Category: Politics
Death Does Not Come for the Deserving
At that time, some people came and reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And He responded to them, “Do you think that these Galileans were more sinful than all Galileans because they...
Christian Hospitality in an Age of Fear: An Interview with Rod Dreher
This is a lightly edited and condensed transcript of a conversation I had with Rod Dreher about his new book Live Not by Lies. Jake Meador: Thanks so much for joining me. I’m excited to talk to you more about...
Natural Law in Early Protestantism
The role of natural law in Reformed Protestantism has been a topic of considerable debate since the twentieth century. As early as the debate between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner in 1934, two competing views on natural law emerged: the...
Citizen Strangers and the Cost of Compromise
The words flowed in perfect patriotic cadence. “My fellow Americans, we are going through a time of testing. But if you look through the fog of these challenging times, you will see, our flag is still there today…” Words that...
Politics Is More Than Abortion vs Character
There has been a lot of Christian handwringing about American politics and the 2020 election. Al Mohler updated the same line of thought that has led to four decades of alliance between conservative, pro-life evangelicals with the Republican Party by...
Dogmatic Partisanship’s Dead End
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter,...
Reading “In Praise of Folly” in 2020
From across the political spectrum, it seems the one thing everyone can agree on right now is that we’ve lost the ability to speak to each other, much less persuade one another. Our seemingly irreconcilable differences about social and political...
A Catholic Judge in a Post-Liberal Age
Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court has once again raised the question of the role of Catholicism in American public life. Catholic judges are often in the position. But in interesting ways, she may represent...
This Gruesome Guest
Nihilism is at our door: whence comes this most gruesome of all guests to us? —Friedrich Nietzsche[1] If nihilism devalues even the highest of values, we can state with a fair amount of certainty that we are living in it...
J. Cole’s “For Your Eyez Only” Gives Hope for Change Beyond Elections
In my lessons on Christianity and social justice, I always feature clips from J. Cole’s 2017 HBO documentary For Your Eyez Only. The film, directed by Cole and Scott Lazer, features interviews with residents of small black cities throughout the...