Cavanaugh's Praise for Bretherton's Christianity and Contemporary Politics

The latest edition of Studies in Christian Ethics sees a review by William Cavanaugh of Luke Bretherton's excellent Christianity and Contemporary Politics. Here's an extract:

Straw men aside, the final chapter and conclusion of the book present an attractive theological account of a Christian politics that acts in ‘ordinary time’, with ordinary means like buying Fair Trade coffee, but that is also open to God’s tranfiguration of earthly life. Such transfiguration takes place between the poles of listening to God in Scripture and listening to strangers who invite the church to seek
the welfare of all.

Notwithstanding the quibbles noted above, this is a wonderful book, perhaps the best book on contemporary Christianity and politics in liberal nation-states I have read. It is both based in concrete practices and theoretically aware. Most of all, its author exhibits the virtues necessary to undertake such a task: he is generous, faithful, and engaged with real communities of Christians and others. I will be using this book with students, and recommending it to colleagues.

If you've not get a copy, get one, this is an academic text, but a reading one, which as Cavanaugh's suggests is not all theory, but grounded in practice.