What has gone wrong with the grand American experiment in "ordered liberty"? The liberal's answer is that America has failed to live up to its full promise of inclusiveness and equality--likely the result of corporate greed and white male ruling elites. The mainstream conservative or libertarian reply points to the Warren Court, the 1960s, or a loss of Constitutional rectitude.

Christopher Ferrara, in Liberty, the God That Failed, offers an entirely different answer. In a counter-narrative of unique power and scope, he unmasks the order promised as a sham; the liberty guaranteed, a chimera. In his telling, the false god of a new political order--Liberty--was born in thought long before America's founding, and gained increasing devotion as it slowly amassed power during the first century of the nation's existence. Today it reveals its full might, as we bear the weight of its oppressive decrees, and experience the emptiness of the secular order it imposes upon us.

The secular state has constructed a "myth of religious violence" to mask its own violent origins and ongoing displays of force. Ferrara destroys this myth with a relentless uncovering of truths hidden by both liberal and conservative/libertarian accounts of what has gone wrong. In this brilliant retelling of American history and political life, the author asks us to open our eyes to harsh realities, but also to the possibilities for a rightly ordered society and the true liberty that can still be ours.

Voices of Enlightenment have long counseled modern men and women to flee authority, including authority claimed by the church. Aspiring to substitute rock-ribbed law for human, or even divine, authority, today's legal minds pursue a "rule of law, not of men." Any possibility of authority is almost everywhere assimilated to the threat of authoritarian abuse. Civilizing Authority counters the flight from authority with the claim that it is precisely authority itself that offers a barrier against authoritarianism. The book's authors share the insight that humans cannot increase, or even long survive, without authority, and they observe, from along a broad spectrum of perspectives, that all phases of our human living depend on authority. Families, churches, clubs, monasteries, unions, cities, and states - human living would be unrecognizable without them, and they all depend upon authority and authorities. Still, what is "the authority experience?" What are we obeying when when we give willing assent to authority? The ten authors of Civilizing Authority, Chrisitians of diverse belief and professional discipline, unite here to explore the ways in which authority, though elusive, remains possible - indeed, exigent - in a post-Christian world. Refusing to conflate genuine authority with positions of power or prestige, they probe the deep, and perhaps transendental, sources of authority. Friendship, solidarity, liberty, and perhaps even belief - these, the authors suggest, may be the true springs of the authority that is the principle of increase in human living.

What has gone wrong with the grand American experiment in "ordered liberty"? The liberal's answer is that America has failed to live up to its full promise of inclusiveness and equality--likely the result of corporate greed and white male ruling elites. The mainstream conservative or libertarian's reply points to the Warren Court, the 1960's, or a loss of Constitutional rectitude.

Christopher Ferrara, in Liberty, the God That Failed, offers an entirely different answer. In a counter-narrative of unique power and scope, he unmasks the order promised as a sham; the liberty guaranteed, a chimera. In his telling, the false god of a new political order--Liberty--was born in thought long before America's founding, and gained increasing devotion as it slowly amassed power during the first century of the nation's existence. Today it reveals its full might, as we bear the weight of its oppressive decrees, and experience the emptiness of the secular order it imposes upon us.

The secular state has constructed a "myth of religious violence" to mask its own violent origins and ongoing displays of force. Ferrara destroys this myth with a relentless uncovering of truths hidden by both liberal and conservative/libertarian accounts of what has gone wrong. In this brilliant retelling of American history and political life, the author asks us to open our eyes to harsh realities, but also to the possibilities for a rightly ordered society and the true liberty that can still be ours.

Rather than discussing their possible vocation, discussions of children tend to center on their rights or duties. Does God have intentions for their young lives -- before they grow up and become "real" people? Distinguished jurist Patrick McKinley Brennan has gathered sixteen authors to approach this idea in various ways, from historical to psychological to theological. The authors explore throughout whether it is possible for adults to either squander their children's vocations or instead to help discover and embrace them.