Category: Political Theory
Who’s Going to Clean the Toilets in Your Utopia? Anna Neima’s The Utopians
Anna Neima. The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society. London: Picador, 2021. 320pp, $39.95. “I saw a horse collapse in the street: the driver was knocked aside by the starving people, who rushed to cut chunks from the...
Calvinism and Liberty
If you had to summarize Calvin’s teaching on resisting tyrants it would be: don’t. Even as his Protestant compatriots, the Huguenots, faced persecution and he fled France to Geneva, Calvin was firmly on the side of maintaining political order. He...
Marilynne Robinson Imagines the Soul of America
Living there, you’ll be free, if you truly wish to be.” ~Gene Wilder, Pure Imagination The frigid breeze gusting through downtown Des Moines, Iowa, did little to help the Democratic Nominee for President, Joe Biden, as he struggled to project...
On Healing: Learning from Separatists
The idea of a black nation seems so far-fetched as to be ludicrous, but if you entertain it for a minute, even as an impossible dream, it should give you a feeling of wholeness and belonging you’ve never had and...
A Baptist Third Way for Political Theology
Author’s note: The following article is the first half of a chapter I have contributed to a book tentatively titled Explorations in Baptist Political Theology, edited by Thomas Kidd, Paul Miller, and Andrew Walker, to be published by B&H Academic...
Puritans and Theonomy, Reconsidered
Joseph Boot, The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society, 2nd ed. (2014; Toronto: Ezra Press, 2016), 978-0-9947279-0-9, 683 pages. Many Christians do not have a worked out political theology. We are aware of the importance of being...
An Evaluation of Religious Exemptions from COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many deaths and much suffering. It has also created a number of acute challenges for churches, one of which is how to think about religious exemptions to vaccine requirements. These requirements are sometimes imposed by...
The Prophet of Re-Alignment: Reading Michael Lind in the Ruins of the Old Republic
It has become a tired cliché to lament the polarization of American politics, yet after a year that witnessed a post-election assault on the US Capitol, and in which even epidemiology became a partisan issue, few would contest the truth...
Punishment and Exchange
It seems to some the very epitome of a “mere” orthodoxy in the worst sense — too juridical for God’s mercy and too arbitrary for God’s justice — even to those who are not in the habit of yielding too...
The Maniac and the Theorist: Chesterton on Critical Theory
It does not matter how beautiful a house seems, how stately its design, how lofty its ceiling, or how well intentioned its builders; a house built on sand will fall when the rain comes (Matt. 7:27). Ultimately, the premises or...