Category: Political Theology
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...
The Dust Bowl, Remembered
In clean, cool air the morning after a thunderstorm, while blazing pink and golden light spills over the horizon before becoming a deep cerulean crown over a sweltering summer afternoon, it is difficult to imagine the conditions in Texas only...
Covenants and the Common Good: Toward a Renewed Politics
Only a few paragraphs into Genesis and the age-old tensions between the individual and society are already beginning to emerge. The story begins with one Individual formed in the image of God, with individual dignity and worth. Yet it is...
Two Cheers for Gregory’s Augustinian Civic Liberalism
In a recent essay, “Liberalism, the American Right, and the Place of Love in Politics,” Jake Meador attempts to move beyond the terms of the recent, ostensibly existential, debate within American conservatism. The opposition between libertarian proceduralism — represented by...
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...
Clash of Idols
The connection between political life and idolatry will not be evident to everyone, but it definitely exists, especially within the various ideological visions vying for influence in the corridors of power. An idol is a surrogate god—something to which we...
The Importance of Political Theology
Western societies are at something of a paradoxical moment in which it feels as though our politics is captive to cynicism and naiveté in equal parts. Everyone else has a “hidden agenda.” Everyone else believes everything they hear. Everyone else...
Our Lives or Our Freedoms: The Fear of Tyranny in a Time of Pandemic
There’s a famous scene in the movie, Braveheart, a 1995 film that became something of a classic among embattled Christian conservatives who liked to see our own battle with “Big Government” in the romanticized terms of a Scottish epic. Riding...
Common Good Constitutionalism Considered
Right. I read it. And by “It” I mean, of course, Adrian Vermeule’s Atlantic piece. Here’s the thing: Vermeule’s “Common good constitutionalism” is not actually that different from, for example, Hadley Arkes’ natural law constitutionalism. That tradition of Finnis-inspired Lincoln-loving...
Public Reasoning in a Pandemic: Responding to Moore, Reno, and Littlejohn
The rapidly expanding number of Covid-19 cases in the United States poses an extraordinary test of our nation’s institutions and their leaders. In recent days, a discussion has broken out about how we should integrate our interest in preserving and...