Soldiers of God in a Secular War | Sarah Shortall

 

It’s not exactly a fashionable title, but it’s one of the most important books I’ve read. So important, I read it twice in prison.

It’s a deep dive into how 20th-century Catholic thinkers responded to the Church being booted out of state power in the late 1800s. That crisis forced a radical return to early Christian traditions — ones that refused the idea of religion being pushed into the private, symbolic, or subjective.

The core message? If God is God, then God has to be everywhere — including politics. The world can and must be remade with the divine present in every moment. The challenge is how to make that real. Catholic social movements made a decent go of it, creating a “personalist” alternative to fascism and Marxism, though not without complications. Still, the impulse to re-enchant the world with the wonders of spirituality— that’s where it’s at.

 

– Roger Hallam
Read Roger’s top ten list of books from prison here.