Keep Christianity Weird
Oliver O’Donovan begins the sixth chapter of his Desire of the Nations, a chapter concerned with the status and legitimacy of Christendom, by considering what made the political witness of the early church compelling:
Busena and Emmanuel’s Story: Refugees Seeking Peace
This is a bit of an unusual post for us. Here’s the story: Through my church I recently became aware of a refugee situation in Lincoln involving a young South Sudanese man named Emmanuel Chol who recently lost his refugee...
Thinking Christianly About the Ahmaud Arbery Lynching
Let’s start here. This is what we know about what happened in February in Brunswick GA when Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed according to the New York Times: BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Ahmaud Arbery loved to run. It was how...
Liberalism, the American Right, and the Place of Love in Politics
The debate about the common good currently roiling American conservatism is not a new one. In the 1960s it vexed National Review contributors, with William F. Buckley dismissing Pope John XXIII’s encyclical on social progress “Mater et Magistra,” with a...
Augustine Amongst the Strong Gods
This is a time of ferment on the American right; that much has become abundantly clear. The post-Reagan consensus built around social conservatism and economic libertarianism is failing, trampled down by an economy that has left middle America behind and...
Nations and Nation-States: A Question for National Conservatives
Early in his book The Fate of Africa Martin Meredith describes the… we’ll call it “unconventional” method by which sub-Saharan Africa was divided in the late 19th century at the Conference of Berlin. Nigeria, for example, contained as many as 250...
The Key Question for the Sanders Campaign
Last night Bernie Sanders, unsurprisingly, won the New Hampshire primary. FiveThirtyEight now gives him a 38% of winning the Democratic nomination—his leading rival, at this point, is a brokered convention, which the site gives a 33% chance of happening. Prior...
The Mystique of the Pro-Life Movement: On Trump and the March for Life
Several years ago Matthew Lee Anderson wrote in these pages that there is no pro-life case for Donald Trump. In many ways the argument has not aged well—Anderson was deeply skeptical that Trump would make good on his promise to...
The Freedom of the Trad
Freddie De Boer has a typically sharp post up at his personal blog analyzing the ‘trad’ trend in some (mostly culturally elite) social circles. Do read the whole thing, but this graf gets at the main critique nicely: Here’s the...
Notes on Christianity Today’s Impeachment Editorial
This is a two-part essay. The first concerns several of the weaker responses to Mark Galli’s recent editorial at Christianity Today calling for President Trump’s impeachment. The latter concerns two of the better critiques and, in particular, one argumentative thread...