The Universe Is on Our Side: Restoring Faith in American Public Life

by Bruce Ledewitz

In The Universe Is On Our Side , Bruce Ledewitz argues that there has been a breakdown in American public life that no election can fix - Americans struggle to even converse about politics and the usual explanations for our condition have failed to make things better. Ledewitz posits that America is living with the consequences of the Death of God, which Friedrich Nietzsche presumed would be momentous and irreversible.

For a long time, God acted as the story of the meaning of our lives. America's future requires that we begin a new story by each of us asking a question posed by theologian Bernard Is the universe on our side? When we commit to live honestly and fully by our answer to that question, even if our immediate answer is no, America can begin to heal. Beyond this, pondering the question of the universe will allow us to see that there is more to the universe than blind forces and dead matter.

Guided by the naturalism of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, and the historical faith of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ledewitz argues we can work towards a trust that the universe bends toward justice and our welfare, which can complete our healing and restore faith in American public life. The Universe Is On Our Side makes the case that we can live without God, but not without thinking about holiness in the universe.

228 pages, Hardcover

Published October 18, 2021

Reviews

[Bill O'driscoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Law professor Ledewitz argues that the country is in a spiritual crisis, essentially because God is dead. He traces the problem back to Nietzsche, who proclaimed God dead quite a while ago, but Ledewitz says it took till recently for the effects of our loss of faith to be fully felt. But he contends that bad things (even more of them) will happen unless we find a sense of purpose rooted in a belief that progress is possible and there's something to live for. Elements of his diagnosis will ring true even to nonbelievers. And his argument about why the universe is, in fact, on our side, and not coldly indifferent, might strike you as more plausible than you'd imagine: He has both secular and faith-based versions. But while it would surely be fruitful for us to heed his call for a sincere, society-wide conversation about whether the universe is actually on our side, it's hard to call it likely.