England’s Israel and the Foundations of Modern Political Thought explores how foundational ideas of modern politics that are usually considered secular were, in fact, born out of deep conversations and negotiations with religion.

To unpack a little, mid-seventeenth century England was a hotbed in which some of the most important ideas of modern politics were conceived: Thomas Hobbes conceived of his social contract, John Selden wrote major legal treatises which were foundational for modern natural and international law, and England participated – in theory and in practice – in the wave of republicanism that swept over Europe. This was also the period of the English Civil War, which has been portrayed by historians as a “war of religion” and a “revolution of saints,” characterized by religious ends and motivations guiding politics.

The book demonstrates that the political theory published in the period was significantly related to the religiously motivated politics of the time through the Hebraic language and imagery that was shared by theorists and saints. In the twenty-year period of 1640-1660, when Hobbes, Selden, and their contemporaries were active, over 40 percent of all texts published in England contained one or more of the terms “Hebrew,” “Israel,” “Jerusalem,” “Zion,” or “Jew.” Further, all known works of political theory from the period employ this language and imagery. When Presbyterian and Church of England ministers, including preachers in parliament, addressed England as “Israel,” the English were to see themselves as God’s chosen people, and there was a sense of urgency or apocalyptic expectation expressed in the language. When foundational theorists of the modern state used the same language, they explicitly rejected the destabilizing identity of England as Israel. They turned English readers, who were intimately familiar with the biblical narrative and the Old Testament people, towards the exemplary structures of Israelite laws and institutions, that in their interpretations were both more conducive to stability and more pleasing to God than the structures of Greece or Rome.

Ultimately, the book argues that it was through a sweeping revival of Hebrew in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that the foundations of modern politics were laid in conversation with Hebraic thought and action and in negotiation with Jewish ideas and ideas of the Jews as understood by Christian thinkers and actors. Modern politics did not develop from within a conversation among elites, and was not conceived as a Godless enterprise, even by its most renown secular architects. Modern – even secular – state politics did not only speak the language of religious politics but was conceived in its terms. As such, modern politics does not only have the tools to speak to religion but can do so in its native tongue. Understanding this has implications for how liberal and modern ideas can exist in conversation with religious and even apocalyptic political thought and action in our time.

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