Abstract

Liberal democracies of the twenty-first century face the continuing economic tensions of globalization and the various populist political responses. In A Political Theology of the Bureaucratic State, Steven T. Lane argues that a deeper problem exists underneath the neoliberal system of contemporary democratic capitalism—the bureaucratic state and the ways it deploys its sovereignty. Yet these problems have received little attention from Christian political thinkers in the fields of ethics or political theology. By bringing thinkers from across the academic disciplines, from political philosophy and economics to biblical interpretation and public policy, and using modern case-studies related to public health and welfare state, Lane address the foundational issues affecting liberal democracies and the claims to power they make against their citizens.