The folks at Cato Unbound have put together a stellar symposium on the role religion plays in politics both at home and abroad.

Mark Lilla, who teaches in the department of religion at Columbia University, gets things started by explaining his notion, rooted in Hobbes, of the "Great Separation," by which he means our willingness to adhere to a political structure not rooted in divine revelation. In terms of contemporary relevance, Lilla stresses that the demise of Christian political theology in the West has no counterpart in the Muslim world. (This point is at the core of Lilla's most recent book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West.)

The first response is from Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, who is far more skeptical than Lilla when it comes to the persistent presence of theology in American politics. Mr. Linker argues that Mr. Lilla overlooks a broad swath of people, which he calls the theoconservatives, who "passionately defend American constitutional principles and political institutions but who also interpret these principles and institutions in explicitly theological terms." The American theocons, Linker explains, do not in fact acknowledge a "Great Separation" between that which is political and that which is divine.

Check back in here at Footnoted, or directly at Cato Unbound, for forthcoming responses from Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Penn State, and Andrew Sullivan.