Cavanaugh gives a theological critique of democratic capitalism and the modern state. He reworks the notion of "time" and "space" around the Eucharist, in that the Eucharist, the body of Christ, gives new time and new space for the acting out of public life. He begins with his famous essay on the so-called Wars of Religion. Contra the established myth, says Cavanaugh, the wars were not wars about religion, but came after the creation of the modern state and were tools of the modern state to fight against religion. The state's goal was to mask its own violence by cloaking the wars as "religious."Cavanaugh, while likely an anabaptist in terms of politics (I realize he is a confessional Roman Catholic), gives an unusually astute analysis of different political options. Most anabaptists incompetently rail at "Constantianism" (note this term is almost never defined), usually with some heretical "fall of the church from the apostles" garbage, and then package that off as "a new and bracing political theology." Cavanaugh is much more mature than that. He notes the Church using the sword is not an option, but realizes that most alternatives to this are either neo-conservatism or privatism. Anabaptists have not been consistently able to give a good alternative to Constantianism without going into pietism. Cavanaugh's discussion is worth reading on this point.Per the Eucharist:The Eucharist is the public acting out of the Christian story. Salvation is the restoring of unity through the participation in Christ's body (13). The body of Christ is the locus of participation between God and man. The Eucharist overcomes the dichotomy between local and universal (113). It takes scattered communities and re-focuses them towards a center. The whole body of Christ is present in each Eucharistic assembly. The Eucharist "bends" space; the more I am tied to the local the more I become aware of the universal.Conclusion:In many ways this book is simply magnificent. Unlike other pacifistic and anabaptist thinkers, Cavanaugh is able (with varying degrees of success) to offer a critique of modern liberal society. The critique of the State as mythos is beautiful. His discussions on globalism and the Eucharist offer much food for thought.Cons:Is this 120 page book worth the $50 selling price? No. This is partly why I despise academia. They are largely irrelevant to the rest of humanity because of stuff like this. But, reader cheer up, one can easily get Cavanaugh's "word for word" arguments by buying two other books that will cost around $40. He writes the same essays in *Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology* and *Being Consumed.* So in a sense, *TheoPolitical Imagination* can be avoided.Also, I am not quite sure he fully rejects modernity's values. One instance is when he refers to the medievals using the Eucharist to exclude Jews (116). Is he honestly saying that we should include Jews at the table? To be fair, he doesn't actually say that, but it's hard to draw any other conclusion. This is the Lord's table for Christians. Excluding Jews isn't bigotry. It is simply a corrollary of the defintion of what it means to be a Christian, something a Jew would agree with!