Divine politics

Divine politics

In "The Stillborn God," a history of the separation of church and state, Mark Lilla urges the West to remember the religious fanaticism in its past -- or risk its return

By Laura Miller

An alternate title for "The Stillborn God," Mark Lilla's new history of the separation of church and state in the West, could be "How Soon They Forget." Take an example from our own lifetime, something titanic like Sept. 11. Remember how it seemed so inconceivable, so unprecedented, that terrorists would blow up the World Trade Center? Yet it had already happened -- in 1993, when a group affiliated with al-Qaida tried to do just that, with a car bomb, killing six people. Somehow, the fact of that bombing never seemed to stick in the public's mind; until the towers actually came down, spectacularly and on national television, and thousands died, an Islamist terrorist attack on American soil remained "unimaginable."