Questions concerning the place of faith in American civil society have in recent elections assumed a new visibility, and many scholars have enlivened the debate by invoking the aid of institutional religion along with the institutions of family, labor unions, and other mediating entities and relations . . . Here, Schlinder gathers several unabashedly confessional essays that speak usefully to these current debates out of the particularity of Catholic social thought and neo-Calvinism. In their appeals to notions such as the common good, subsidiarity, and sphere sovereignty, the two traditions illustrate the value of attending to specific nonuniversal perspectives in public debates.

Theological Studies

One of the big stories of Western social thought is the discovery of civil society-the growing appreciation of the fact that to understand the relationship between the individual and the state we have to understand the vast social ecosystem between the two poles. Jeanne Schindler's book breaks a second big story: in exploring this human rain forest, Catholic and Protestant thinkers are way ahead of the secular pack.

J Budziszewski, University of Texas, Austin, and author of What We Can't Not Know: A Guide