not their contexts. There is little attention to secondary literatures, and even less to local debates. Beiner scans the texts for “complexities, riddles, ironies, tensions and paradoxes,” on the assumption that “it is at these points … that a thinker's deepest thoughts will most tellingly disclose themselves” (409, 410). Fair enough, although there are a few occasions where Beiner's readings seem a little too Gnostic, as if he were decoding secret messages intended just for him. That aside, the writing is clear and engaging.

Alas, Beiner's book does have at least two serious shortcomings. The first is regrettable but understandable. It stems from Beiner's omission of theological writings on the politico-theological problem and, more deeply, from his rather tenuous grasp on the history and varieties of Christian theology and ethics. Surely, the conversation would have been more interesting had Beiner invited Luther, Calvin, and Suarez to the table, along with, say, Buber, Niebuhr, and Murray. But this would have made it harder to argue that liberalism is simply a reaction to religion, rather than (in part) its creation, and would also have cast serious doubt on Beiner's presumption concerning Christianity's putatively theocratic pretensions. But one can always do more, and Beiner has already done a great deal, so this sin of omission is hardly a mortal one.

The more serious shortcoming is the second one. It stems from Beiner's claim that the politico-theological problem admits of only three possible “solutions”: theocracy, liberalism, and civil religion. This rather constrained typology makes for strange bedfellows. For example, Beiner throws Nietzsche and Tocqueville together with Hobbes and Rousseau in the “civil religion” camp. A more capacious schema seems called for. Logically speaking, the underlying dimensions of Beiner's typology already imply a fourth possibility, one in which the religious and political spheres are formally separate but the political sphere is subordinated to the religious (as in Latin Christendom after the Papal Revolution). Beiner's schema also presumes that one sphere must be subordinated to the other, that sovereignty must be unitary. But can't the spheres co-exist beside one another? Can't there be parity, rather than subordination? That is what reformers from Marsilius of Padua through Martin Luther to Thomas Jefferson envisioned. If we imagine the relationship between the two spheres as having two dimensions, horizontal as well as vertical, each with three modalities – fusion, overlap and separation – it yields a three-by-three table that generates nine distinct “solutions.” One is “radical secularism.” Whereas liberal secularism (as I understand it) aims for separation with parity, radical secularism seeks separation with subordination. On this coding, Beiner is actually not a liberal secularist à la Locke, as he claims, but rather a radical secularist à la Comte or Dawkins. And whatever its philosophical merits, radical secularism is not politically stable; on the contrary, much research suggests that it produces massive backlash, sometimes violent. Beiner's tripartite typology also occludes another historically important form of religio-politics: “political religions” which attempt to extinguish transcendent religion and replace it with immanent religion. The West's experience with Communism and Nazism, and the role of religious actors in resisting and defeating them, suggests that religious communities can serve as an emergency brake on political idolatry. In sum, Beiner may be right that civil religion is riven with tensions. But it seems to me that these tensions are systemic ones that afflict all solutions to the politico-theological problem, but also productive ones that check excessive concentrations of power.