This is not a quibble about words, since it would seem fundamental that we know what arena of life we are addressing. In Lilla’s case, I take that to be how one does politics . Now, after the Great Separation, we do our politics autonomously of religion. Lilla’s fear is that there are those who would undo the Great Separation, have us accept doing politics on religious grounds once more.

If I am correct, then, the book is decidedly not about how one “does theology,” despite the mention of the occasional theologian, such as Reinhold Niebuhr or Augustine. To wit, note how little is said of Luther (see Casanova’s comment for a partial corrective to this). As such, the book is not about “political theology,” but about the rise of attempts to practice and theorize politics in religious terms.

My question to Lilla is why he chose to write of “political theology” rather than “theological politics”? I would press this question because selecting the usage of “political theology” over “theological politics” might well make us tend to think about the Great Separation, such as it is, as a matter of changing beliefs. Often enough in the book, such beliefs seem cut free of any moorings in social and political relations.

But what if the Great Separation, such as it might be, was really a function of institutional changes or arrangements, rather than beliefs, as Lilla at least gives one the impression it is? Thinking about the Great Separation as a matter of religious and political praxis and institutional arrangements (e.g. Church vs Empire) would then require that one named it something more like a “theological politics” rather than “political theology.” So, in effect, does Lilla’s choice of the term “political theology” reflect a mistaken impression of the Great Separation as a crisis of belief, rather than of institutional relations? Following Neville Figgis, Louis Dumont and others, I would be prepared to argue the case for an institutional—not cognitivist—reading of the Great Separation (actually several separations), and may do so in a subsequent comment.