Abstract
This article is an invited response to James Davison Hunter’s much-discussed book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010). Hunter, a sociologist at UVA and a believing Protestant, claims that law’s capacity to contribute to social change is “mostly illusory” and that Christians, therefore, should practice “faithful presence” in the public square rather than seek to influence law directly. My response is that it is, in fact, law’s stunning ability to alter and limit available choices that makes it an object of deservedly fierce contest. The wild protest over the recent enactment of a “Christianized” constitution in Hungary is illustrative. Hunter worries that law is too much just about power. I agree with Hunter’s argument that for law to represent more than power, it must be linked to a realm that is not reducible to politics. Hunter indefensibly downplays, however, the role of the natural law and of the Church in establishing such an apolitical realm. Hunter’s thesis provides an opportunity to reconsider the modern orthodoxy according to which the ideal is for the state to be “separate” from the Church. The conscience of a free people is not all the spiritual authority there is – and more is needed.
Disciplines
Comparative and Foreign Law | Constitutional Law | European Law | Human Rights Law | International Law | Jurisprudence | Law | Religion Law
Date of this Version
Winter 1-2013
Recommended Citation
Brennan, Patrick McKinley, "The Mighty Work of Making Nations Happy: A Response to James Davison Hunter" (2013). Working Paper Series. 169.
https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/wps/art169
Included in
Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, European Law Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, International Law Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Religion Law Commons
Comments
Forthcoming Pepperdine Law Review, January 2013.