AUGUSTINES LEADERS

In Augustines Leaders, Peter Iver Kaufman works from the premise that appropriations of Augustine endorsing contemporary liberal efforts to mix piety and politics are mistaken--that Augustine was skeptical about the prospects for involving Christianity in meaningful political change. His skepticism raises several questions for historians. What roles did one of the most influential Christian theologians set for religious and political leaders? What expectations did he have for emperors, statesmen, bishops, and pastors? What obstacles did he presume they would face? And what pastoral, polemical, and political challenges shaped Augustines expectations--and frustrations? Augustines Leaders answers those questions and underscores the leadership its subject provided as he continued to commend humility and compassion in religious and political cultures that seemed to him to reward, above all, celebrity and self-interest. A lucid, powerful, and deeply thoughtful work. Kaufman takes a very skeptical historians view of the proposals of several contemporary thinkers, myself included, on Augustine and politics. He is equally frank about those disagreements and charitable with those whose views he critiques. But the book rises above critique, it distills decades of careful linguistic and historical scholarship, and offers a compelling vision of Augustines understanding of the relation between Christianity and worldly activism. I may stubbornly disagree with (parts of) Kaufmans interpretation, but I learned a tremendous amount from this book, both to my edification and my correction, and the next time I teach anything about Augustine and politics, it will be required reading. --Charles Mathewes, Carolyn M. Barbour Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia Political Augustinianism is a venture into a mixed bag of expectations