Posts Tagged → peter leithart

Constantine and the Gladiators: Politics or Culture?

Is the legal and political downstream from culture, or vice versa? That’s the debate going on in religious conservative circles today. A rising number of voices, mostly in reaction to the excesses and missteps of the Religious Right, have been arguing that religious conservatives have been largely blind to the way that culture is upstream from law. In an effort to secure legal ground against progressive advances, the Right was ceding the deeper war for the imagination and affections of the populace. Gay marriage is an obvious example of this. As social conservatives secured dozens of temporary political victories, the vision of the general population was being captured through media narratives that were laying the groundwork for the generation-shaping, sea-change in popular opinion we’ve witnessed in the last few years.

While many of us might have been nodding our heads in agreement with this line of critique over the last couple of years, a jaunt into early church history might complicate the picture a bit. Peter Leithart’s fascinating cultural analysis of the Roman spectacles and their proscription by Constantine in Defending Constantine: The Twilight of An Empire and the Dawn of Christendom suggests a more intricate relationship between the two spheres than any strict dichotomy can capture.defending-constantine

 

A School of Romanitas

“A microcosm of Rome”–that’s how Peter Leithart describes the gladiatorial shows. Identifying a number of threads present in the contest that made them more than just entertainment, Leithart reveals that they were one of the primary means of inculcating the populace with a sense of romanitas–the guiding cultural-political spirit of Imperial Rome.

Roman military culture was a complex of “devotio, patriotism, self-sacrifice to chthonic deities” which supported an attitude and practice “closely resembling human sacrifice”—what better description can one find of the games? (pg. 192) Drawing on Tertullian’s analysis of the bloody spectacles, Leithart points out they were also were called munera because they were regarded as offering services to the dead. In the games, men were trained to kill and die as a sacrifice for gods of Rome. Following the thread of sacrifice, Leithart also sees the combat in the arena as enacting the founding myth of Rome, that of Remus by his brother Romulus. Remus was put down by his brother for daring to cross the line that separated Rome from the “non-Roman.” As the slaves died in the arena, the line between the nobility and everyone else was symbolically drawn and reinforced. (pp. 192-193)

Spectacular events also functioned to show “Rome on parade,” (pg. 193) Rome exhibited itself in all of its many-splendored and hierarchically socially-structured glory in amphitheatres across the Empire. Leithart points to the way that everyone from the lowest peasant to the Emperor himself was present and yet simultaneously carefully separated, “visually and spatially” depicting and reinforcing the social order.

The presence of the Emperor made the games political. Continue reading →

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The Late Great Natural Law Debate: Synopses and Reflections, Pt. 2

Last week, I sought to offer an extended summary, with a few reflections of my own, on the barrage of posts and counter-posts prompted by David Bentley Hart’s “Is, Ought, and Nature’s Laws.”  Although Hart’s essay had addressed the problem of natural law’s persuasiveness generally, the particular context for it was of course the debates over gay marriage, and when Peter Leithart reflected at First Things on the gay marriage problem specifically, it touched off what could be considered a second round of the natural law debate.  I have reserved consideration of that second round to this installment, which Matt Anderson has graciously invited me to post here.

In Part I, I worked to distinguish the pragmatic and the principled arguments against natural law, which had been mixed together in some of the discussions.  The first, while not disputing the formal validity of natural law arguments, worried that they simply would not gain any traction in our current culture, and so should be set aside.  The second deduced from the present ineffectiveness of natural law that it was not formally valid in any time and place, and we must resort to specifically theological arguments.  However, as I arrived at the conclusion of Part I, I pointed out that the pragmatic and the principled are not quite so easy to separate.  For if, in point of fact, natural law is valid, but our culture cannot see it as such, that means our culture is willfully blind or irrational.  And if we are to say that, are we not left with a condition of incommensurable beliefs and resulting culture war, part of the problem that the turn to natural law among contemporary evangelicals was meant to address?  Instead of telling our opponents, “You couldn’t possibly understand because you don’t know God,” we’re reduced to telling them, “You couldn’t possibly understand because you’re irrational,” which is, if anything, even more insulting.  In either case, we’re left with no real means of rationally persuading the opposition, and with quite considerable challenges to living together peacefully in a pluralist society.  I promised at the end of that post to work to “explore and perhaps even address these questions” in this second installment.  Whether I get beyond “exploring” at all remains doubtful, but let’s begin by briefly considering Leithart’s First Things post that kicked all this off.

Leithart’s starting point was not the failure of natural law arguments against gay marriage, but of biblical arguments, as observed in a recent debate on the subject between Doug Wilson and Andrew Sullivan.  Wilson’s arguments, said Leithart, were predominantly pragmatic, attempting to demonstrate the negative consequences of gay marriage, or else Biblical.  Sullivan considered the former unconvincing, the latter frankly irrelevant.  To be sure, Wilson sought to emphasize not the negative prohibitions of Scripture on the subject of homosexuality, but its positive vision of the genders and marriage, and the rich Biblical typology surrounding these themes.  Nonetheless, “in order for that to carry any weight,” observed Leithart, “people have to be convinced that social institutions should participate in and reflect some sort of cosmic order. Who believes that these days? Wilson tells a cute story, many will say, but what does it have to do with public policy?”

To anyone familiar with the recent discussions, it might appear that Leithart is headed at this point toward an endorsement of more robust, natural-law arguments on the subject, but instead, he throws up his hands in resignation: “Perhaps Christians are called to do no more than speak the truth without worrying about persuasiveness. Perhaps we have entered a phase in which God has closed ears, so that whatever we say sounds like so much gibberish.”  Our only hope, he concludes, lies in “a renaissance of Christian imagination.  Because the only arguments we have are theological ones, and only people whose imaginations are formed by Scripture will find them cogent.”

Writing at The Calvinist International, Alastair Roberts expressed incredulity over this “loss of nerve”: Continue reading →

The Election Disaster? Social Conservatives and Hope

Since the election, conservative evangelical handwringing over the future has reached something of a fevered pitch. Al Mohler has been the loudest voice, pronouncing the election a “disaster” for social conservatives, a point that was repeated by my friend Denny Burk.  And then Mohler repeated the point for the NY Times.  I could dig out the lamenting tweets I’ve seen, but frankly I haven’t the time.  My friend Gary dubbed it “freak out panic end of the world despair,” which to me about sums things up.  Your mileage might vary.

What should we make of all this?  How about a list, since we haven’t had one in a while.

1)  The willingness to dub this a “disaster” actually reinforces the identification of evangelical conservatives with Republicans in the public square, an identification that seems like is bad for everyone involved.  I mean, on the one hand you have a lot of younger evangelicals who are very frustrated with the old guard for their rather unsophisticated approach to political engagement.  On the other hand, the Republican party isn’t exactly in great shape these days.  And they’ll almost certainly figure out a way to blame social conservatives for all this anyways.  So it does conservative evangelicals no good at all in the aftermath to be among the loudest voices shouting about how bad it has all gone and functionally blaming a shift in social issues for the losses.

2)  It actually may be a pretty unsophisticated analysis.  Folks like my friend David Sessions will presumably suggest that this point is merely clinging to the flimsy pieces of evidence that everything isn’t as bad as all that, but it’s worth noting even for that.  As Matthew Schmitz points out, social conservative issues actually did better than the candidate who we somehow dubbed to represent them.  How does that fit the disaster meme?  Also, turns out that on the Presidential level a disastrous get-out-the-vote effort by Romney’s team had who knows what sort of political effect.  While Mohler dubbed this election a “seismic moral shift in the culture,” that presupposes not much had gone on in America since in between the last election.  And that this election happened out of nowhere.  The reality is that this game has been afoot for a while, and taking one election and responding like this simply confirms for most people how out of touch conservative evangelicals actually are.

3)  Okay, though, I get it.  I mean, I said it was bad and said that conservatives should probably get ready for a long series of defeats.  And here’s the thing:  I meant that.  Like, really meant it.  From what I can tell, the Republican party is so soulless right now that their main pundits are already in the process of flipping on illegal immigration in order to win votes.  Now, whether we think “amnesty” or what have you is the right position is currently not my concern.  My point is simply that they are obviously so desperate to return to power that they’re willing to hack away at their principles to get there.  And that’s supposed to win trust back?

4)  Let’s run through that last point, just a bit more.  We’re being told repeatedly right now that conservatives need to “reach out” to Hispanics. From what I can tell, the desperation amounts to little more than pandering of the very worst sort.  We might as well wear a sign and shout that we need votes and we don’t quite care what it takes to get them.  You can make a case for pandering as a matter of political expediency.  But in an environment where a party already has no credibility, I fail to see how hasty reversals of its positions one week after losing an election is going to build any at all.  Ross Douthat in his judicious Douthatian way called that notion into question.  I might go a step further and have a hearty laugh over it.  I mean, we just nominated someone who elevated pandering to an art.  And how did that go for us?  But all of a sudden, many of the Republican pundits are suggesting we should all follow suit or we shall all experience doom (the same argument, we should all remember, that was foisted upon us as the reason to vote for Romney).  Turns out, we truly nominated the candidate we all deserve.

Obama Progress

What conservatives need is someone who can speak with authority about conservatism, who understands it well enough that they can cheerfully and graciously interact with those who disagree with us and win them to our team.  But that sort of public speech only comes if we understand our positions to the bottom and have the firmness of resolve that comes from believing they are genuinely true.  And if we can’t reach that point, then we ought to change ‘em anyway—but not for the craven political end of securing votes.

5)  It was said early on that this was a “status quo” election.  And it was—for evangelicals and for conservatives.  In their response, they seem to be standing by the status quo of viewing politics as the most significant cultural bellweather on the one hand and of privileging the acquisition of political power over principles on the other.  It’s an unholy mess and unbecoming of our leadership.

What people want is not handwringing when things don’t go “our way,” but hope.  And a sober and serious assessment of how things look along with something like a strategy to turn them around that stays true to our principles.  Or maybe I speak too broadly.  So let me narrow the scope:  that is what I want from an evangelical leadership, not the sort of handwringing that we are currently experiencing.

Along these lines, let me highlight this bit from Peter Leithart’s fine piece:

Yet conservative Christians have much to die to. Not least, we have to die to a rhetorical style and a public posture. The media exaggerates the crankiness of religious conservatives, but they are exaggerating something real. Does the frenzied tone of Christian commentary manifest confident Christian faith? I don’t remember that Jesus said, “You shall know them by their fear.”

In the suggestion that this election was a “disaster” for social conservatives lay the seeds of fear and the beginnings of a less-than-cheerful oppositionalism to the President’s policies for the next four years.  But we as Christians are called to a politics of hope and that must frame our public discourse.  Not the sort of sentimentalized bastardization of hope that attaches it to the rise and fall of political, social, or moral orders.  But the hope that endures well beyond them, that cheerfully faces a world that is hardly to our liking and entrusts our children to the providential care of the loving and triumphal God.

Between Babel and Beast: Reviewing Peter Leithart’s Political Theology (Pt. 2)

Editor’s note:  I am pleased to publish this two part review (see part one) by Brian Auten of Peter Leithart’s new book.  Brian is a reader and friend of mine and this review is both substantive and important.  I commend both parts to you, eagerly, and encourage you to buy the book itself.  

From now until July 31st, using LEITHART as a coupon code at Wipf and Stock will save you 40% off the cover price.  

Following his analysis of worldly empires and the Abrahamic imperium, Leithart trains his sights on the United States, Americanist civic religion and ideology, and the role of the American church.  In a similar vein to Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? (2007), Leithart spends the remainder of the book discussing which imperial category best suits the United States (guardian, Babel or beast).  As per his title, it falls somewhere between the latter two, but could easily slide in the bestial direction.  Leithart introduces a discussion of the “metapolitical framework” or “canopy” that formed Western Christendom and the Byzantine Empire.  The original framework, as he puts it, involved a condominium between the state and the “unprecedented social and political form” of the church.  The state had to acknowledge and accept the church’s independence and its status as a “quasi-civic order,” as well as the freedom of the church’s “sacrificial center”– the Eucharist– from civil control or influence.  Lastly, according to Leithart, the state in this framework was called to adopt the church’s telos as its very own.  Using the work of Henri de Lubac, Sheldon Wolin and Chad C. Pecknold (whose scholarship connects de Lubac and Wolin), Leithart insists that, over time, this “metapolitical framework” eroded as the concept of the corpus mysticum “migrated” from its earliest form as the Eucharistic community to the institutionalized church, and then jumped post-Reformation to the nationalist polis with privatized faith and practice.

babel and beast leithart

It is here that Leithart kicks off an analysis of the Puritans and their foundation of what Leithart calls the heretical –yes, heretical – Americanist state.  “You can take the American away from New England, but you cannot easily take the New England from the American,” quips Leithart as he lambasts the withering of the “independent and public church” in Massachusetts and the Rhode Island experiment.  In the former case, the community’s over-identification with Israel meant that it lost key distinctions between church and colony, while in the latter, the church became “invisible and weightless.”  The Halfway Covenant controversy is identified by Leithart as an under-recognized debate over the future form of American political theology, concluding with Puritanism’s “lean” towards conceptualizing churches as “private voluntary associations.”

Consequently, the church lost its ability to – if I may tweak Hauerwas and Willimon’s Resident Aliens – “enable the [colony] to strike hard against something which [was] an alternative to what the [colony offered].”1 On the eschatological front, the Puritans envisioned America-the-new-Promised-Land as the global telos, but through yet another ‘migration’ (or perhaps more accurately, metastasis), our view of the end of history is often wrapped up in liberal democracy promotion and the replication of the American experiment.  In Leithart’s view, we’ve marginalized and privatized the church and busied ourselves in the work of evangelizing the world-at-large into our Americanist heresy.  All the while – to tweak Hauerwas (and Yoder) once more – we’ve tempted ourselves into believing our actions cut along the grain of the universe.2

Leithart’s concept of American exceptionalism in Between Babel and Beast is, I would argue, akin to Matt’s thoughts in his “non-culture-war” posts.  The United States has enormous military and economic power, and is able, as is any heretic, to do the occasional good work, but there is no inherent American virtue which makes the country exceptional.  In chapters six and seven, Leithart warns against viewing American exceptionalism through the lens of Americanism, a “wholly religious [and heretical] saeculum.”

He claims, first, that Americanism has led the United States, particularly in the 20th and early 21st centuries, to hide Babelic foreign policies with various rhetorical glosses – for example, the world community’s need for an order-creating power or the defeat of Communism in the developing world.  In the second case, Leithart takes particular aim at US counterinsurgency and covert action, arguing that US-supported coups in Vietnam, Guatemala and Iran were really about eradicating other competing nationalisms.  As someone who has taught intelligence and Cold War history, I do wish that Leithart would have turned to someone else besides William Blum, who is well-known as a fringe scholar in covert action studies, and I also think that he could have better explained how, particularly in the second and third worlds, nationalism and communism were inextricably connected during the 20th century.  The United States continues along a Babelic path as it engages in protectionism and the aerial bombing of civilian populations, and we slide ever closer to the beast category, Leithart concludes, as we give aid and succor to Christian-persecuting states like Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

So, to steal back a line coined by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, a mid-to-late, nineteenth-century radical in Babelic-leaning Russia (which was later co-opted by the Russian beast-maker himself, Lenin), shto delat?  What is to be done?   The church, Leithart asserts, is the counter-polis, and the United States is a near-Babelic polity which, if it isn’t more careful, could, one morning, stumble bleary-eyed from its bed after a night downtown with the neighborhood guys—Oh, man, he mutters, head in hands, I promised myself I was just going to be the designated driver— steal a quick glance in the mirror and find that its rugged good looks have been replaced with a more monstrous visage.   What, then, does Leithart believe the church in America should be doing about this?  There is a short prescriptive section at the end of Between Babel and Beast, so it’s necessary to do a bit of reverse-engineering from the book’s earlier chapters, as well as reflect back on the conclusion of Defending Constantine.

At the highest level of prescriptive theory – Leithart’s prescriptive goal and strategy – is the call for the rejuvenation of a “Eucharistic politics.” The connection between the Eucharist and political activity is key for Leithart’s political theology, a point which explains much of recent posting on all matters Eucharist over at First Things.3  “No church,” argues Leithart, “is independent enough or powerful enough to challenge American power effectively [and] few try.”  In a recovery of the pre-medieval, pre-“migrated” understanding of the corpus mysticum, the Eucharist, or what Leithart deems the “[ritual enactment of] a transcendent vision that not even the most expansive understanding of ‘empire’ could have competed with,” is to be celebrated on a regular basis.  It is only in the Eucharist and the preaching of the Word, enacted in what one might call the church’s ‘soil’ of love and discipline, that the Body of Christ in the United States is trained, liturgically and ecclesially, for non-Americanist political engagement.4 Using a more martial analogy, national security practitioner that I am, the Eucharistic celebration for Leithart might be best considered the ‘strategy’ that marries tactical activity to the goal of “break[ing of] Babelic or bestial power.”

And what about Leithart’s discussion of tactics?  In Between Babel and Beast and Defending Constantine, he unloads a litany of church-teaching-related and church-discipline-related verbs — instruct, train, teach, insist, urge, remind, “give an earful,” cultivate, encourage, and (even) forbid.  In brief snippets near the end of Defending Constantine, Leithart lists some ways the church, as the Eucharist-centered polis, might be able to “[model] and [teach] rulers to rule like Jesus.”  The general instruction and discipline of the church should have natural political effects, regardless of whether the recipient is a civil servant, a statesman, or an emperor; that is, ‘turning the other cheek,’ loving enemies, fleeing lust, keeping short accounts, and caring for ‘the least of these’ should actually have a visible and noticeable impact in international and domestic politics.5  Here, I think a fruitful dialogue could take place between Leithart’s work and something like Glen Stassen’s Just Peacemaking Theory, which also tries to discern the possible political fruits of the church’s general teaching.6

Similar to Matt’s clarion (and, as he said, paradoxical) cry for “bringing Christian political engagement back into the local church,” the conclusion of Between Babel and Beast recommends the church’s formation of disciples who can see – really see – injustice and/or the unjust use of force, particularly if one’s own government is acquiescent or complicit.  I believe this would be at least one part of Leithart’s response to Yoder’s historical indictment of the use of just war theory by non-pacifist churches: the church is, in fact, called to judge a government’s policies, including its national security decision-making, so if the just war theory is to have, as Yoder put it, “teeth,” the church – pacifist and non-pacifist alike – must be willing to apply church discipline (to include the withholding of the Lord’s Supper and even excommunication) to those who will not refrain from participating in a conflict or policy the church deems unjust.7  Lastly and positively, Leithart, who may or may not realize he and Andy Crouch are allies, says that the church also needs to figure out how to help Christians identify how they might “turn American power towards justice, peace and charity.”8

What I hope for in the future – and what I consider a scholarly hole that needs filling – is more in the way of how Leithart’s tactics have been implemented by local churches in the past, and how they might be implemented in the future.  I’m a full-time civil servant, an adjunct professor teaching counterterrorism to undergraduate evangelicals, and a lay leader at a Young, Restless and Reformed church in Northern Virginia, populated with employees and private contractors from just about every spooky or near-spooky three-letter organization you can name.

One of my current responsibilities is revamping the church’s extra-sermon teaching diet, including discipleship curriculum.  So, does local church-based disciple formation of the type Leithart speaks necessitate, for example, groups of men and women studying City of God or E. Margaret Adkins and Robert Dodaro’s Augustine: Political Writings?  Is the congregant-cum-statesman or congregant-cum-civil servant going to take from the church’s ‘standard’ teaching mechanisms – liturgy, word and Eucharist – what he needs to perform his national security-related job in accordance with his baptism?  And how would the pastor or elder board even know, given information asymmetries, especially if it involved classified material?   And because of information asymmetries, how might one train their flock to discern accurately between Americanist and non-Americanist US military, national security or foreign policies?

 

  1. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens, p. 94. [↩]
  2. Yoder’s quote, which Hauerwas has used frequently (including as the title for his 2001 Gifford Lectures), is that “people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe.” [↩]
  3. For example, see “Do This,” First Thoughts, 23 March 2012. He has had other Eucharist-related posts in early June 2012. [↩]
  4. Leithart’s former student Brad Littlejohn has recently explained how love and discipline may not be “ marks” of the church in the same sense as are Word and Sacrament, offering a distinction between “constitutive marks” and “descriptive marks.”  Brad Littlejohn, “When a Mark Isn’t a Mark: Discipline and Disciplinarianism,” The Sword and the Ploughshare, 13 June 2012.  I would especially like to thank Brad for his very helpful comments and corrections on the early draft of this review. [↩]
  5. Defending Constantine, pp. 337-339. [↩]
  6. Glen Stassen, Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace (Westminster Knox Press, 1992).  Also, on point with Leithart’s call for statesmen accountable to their respective churches or confessions, see Stassen’s “Harry Truman as Baptist President,” Baptist History and Heritage (Summer-Fall 1999). [↩]
  7. See Yoder’s When War is Unjust: Being Honest in Just War Thinking. [↩]
  8. See, for example, Crouch’s talk at Trinity Forum Academy, 30 January 2010, or more recently, his talk at Gospel and Culture’s 2011 conference. [↩]

Between Babel and Beast: Reviewing Peter Leithart’s Political Theology (Pt. 1)

Editor’s note:  I am pleased to publish this two part review by Brian Auten of Peter Leithart’s new book.  Brian is a reader and friend of mine and this review is both substantive and important.  I commend both parts to you, eagerly, and encourage you to buy the book itself.  

From now until July 31st, using LEITHART as a coupon code at Wipf and Stock will save you 40% off the cover price.  

In his recent remarks about Christian-and-conservative political activity of a “non-culture war” variety, Matt drew attention, among other things, to the church’s identity as a counter-polis and the potential of a responsibility-focused (in contrast to a virtue-focused) definition of American exceptionalism.  As regards the first, the church, as Matt put it, has “its own culture, [symbols], ways of speaking and manners of formation” and one shouldn’t think they have to be Anabaptist or pitch their tents in the Hauerwas/Yoder campground in order to appreciate the importance of the local church – its collective witness, theological formation and discipleship – for Christian political engagement.

Riffing from Douhat, Matt’s second point on American exceptionalism is one that would also be familiar to readers of Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Just War Against Terror (not to mention almost any Marvel or DC superhero comic): the United States is exceptional because it’s been blessed with immense power, which means that it will be judged – with the rest of the quick and the dead – as to whether its power has been used responsibly, ethically and justly.

babel and beast leithartMatt’s points provide an uncannily well-timed segue into Peter J. Leithart’s soon-to-be-released polemic, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Perspective (Cascade Books, 2012).  Billed as a book-length footnote to his recent Defending Constantine, Between Babel and Beastcontinues Leithart’s long-term project of showing how the “kingdoms of the world have and will, more and more, become kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ” and how the church’s presence means “always and forever, an end to ‘business as usual’ [in the earthly city].”12

Defending Constantine is Leithart’s treatise against Yoderian interpretations of early church pacifism, the church’s ostensible fourth-century fall and “Constantinian” captivity.  In Defending, Leithart addressed what he had identified in earlier work as the central disconnect in Yoderian and Hauerwasian political theology – namely, if the church is indeed a polis, why the apoplexy over any explicitly Christian ordering of worldly politics?  “Will the king always refuse to listen?” asked Leithart in what is undoubtedly the most succinct—and one of the more trenchant–critiques of Hauerwas, “[And] when the king begins to listen, must the church fall silent [and refuse to succeed]?”3  While Leithart has conceded that Constantine by no means an unsullied model of Christian political engagement,4 the point is that, first and foremost, he listened, and because he listened, the empire, over time, turned its back on religious sacrifice (“de-sacrificed”) and was “baptized.” Continue reading →

  1. Leithart’s long-term project, I would assert, goes back to his involvement with the Tyler Circle Reconstructionists in the 1980s.  At that time, Christian Reconstructionism was divided into two distinct wings, or what one might call the “Vallecito [California] Circle” and the “Tyler [Texas] Circle.”  The Vallecito Circle was centered around Rushdoony and the Chalcedon Foundation, while the Tyler Circle was comprised of former students of Greg Bahnsen (including James B. Jordan and David Chilton), Ray Sutton’s Westminister Presbyterian Church, as well as Gary North’s Institute for Christian Economics.  Indeed, a number of Jordan’s ideas about Babel and empire, referenced by Leithart in this book, were discussed in Gary North’s Healer of the Nations: Biblical Blueprints for International Relations (Dominion Press, Fort Worth, TX, 1987), pp. 66-75.  One difference between the two “circles” involved the comparative importance of the family as the locus for Christian Reconstructionism (Vallecito) versus the church (Tyler).  For a detailed, archive-based study of this, one will have to await the public release of Michael McVicar’s Ph.D. dissertation on Rushdoony and the history of Christian Reconstructionism. [↩]
  2. [2] Against Christianity, pp. 147-148, 154. [↩]
  3. Against Christianity, pp. 148, 150. [↩]
  4. See Leithart’s blog post, “What if they ask? What if they listen,” outlining part of his response to critiques of Defending Constantine by Mark Thiessen Nation and Vigen Guroian at the 2011 American Academy of Religion (AAR) annual conference. [↩]