A Conversation with Michael Walzer Q:  Why did you write this book? A:  I think about politics all the time when I read, and I've been reading the Bible all my life. So why should this book be different from any other book? There is a politics in the Bible, and sometimes an anti-politics, and the stories and arguments are gripping. They cry out for our engagement. Q:  What did you find most surprising in the Bible? A:  The many voices, the radical pluralism of the Bible, which is really an anthology, a book of books. The last editors would never have called themselves pluralists or articulated a doctrine of pluralism, but they were remarkably inclusive. They brought together radically contradictory views, without seeking to harmonize the contradictions. Q:  So, is there a biblical political doctrine, a single teaching, a lesson to be learned? A:  No. Biblical fundamentalists will have a hard time finding the foundations.

There is a biblical doctrine about religion and one about justice, but there is radical disagreement among the Bible's authors about politics. Some are actively hostile: when God is king, what need is there for human politics? Praise for Michael Walzer's Arguing about War : "Walzer has moved the concerns over just war from the periphery of political theory to the very center of our democratic dilemma."-Garry Wills, New York Review of Books Praise for Michael Walzer's On Toleration : "The genius of Walzer's little book . is how realistic it is about the contradictions confronting those who would create an open society."-E. J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post.