Category: Current Politics
Trumped Up? Is the Donald’s Support Really Driven by Racist Xenophobia?
The last few months have witnessed the appearance of a burgeoning cottage industry of take-writing about the rise and appeal of Donald J. Trump. In her latest post, Rachel Held Evans has voiced her opinion: Trump’s appeal among evangelicals is...
Might Makes Right: A Response to Matthew Lee Anderson
Editor’s Note: ”Boromir” has been involved with Mere Orthodoxy to varying degrees over the years and anonymously submitted this response to Matthew Lee Anderson’s piece on The Undead Religious Right. We have published it here for the sake of hearing...
Is Not Voting in an Election Nihilistic?
One of the more common complaints about yesterday’s feature by Matt is that refusing to vote for a candidate in an election is nihilistic in a way that goes well beyond whatever nihilism one might see in Dod Crump. (This is...
The Undead Religious Right: Why I Cannot Support Ted Cruz
It is a well-known story: The Religious Right first galvanized around Ronald Reagan in 1980. Their ascent was over by 1988, when Pat Robertson’s failed campaign divided its constituency and the Moral Majority was dissolved. But the obituary was premature....
On Prayer Shaming
If you grew up evangelical, or at least in the fundamentalist brand of evangelicalism I grew up in, one of the things you learned about prayer is that it isn’t gossip if you tell a compromising story about another person...
Moral Sentimentalism and Mechanized Society
Recently Alastair Roberts and I had the chance to do an email back and forth over an issue I’ve noticed increasingly often in the way that many are reasoning about issues of public ethics. Unsurprisingly, the discussion sprawled out a...
Protestantism and the Benedict Option
The following is less a long-form essay and more a series of semi-connected thoughts concerning the Benedict Option and American Protestantism. I’ve broken them down with headers in hopes of making it easier for readers to pick out which parts...
On substitutionary atonement and disgraced politicians
In one of the great skewerings of both the Washington political establishment and modern language, George Carlin destroyed politicians–here you should think of Mark Sanford and Anthony Weiner–who are caught in a major scandal, but don’t see why that should...
Five Reasons I’m Voting for Mitt Romney
My vote won’t matter at all in California, but I sent in my ballot last week anyway, voting for Mitt Romney. Am I super excited about everything Romney stands for? Not at all. I’m uncomfortable with his Mormon faith, regret that...