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Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square. By Cathleen Kaveny. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016. x + 451 pp. $49.95 (cloth).
Cathleen Kaveny is a distinguished professor of law and theology at Boston College. That is an unusual and welcome combination of specialties, especially in these latter days, when it is not law but politics that has formed an unholy alliance with demagoguery masked as theology. The toxic brew of invective and prevarication now offered routinely in the public square is the poison for which Kaveny offers a powerful antidote: the restoration of biblically warranted prophetic speech-speech both public and fierce. A clergy friend of mine insists that all religious speech-including preaching- is political, but not partisan. Kavenys work brilliantly, even courageously, walks that fine line of separation, advocating prophecy without partisan contempt-contempt that time and again preempts effective opposition to religio-political demogoguery by becoming a version of what it opposes.
In a far-ranging exploration of oppositional religious speech in American public life, Kaveny describes the key role of the biblical jeremiad as the principle vehicle of prophetic discourse in the United States: beginning in colonial times; gaining strength in the abolitionist agitations preceding the...