Top books of the 21st century
Darald and Juliet Libby Millennium Professor of Theology and Law Cathleen Kaveny鈥檚 2016 book Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square has been chosen by the online journal Current as one of the .
Other books selected for the list include Gilead (Marilynn Robinson), Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (David W. Blight), Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling), Outside the Gates of Eden: The Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now (Peter Bacon Hales), Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen), Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates), Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Michael Burlingame), and Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood).
Current describes itself as an online journal 鈥渙f commentary and opinion providing daily reflections on contemporary ideas, culture, and politics.鈥澛�
In Prophecy without Contempt, Kaveny鈥攚ho holds a joint appointment in the Theology Department and Boston College Law School, and whose scholarship centers on relationships between the law, religion, and morality鈥攕eeks to reframe the debate about religion in the public square by focusing on a powerful stream of religious discourse in American political speech: the Biblical rhetoric of prophetic indictment, the jeremiad. (Read a full discussion of the book in .)
鈥淚t is all too tempting for practitioners of prophetic rhetoric to let their condemnation mutate into contempt,鈥� writes Kaveny in the book鈥檚 preface. 鈥淭hey鈥攚e鈥攎ust resist this temptation. In an increasingly pluralistic liberal democracy, prophetic condemnation of deep social evils can be justified on occasion, although such rhetoric never comes without ancillary costs.鈥�
Treating one鈥檚 political interlocutors as 鈥渧ile or worthless is to risk undermining their equal status as participants in our political community,鈥� she explains. 鈥淚t is to treat them as unworthy of citizenship, as people who must be 鈥榩runed鈥� from our common political endeavor.鈥�
Kaveny, who has published four books and more than 100 articles and essays on topics in law, ethics, and medical ethics, said that, while she didn鈥檛 know about Current鈥檚 list, 鈥淚 know鈥攁nd respect very much鈥攖he panel of reviewers.
鈥淭he list includes a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books, including books dealing with religion,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 was particularly honored聽to be included in the company of Charles Taylor's聽A Secular Age, and Mark Noll's聽America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, because I continually teach from and learn from those books.
鈥淚n addition, many of the fiction books have taught me more about theological reality than academic treatises. I think of George Saunders's聽Lincoln in the Bardo, which is deeply humane and a model of compassion.鈥澛�
What effect will her inclusion in the top 100 have on her?
鈥淚 think the biggest impact on me will be that it will help me summon up the courage to write聽my next book, which聽is on nostalgia,鈥� she said.