Redemptive Hope: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Age of Obama

This is a book about the need for redemptive narratives to ward off despair and the dangers these same narratives create by raising expectations that are seldom fulfilled. The quasi-messianic expectations produced by the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, and their diminution, were stark reminders of an ongoing struggle between ideals and political realities.

Redemptive Hope begins by tracing the tension between theistic thinkers, for whom hope is transcendental, and intellectuals, ...