Book Review: Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age

Abstract

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Theology in a Age. By Elaine Graham. London: SCM Press, 2013. xxvii + 266 pp. $88.00 (paper).One of the great challenges facing Christians today is have our say in the public sphere now we no longer hold the positions of power and privilege we once did. One could argue this is less of an issue for Anglicans in England, given the Church of England is still established and several of its bishops are in the House of Lords-of course it has a voice in the public square! Yet, even there, Christianity does not have the same place of privilege, the same societal cache it once did. Even in religious America, where the faith of presidential candidates is a major issue, Christians need rethink their participation in public discourse.For those faithful, thoughtful, politically moderate Christians wondering one might go about being a Christian voice in the public square, Graham s work provides much food for thought. Graham weighs in substantively on a controversial and challenging topic. At least in America, strongly conservative Christian voices get lots of airtime, and so the question of those who do not hold the political ideals of the Tea Party might weigh into the debate is a real one. If readers want a quick answer the how to question, they can skip right Grahams last chapter. However, doing so means they would miss out on a thorough and thought-provoking survey of the field and we got here.Grahams text is divided into three parts: Post-Secular Society, PostSecular Theology, and Public Theology as Christian Apologetics. The text sets out find the path between the 'rock' of religious resurgence and the 'hard place' of institutional decline and secularism (p. xxvii). Graham succeeds in meeting this goal, and along the way she does an excellent job of mapping out the landscape. Early on, she has tables of statistics, and then throughout her text she has notable anecdotes paint the intriguing picture of the ways in which religion is declining and growing. Graham notes Christendom's decline makes the religious voice just one of many in the public square-but one has a right be there. It is not clear, she observes, that non-theological reasoning is any the less subjective or partial than any other form of public discourse (p. 65). Particularly in chapter 5, with her survey of recent events and court cases, Graham highlights the growing place of religion in public life and the question of what constitutes appropriate public theology. …