But Now We See

In Prophetic Encounters, his survey of religion and American radicalism, Dan McKanan briefly traces Day’s pilgrimage, but he doesn’t examine Day’s claim to have encountered the old Messiah in the new one or other pertinent theological reflections scattered throughout her writings. By neglecting Day’s theology, he obscures the ideas on which she drew to make sense of her turbulent life and encounters, and that elision reflects the pervasive flaw that mars his otherwise invaluable book. It’s an odd shortcoming, as McKanan is one of the foremost scholars of religion and radical politics. A senior lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, he has written extensively on antebellum Christian pacifism, contemporary Christian intentional communities, and the post-Day Catholic Worker movement. Focusing on how Christian radicals have lived, not only with each other but with “the world,” McKanan seeks, as he puts it in one of his books, to “build bridges rather than walls”—to join hands with non-Christians while maintaining enough distance to pose a challenge and an alternative.