Some (pundits mostly) have framed what happened in political or legal terms: one group of citizens exercising their right to freedom of speech and another exercising its rights to privacy and the free exercise of religion. We are simply dealing with another case of mediating between equally protected and constitutionally guaranteed rights for which there are existing legal codes and precedents to adjudicate such matters. Sure, a law was probably broken here and a wrong committed there, and yes, it’s messy and uncomfortable, but this is the way we make progress in a liberal democracy.

But I don’t think that’s what happened either—not really anyway.

Remove all the secularist gloss and examine the facts at face value: One group with a particular vision of the good based on certain metaphysical claims used force and intimidation to impose their will on another group with their own vision of the good based on different metaphysical claims. Now the state must decide: Whose vision of the good will it defend? Whose metaphysical claims will it stand behind?

This is important because it’s a mistake to think that what transpired is merely a matter of the right to peaceful assembly on private property. The stakes are much higher.

Remember that Christian worship is never merely a private act, as James Wood articulated so well in a recent piece at First Things. When Christians gather to worship, they are, at least in part, publicly declaring Jesus Christ’s reign over all things including both church and state.

However, part and parcel of the church’s public witness is that critical distinction between sacred and secular—one based on particular metaphysical and theological claims, like, for example, the common dignity of all, the universality of human depravity, and the special offer of forgiveness in Christ.

Such claims by the church, when acknowledged and privileged by the state, shape a public moral order. In America, the fruit of Christian public theology has been a level of toleration and freedom for dissenting views. But as authors like Joshua Mitchell have pointed out, when the state no longer stands for those claims, either out of some false duty to neutrality or by adopting altogether new claims, there are downstream consequences.

The mistake is to think that one group is doing religion and the other is doing politics and the solution is building an impenetrable wall between the two. Both are doing public theology. And I don’t think you have to be Christian to realize that, of the two on offer last Sunday at Cities Church, only one fosters the conditions for the free and dignified life while the other will invariably lead to a depraved future of servitude and tyranny.

What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think you can fully appreciate what really happened in Minneapolis unless you understand that it is, on some level, a religious conflict between two competing public theologies vying for the same coveted space in the public moral order. All that remains is the question of who will win. Now is the time for public theology.

That collectivism is anything but warm or untried is obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of the 20th century. What caught my attention, however, was not Mamdani’s historical ignorance but his indictment of ‘rugged individualism.’ I had heard it before. In my conservative-ish evangelical seminary. So what explains the cross-pollination of rhetoric between that institution and the far left ideology of a group like The Squad?

‘Rugged individualism’ was a dirty word by the time I showed up in seminary in 2018. People have told me it remains so in many pulpits, podcasts, and publishing houses throughout the evangelical ecosystem. However, the full-scale denunciation of ‘rugged individualism’ often leaves evangelical listeners with more questions than answers. After all, what exactly is the target? Right-wing economic theory? Modernity? The American political project? It wasn’t always clear to me in seminary and remains less so today.

As far as I can tell, there are three ways evangelicals have employed the ‘rugged individualism’ critique.

The first is nothing more than a sophomoric indictment of anything draped in the flag. It is a shot across the bow, meant to project piety over and against what he or she considers political idolatry. I use the description ‘sophomoric’ intentionally not only because such a posture is immature in and of itself but also because it is wholly uninformed.

Serious students of history will know that American-style individualism has never been particularly rugged or individualistic in the way those making the critique seem to suggest. As books like Tocqueville’s Democracy in America show, the typical American has traditionally lived in, and depended on, a patchwork of social and civic associations. Of course, these mostly private associations were organized and operated outside the domain of state action. Thus, it’s true that Americans are ‘rugged individualists’ but mostly in the sense that they remain suspicious of government intervention and repulsed by state collectivism.

In the end, the evangelicals who wield this critique do so because they want to sound profound, much like the half-drunk, first-year poli-sci student wants to sound profound when he declares gender to be a construct to his dorm buddies. It’s bluster, and not particularly intelligent bluster at that.

A much more honest type of evangelical employs the critique not against America in particular but late modernity broadly speaking. On this point, I suspect Carl Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self has been very influential within evangelical circles. As the story goes, modernity happened when Cartesian epistemology replaced the authority of divine revelation. Over time, objective reality was cast aside so that individuals could realize their subjective, inner truths. Trueman’s term for this phenomenon is ‘expressive individualism’ not ‘rugged individualism,’ but if one isn’t too careful the two can function interchangeably.

Clarity, however, is important. Trueman’s thesis ably proves that left-wing ideology is, on the whole, far more individualist than any conservative politics which someone like Mamdani may have in his sights; it does not, however, explain why the expressive individualists of our day are so comfortable with conformity. The stereotype of what I’m talking about is the Millennial Hipster who was told from childhood to be as eccentric as he wanted to be yet he and all his friends dress the same, listen to the same music, eat the same food, stream the same content, and hold the same political opinions.

Still, the average evangelical’s instincts are right that something about late modernity is amiss. It just isn’t ‘rugged individualism.’ Rather, what evangelicals are calling individualism is really atomization. The distinction is important.

In its most basic and benign form, individualism simply recognizes our free and inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. No doubt individualism can take on aggressive and excessive forms when it elevates individual pleasure-seeking over and against the common good. But individualism does not intrinsically reject the natural social bodies and traditions (i.e. the family or the polis) which individuals are born into and that help shape their conception of the good. The same cannot be said about atomization. Atomization seeks to divorce individuals from all traditions, institutions, and communities that provide us with meaning and purpose.

That is, besides the state.

Now we can start to understand how a democratic socialist mayor can condemn ‘rugged individualism’ in one breath, be a vocal proponent of radical LGTBQ+ policies in the next, all while advocating for the harshest form of collectivism imaginable. I have no doubt that most evangelicals oppose many of Mamdani’s policy proposals, but they should be clear about why it is they oppose them.

I fear too many evangelical leaders and pastors have trained their audiences to hear “rugged individualism” and think, “That’s bad!” without articulating what it is we’re condemning. The fruit of our laziness is confusion in the pews which is an indictment on anyone called to shepherd God’s flock. But what if it’s even worse than that. What if, by mistake or by vanity, we’ve actually been complicit in a far more sinister deployment of the ‘rugged individualism’ critique.

I’m talking about the one that takes on special meaning when its target is our young men. The one that amounts to a total and complete indictment on virtues like resilience, confidence, and tenacity. The one that labels such character traits as ‘toxic’ and reminds us that John Wayne played the rugged individualist and he was really, really bad don’t you know.

I mentioned that I started seminary in 2018. For those who remember, it was two years after the initial evangelical crackup when Donald Trump won his first presidential election and two years from the larger evangelical meltdown following Covid-19 and the George Floyd Riots. The DEI regime was not quite at its zenith, but it was close. Those eager to signal their displeasure with the President, express sympathy for identity politics, or both needed a catch-all critique that was palatable to evangelicals. I believe ‘rugged individualism’ became that critique.

To be clear, I don’t think that’s how early adaptors meant for it to be received. When James Davison Hunter critiqued individualism in his book, To Change The World, he wasn’t really saying anything more controversial than ‘God helps those who help themselves’ isn’t the Gospel. But his insights, transmitted into elite evangelical circles by leaders like Tim Keller, were hijacked by less-responsible people with obvious political agendas and baptized as Gospel truth.

Suddenly, for an evangelical to think that individuals bore responsibility for their outcomes was to be “captured by the spirit of the age.” Publishers, podcasters, and pastors talked much more about systems and power structures. One minister of a prominent evangelical ministry mentioned to me that he heard fewer evangelicals talk about sin. “It’s all about brokenness now.”

I’m not saying that I reject the concept of corporate sin. I wasn’t there that day in the Garden with Adam, but I affirm that I “sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression” (WSC 16). But it is precisely our admission of guilt for the broken state of the world that prepares us to receive the universal offering of forgiveness in the New Adam. That message alone has the power to overcome past injustices and propel us into renewed fellowship and obedience as we await the day of glory.

What I am saying is that for a brief period in the recent past, and perhaps lingering on even now, the ‘rugged individualism’ critique was used to smuggle in a syncretic, Jesus+ paradigm that closely mirrors the secular religion Joshua Mitchell describes in American Awakening. One in which justice completely crowds out grace and mercy and men (especially white men) serve little purpose except as sin-bearers.

To be completely honest, I find this all incredibly difficult to talk about. Grievance politics are distasteful to me, as I imagine they are for many people. But when my wife and I started having children, and started having boys at that (we’re up to four now), I could no longer avert my eyes to what was happening both in our culture and, sadly, within some corners of the church.

I admit, freely, that I want my sons to be ‘rugged individualists.’ So what do I mean?

I mean something like what the Christian historian Herbert Butterfield meant when he said that men shape history. Butterfield wasn’t invoking some Great Man philosophy of history a la Carlyle. He meant that all people, great and small, contribute to the history of peoples and nations as they tend to their duties and fall prey to the cupidities of their dignified but depraved nature.

When I say I want my sons to be rugged individualists I mean that I want them to realize that their life has purpose and meaning beyond what any ideologue or demagogue may tell them. I want them to see a job that needs doing and have the greatness of soul to do it. To be excellent men that others can depend on for a helping hand. To ask not what their country can do for them but what they can do for their country. And I want them to be quick to repent and fast to forgive.

What’s so bad with that?

It is obvious now in his death, as it was to those who were close to him in his life, that Charlie’s faith in his Savior animated everything he did whether he was debating students on college campuses or caring for his wife and children at home. In an event that straddled Christian funeral and political rally at times, there was no doubt that, for Charlie at least, faith always preceded politics. The power of the Gospel changed Charlie’s life. Why should we not hope that it can change a nation?

As a Reformed Christian and pastor committed to the ordinary means of grace, I feel duty bound to remind us all that revivals, by definition, are tricky things. We do well to humble ourselves before the Almighty God whose ways are above our own. Any attempt to forecast with authority what the Holy Spirit will surely do in future days puts us on par with prophets of the Old Testament. Go read about what happened to them when they got it wrong.

That being said, humility about the future does not preclude us from hope. And Sunday provided us many reasons to hope.

The ceremony began with a simple call to personal faith in Jesus that is standard fare among American evangelicals. Somewhere close to 100 million people both in person and streaming online heard it. It is a reminder that all hope about the future of our families, our churches, and our nation emanates from the hope of the Gospel, of the judgment of the wicked and the vindication of the righteous, and of resurrection life in Christ’s eternal kingdom.

That eternal hope was emphasized throughout the ceremony as our nation’s most prominent public figures offered surprisingly profound articulations of Christian theology.

Tucker Carlson’s short speech spoke to the doctrine of original sin, the need for all people regardless of political affiliation to repent, and to place our ultimate hope not in princes of this world but in Jesus, the King of Kings.

Marco Rubio capped his address with a summary of the Nicene Creed similar to the one Vice President J.D. Vance delivered on Charlie Kirk’s show just days after the shooting. Vance admitted on stage that he had spoken more about his personal faith in Jesus in the last two weeks than he had in all of his previous time in public office.

The most memorable part of the night, however, was not the appearance of the President but the resolve of Erika Kirk. In a beautiful testimony to the supernatural power of the Gospel, Erika publicly forgave her late husband’s assassin. Charlie would have wanted nothing less, she said. In contrast, President Trump spoke about harboring no love for his enemies in remarks that felt disjointed from the ceremony as a whole.

All of this suggests that Kirk’s death may mark a shift in the development of the New Right. What was, under Trump, a movement that certainly welcomed Christians and promised to deliver on their political goals may be giving way to a new iteration led by men and women of true Christian convictions. Whatever the future holds, it certainly looks like Christianity will be an indispensable element of the party ethos going forward. The only question that remains is what it looks like in practice.

There are those who espouse legitimate concerns about so-called “Christian Nationalism.” They worry that we are returning to a Bush-era syncretism of evangelical politics albeit with a harder right-wing hue. They argue that such conditions threaten true Christian liberty over political issues, and I tend to agree.

And while there was some of that on Sunday, it paled in comparison to the echoes of an older and much more biblical arrangement between Christianity and society. The speeches from Carlson, Rubio, Vance, Mrs. Kirk and others spoke about Christianity, not as a self-contained political program, but as supplying the necessary pre-political foundations for any society to thrive. As Charlie so often argued before his audiences, those foundations are obvious to careful readers of the great American literary tradition—in documents like the Declaration of Independence and speeches like Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.

For a long time now, both parties have insisted on an artificial unity around mere mental assent to the principles espoused in our political tradition while denying the philosophical and religious presuppositions upon which those principles are built. True, one need not be a Christian to be an American, but can you truly understand America and her history without appreciation for the Christian tradition that shaped the political imaginations of our founding generations? Charlie spent a lot of his public life arguing you couldn’t. As more information about the assassin is released, I suspect we’ll learn it was also the reason he was killed.

Sunday enlisted all of us in a mission to carry on the legacy of Charlie Kirk, which is really no different than carrying on the legacy of all great Americans that have gone before us. We must renew our fearless commitment to the good, the true, and the beautiful and a humble submission to the laws of nature and Nature’s God. We’re all Charlie Kirk now.

The study of America’s history, however, can be extremely complicated. Our history, like the history of all people everywhere, isn’t perfect. For every act of great heroism there are others which cause us to hang our heads in shame. How does the student of history deal with such complexity? And more to the point of The Public Theology Project, is there a distinctly Christian way to handle the historical record?

One resource that Christians can lean on is the work of Hebert Butterfield (1900—1979). Butterfield, who spent his academic and professional career at Cambridge, was both an accomplished scholar and a Christian of heartfelt faith and piety.

Though Butterfield recognized certain distinctions between his personal faith in Jesus and his vocation as an academic historian, he could not entirely separate the two from one another. The former came to bear on the latter in important ways, particularly with respect to his theological and philosophical views on human nature, redemption, and divine providence. The way he attempted to organize them in his writings reveals a distinctly Christian philosophy of history that remains instructive for us today.

Butterfield is most famous, perhaps, for his criticisms of the “Whiggish” interpretation of history, or the “tendency to see things running in a straight line of progress from somewhere in the past and culminating in whatever the historian favored most about the present.”1 In telling his story of moral, social, or cultural progress, Butterfield accused the Whiggish historian of turning history into “a fight of white men, pure and righteous, against the diabolically wicked.”2 For Butterfield, this was not only bad history but bad theology. In reality, history was far more complicated because humans are far more complicated. “Events tie themselves into knots,” Butterfield said, “because of…general cupidity; situations becoming more frantic and deadlocks more hopeless because of man’s universal presumption and self-righteousness.”3

In affirming universal human sinfulness, we see Butterfield plainly articulating an Augustinian doctrine of original sin. Coupled with our depravity, however, is our inherent dignity as an image-bearer of God. “It is men who make history,” Butterfield said.4 Therefore, the historian ought to treat the objects of his study as possessing all the inherent qualities of agency and responsibility. No doubt there is a level of history operating above the heads of individuals, Butterfield admitted, but it is not right to treat the subjects of history as passive victims of abstract concepts. For Butterfield, this was tantamount to pulling the cart before the horse. After all, ideas are not self-acting agents but are carried along in the minds of men and actualized through their countless interactions in a world where they are simultaneously constrained and free.

But what do these twin ideas of human depravity and dignity mean practically for the study of history? Let’s take the common refrain, “He was a product of his time,” as an example.

On the one hand, the saying communicates something true about human limitations. As embodied creatures, we are conditioned at some level by the time and space we occupy. We can’t reasonably hold a figure from the 16th century to 21st century standards on civil rights—most if not all of the prerequisite conditions for our modern society were simply not operative. Nor can we simply assume that those who advanced the causes of justice did so for purely altruistic reasons or that those who defied them did so because they were uniquely wicked.

Does that mean we are incapable of leveling moral judgment on historical actors? Of course not. However, it should leave us with a profound sense of humility about our own limitations and sinfulness which just might temper the expectations we hold for our forefathers. As Butterfield so famously quips, an honest study of history will leave us “being a little sorry for everybody.”5

However, it is precisely this sense of moral ambiguity that presents us with the opportunity to develop a uniquely Christian philosophy of history. For Butterfield, feeling a little sorry for everybody is just another way of describing Christian charity. History actually shapes and forms us into the kind of virtuous people who deal honestly with our nature and the tragic consequences of our actions. Why? Because we serve the God of History.

As a Christian, Butterfield objected to the notion of an “absentee God.” He believed God to be the living and active God who sovereignly chose of His own goodwill to enter into history. “The way that God reveals himself in history is in fact the great theme of the Bible itself,” said Butterfield.6 The ancient Israelites’ inspired reflections on God’s mighty acts in history eventually produced a linear view of history based on the promise of redemption—a view that was distinct from the essentially cyclical view held by their neighbors. And though it sounds like Butterfield is inadvertently baptizing the Whiggish notion of historical Progress, he reminds us that the history of the redemptive promise to God’s people was always punctuated by periods of judgment wrought by their own sin and covenant disobedience.

For Butterfield, the good news of the Gospel is that judgment never gets the last word. It is never the end of the human story. And we see that fully and most brilliantly in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because the inheritance of the Biblical history is essentially one of grace, the Christian historian never operates without mercy, charity, and forgiveness toward all. Because of the faith he has received through the Gospel, he is also able to detect God’s Providence superimposed on the story of human tragedy (cf. Gen. 50:20), even secular history. He can read as one not without hope because he knows how the story ends even if he is blind to how we’ll get there.

In that way, Herbert Butterfield’s Christian philosophy of history is more humane precisely because it is unwaveringly theocentric.

The piece describes documented cases of paranoia, disillusionment, broken relationships, and violence that all began with posing otherwise innocuous questions to ChatGPT.

One user, for example, asked the AI tool about “the simulation theory” best known from its incorporation into the plot of the popular film The Matrix. The chatbot led him down a rabbit hole that reinforced his suspicions about reality, even suggesting that he could jump off a building and fly if he believed hard enough. Two other users became obsessed with the AI tool after it convinced them that it was a more reliable friend and lover than the people in their offline lives. One physically assaulted her husband when he confronted her about her unhealthy attachment to ChatGPT and another committed suicide by cop suspecting OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, had murdered his algorithmic paramore.

It is no wonder then that many have looked at the disorder and destruction caused by AI and surmised there must be spiritual agents lurking behind the code—real life ghosts in the machine. “It’s demons” may sound outlandish on first blush but it’s hard to deny something spectral about the whole thing. None of the users from the Times article had any history with mental illness. Like a horror movie out of Hollywood, their lives looked perfectly ordinary until an insidious stranger showed up on screen.

And while I’m not denying the possibility of demonic activity, I also wonder if it has become something of a cope—an excuse that, while not quite a relief, is certainly more comfortable than the difficult prospect of confronting the evil within. For the spiritual-not-religious types, it easily satisfies the human intuition that reality is enchanted while keeping them firmly centered within an immanent frame. Blaming demons is convenient because it often means we get to play the role of innocent victim.

The problem with that approach, at least from a biblical perspective, is that human sin is never excused even when demons torment persons from without. The serpent tempted Adam and Eve, but the responsibility for the Fall lies squarely on their shoulders. Even the story of Job, a “blameless and upright man,” ends with repentance of his own hubris in light of God’s perfect holiness and sovereignty.

The point of Scripture’s warnings against “the spiritual forces of evil” is not to excuse our depravity but to confront us with our own inclination toward sin and push us toward the loving protection of our holy and loving God who alone conquers the Enemy by the ministry of his Son, Jesus Christ, and strengthens us for spiritual warfare through the power of his Spirit.

Satan, after all, does not have creative power like God. He and his minions are creatures like us, capable only of manipulating God’s good creation to serve their own sinful intentions. As C. S. Lewis so brilliantly portrayed in his book, The Screwtape Letters, demonic tactics often involve tempting us to idolize what is, in its proper station, perfectly good and so steer us toward self-righteousness and the judgment of others. Once we have heeded Satan’s siren song, even something like zealous attendance and involvement in church can become the thing by which we count ourselves justified before God and superior to our lazy or blasphemous neighbors.

In the cases involving AI described above, each person was either in search of a loving relationship or a sense of meaning in life. As a tool created by humans for humans, no doubt the inventors of AI hoped that the algorithm would have generated answers for assisting their users in the actual pursuit and attainment of those things. For a lonely and wounded wife and mother, a reminder about the liberating power of forgiveness. To a single man discontent with his station in life, resources for personal growth. Or, for any obviously hurting person typing away into ChatGPT, ways to connect with in-person professional services.

Instead, it gave them conspiracies, excuses, and artificial replacements. It is interesting that the technology experts consulted in the article repeatedly describe ChatGPT as “sycophantic.” Artificial intelligence tells us the answer we want to hear which is really helpful if we’re asking for a dessert recipe that doesn’t use processed sugar or a template of a professional memo but damning if we’re investigating the source of our own malcontent. God’s Word, however, has no such deficiency. We may not always like it, but the Lord tells us exactly what we need to hear—about our own sin, the perfect atonement made by Jesus on the cross, and the promise of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

Approaching new technology with a realistic sense of our own depravity protects us from opposite but equally destructive reactions. AI cannot possibly fill the hole in our souls for meaning, love, acceptance, or justice. But neither will a Butlerian Revolution. Without denying real cases of demonic manipulation of AI, we should recognize that humans have created a thing after our own dignified but corrupted image. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised when it simultaneously reflects the best and ugliest of humanity. AI, used wisely, is and will continue to be a powerful, if incomplete, tool as we continue to seek our ultimate good in the glory of God.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Importantly, each of these isms were really reactions to the capital-I Ism of the day: Modernism. Among those reactions, Johnson counted a relatively new and obscure philosophy coming out of the German academy. It’s unclear if Johnson really believed a mass movement of people would have the patience of mind to systematically organize Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas and fashion them into a coherent worldview, but he certainly understood why men, and young men in particular, would be drawn to a version of Nietzscheanism like moths to a flame. 

The turn of the nineteenth century was a time of male ambivalence. Dizzying changes in philosophy, politics, and society had upended the expectations and future prospects of men. Within that malaise, Johnson believed Nietzsche offered a false but alluring opportunity for “redeeming men.”1 Seeing as most earthly frontiers had been subdued by science, technology, and industry, Johnson thought men would find in Nietzche’s abolition of traditional Christian morality new opportunities to dare and to dream. “He would lift the naturally strong to greater strength,” Johnson explained, “that they should court danger and adventure, overcome pity, and…above all be valorous.”2

Today, we face new isms but a similar crisis among men. Male suicide rates are up and their employment levels are down. What should men do in the wake of a cultural revolution which has left so many of them deft of purpose and meaning?

This is the question which another prominent Presbyterian has attempted to answer. In his latest book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Need, Senator Josh Hawley identifies Epicureanism as the dominant ism of our day.3 For Hawley, this post-modern iteration of an idea with ancient roots seeks to overthrow any constraint on the human person that would prevent him from actualizing his inner truth. Only when we have cast off the bonds of religion, family, even biology can we create a society in which all people are truly free. 

Another author4 has recognized the same cultural trend and says that men often play the part of social scapegoat in the Epicurean utopia, bearing the sins of heteronormativity, patriarchy, and so-called “toxic” masculinity. Instead of cultivating virtue to channel their natural inclinations of ambition, assertiveness, and aggression, men are encouraged to numb them with porn, drugs, and video games. 

Among men, reactions to Epicureanism range from basic acceptance to the hyper-masculinity of internet celebrities like the Tate Brothers. The two, though they seem like opposites, lead men to the same place: trapped within an immanent frame, without transcendent meaning or purpose, and enslaved to the passions of their flesh.

Josh Hawley is a statesman, not a professor, but it is interesting to see how his alternative approach mirrors that of Johnson’s a century earlier. The consonance between the two suggests a concrete tradition of Reformed reflection on masculinity that we can make use of in our own churches and communities. 

Central for both Johnson and Hawley is correcting the record about Christianity. Nietzsche’s version of Christianity with its “slave morality” was a “caricature,” Johnson said.5 If he had truly labored in the Bible, Nietzsche would have seen that Christian faith “was making strong men.”6

For Johnson, the meaning of manhood comes from the God of the Bible who “frowns on the doting indulgence of the grandmamma” and calls men to “stand with iron strength against being swayed by mere benevolence to go against the right.”7 A Christian man’s allegiance, Johnson said, was to “that love which is heroically controlled by regard to inexorable and eternal right.”8 In other words, men were divinely constituted to virtuously discipline their strength in order to serve others, especially the weak and the vulnerable.

Johnson admitted that the biblical concept of Christian manhood was foreign to the German pietism with which Nietzsche was familiar. However, aberrant forms of Christianity didn’t negate the true expression of faith. Likewise, Hawley doesn’t want to give up the biblical vision for manhood just because modern evangelical churches have mostly embraced egalitarianism. Instead, Hawley calls men to take up the mantle of what he calls “the Adam story” (which is really one iteration in a series of Adam stories that includes other biblical figures like Abraham, Joshua, and David), disciplining their hearts, minds, and bodies for sacrificial service as husbands, fathers, warriors, builders, priests, and kings.9 

Both Johnson and Hawley call men to the vita activa which requires true effort. And though plenty of authors have directed similar calls at men, what makes Hawley’s, and Johnson’s, and the Reformed tradition’s contributions unique, and ultimately more satisfying, is the central role of grace.

For Hawley, grace is not a footnote or something you tack on at the end; it's interwoven throughout a man’s entire identity. Indeed, a man can not obtain his high calling without it! “To be a man is to realize that we are, each of us, imperfect. We are wounded and flawed,” Hawley admits. He goes on,10

We are dependent for our significance on something outside ourselves. That is no cause for shame. For in recognizing our need, we do what Adam would not. We embrace humility, we accept the call to serve, and we open our lives to the possibility of transformation. The success of a man’s life turns out to depend not finally on the man. It depends on the God he serves.

Transformation comes by grace through faith in Jesus, or “The Man” as Hawley often refers to him throughout the book. Yes, we are called to action. To be a builder and a warrior and a king means we actually have to do something. Yet, our activity is always derivative, always a response, to a prior identity we passively receive. In the garden, we received our identity as sons of God, created in his image to build and rule and love as God does. Yet, the first man, Adam, gave up that God-give identity to construct one of his own making. Perhaps that makes Adam the first Epicurean and the Epicureanism we see so much of today our natural inheritance.

Thankfully, our first father was not the end of the Adam story. There is a New Adam, a New Man, a true Son of God who opens the path back to God and our true calling. In Jesus, there is salvation from our sin, adoption into the family of God, and blessed service in Christ’s kingdom. Only when we have grasped the Gospel of Jesus in the deepest part of our soul, can we truly live out our calling and mission as men.

Image credit: Unsplash

During his first term, the President committed billions of federal dollars to building a wall on the southern border and enacted several policies to address the number of illegal migrants entering the country. An early hallmark of his second term has been empowering Tom Homan to authorize a mass deportation effort of migrants with violent and criminal histories.

How to manage America’s immigration crisis remains a sensitive topic among many evangelical Protestants. For years, elite evangelical institutions like the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today were intimately involved with the Evangelical Immigration Roundtable (EIR), a group that pitched itself as a “third way” approach to the issue and advocated for the controversial “Gang of Eight” bill.

Today, the EIR remains committed to a similar vision including a pathway to citizenship even though Trump’s popularity among conservative Christians suggests a real divide in popular and elite evangelical opinion.

Regardless of what one personally thinks about the Trump administration’s immigration policies, no one can deny that they raise important questions about citizenship. What does it mean to be a citizen of a nation? And is there a distinctly Christian way of thinking about earthly citizenship?

“Honor the emperor”

In his letter to the “elect exiles of the Dispersion,” the Apostle Peter reflects on the political circumstances of the early church. At first, Peter emphasizes the church’s unique identity as “sojourners and exiles” who are set apart from the world (1 Peter 2:11). With language that mirrors Israel’s calling in Exodus 19:5-6, Peter calls the church of Jesus Christ “a chosen race,” “a royal priesthood,” “a holy nation,” and “a people for [God’s] own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). Just like Israel was set apart from the other nations to serve God’s purposes of bringing salvation to the world, so too is the church set apart to proclaim the good news of the promise of heavenly life in Jesus Christ.

The church’s identity as a corporate entity, Peter says, is ordered to the kingdom of God. However, that does not mean individual Christians have been relieved of the cares and concerns of earthly life. In the meantime, Christians sojourn through the kingdom of man and participate in the daily activities of family life, the market, and political and social life.

In other words, Christians cannot escape the fact that they live with a kind of dual citizenship: they are, at the same time, citizens of a heavenly kingdom (Philippians 3:20) and an earthly one. Most modern commentary on the subject stresses the tension between these two citizenships for two reasons. The first has to do with the complete secularization of the modern West. For better or worse, most Americans, believers and unbelievers alike, have absorbed the concept of Thomas Jefferson’s “high and impregnable” wall between church and state to mean a wall between religion and public life (whether Jefferson would agree with the way we have come to apply his words is a different discussion). The second reason is the command that pluralism has on the American political imagination. As some have argued, the very basis for the modern liberal order and the absolute right to religious liberty is itself a unique contribution of Christianity to the social order.1

Taken together, this creates a paradox for many American evangelicals who believe that Christianity is both set against culture and its very moral foundation. Indeed, a group like the EIR is a manifestation of that paradox when it excoriates movements like “Christian Nationalism” as neither Christian nor patriotic while simultaneously sacralizing its own form of political Christianity.

Paradox may, in fact, be an apt description of the Apostle Peter’s idea that we are both saved from the world and for the world. However, does the admission of a paradox necessarily mean its application lacks logic or integrity? I would argue no, and I believe the Reformed tradition agrees.

Two kingdoms: a reformed solution

Early in his Institutes, John Calvin distinguishes between “the understanding of earthly things and of heavenly things.”2 Among the former, he lists government, household affairs, scientific and mechanical arts, and philosophy; the latter includes the knowledge of God and his will. Most importantly, the knowledge of both types of things correspond to related but distinct sources: the knowledge of earthly things deduced by reason through general revelation (e.g. God’s works of creation and providence) and the knowledge of heavenly things from the Holy Spirit through the special revelation of God’s word.3

However, the earthly and the heavenly are not so distinguished as to be unrelated. After all, God alone is the origin and creator of all things. Christ rules over both kingdoms, albeit in different ways. In the heavenly kingdom, Christ’s rule is unmediated; he alone is the “Head of the Church.”4 But Christ’s rule over the earthly kingdom is mediated; he “removes and sets up kings” who rule with a subordinate authority (Daniel 2:21; cf. Psalm 2:11, 12). Earthly authorities are not free to disobey God’s will but are set in a position of authority to maintain God’s standards of justice, punishing those who do evil and to praising those who do good (1 Peter 2:14).

In other words, the Reformed understanding of the two kingdoms is not one of paradox or tension but order. Christ isn’t set against culture; instead, the latter is ordered to the former. They are distinct in such a way that the State cannot do churchly things like decide doctrine or administer the sacraments, and the Church cannot do stately things like enforce corporal punishments or pass civil laws. But they are related such that the state maintains the temporal conditions in which the gospel can flourish and the church prepares citizens worthy of citizenship in a free republic. The two exist together “as planets moving in concentric orbits.”5

Application

So how would we apply this Reformed vision of the two kingdoms to the specific question of immigration and citizenship?

First of all, Christians must understand that the state has a natural duty and right to decide and enforce immigration law.6 Being among what Calvin called earthly things, decisions about immigration and assimilation are the purview of temporal authorities and guided by natural principles deduced by reason. Since grace does not destroy nature but restores and perfects it, there isn’t some biblical prescription about immigration, or citizenship for that matter, that transgresses natural principles rightly understood. Rather, the Bible confirms those things which nature also reveals like natural and inalienable rights, integrity of nations, and the rule of law.7

Lamentably, ideology often infects the debate about these issues. Wisdom, on the other hand, admits that circumstances change and so can our policies so long as they remain fixed on first principles. For example, America, in principle, may remain a place where people of all colors and creeds can prosper even if the nation decides through its elected officials that it would be best to temporarily limit the number of immigrants for various prudential reasons.

That being the case, the Christian imperative to care for the sojourner is not a license to violate or disregard justly administered immigration laws. Christians must decide how to do one without doing the other. A great example is ESL Ministries which equips churches to serve immigrants, refugees, and international students through English-language classes that simultaneously share the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Still, the tragedy of living in a sin-fallen world means there may be particular tactics of enforcement that could justify peaceful resistance even while the church broadly affirms the just authority of the state to decide immigration law. One such example is the question of permitting ICE agents to use the corporate worship of God’s people as an opportunity to track potential suspects. It strikes me that sharing membership roles or using Lord’s Day worship as a vehicle for empowering state actors is a poor precedent and likely violates a principled commitment to two kingdoms doctrine.

Finally, Christians must recognize that liberty of conscience grants differences in opinion over these issues. Christians may be hawkish or dovish on immigration and remain within the kingdom of God. However, the freedom of the gospel should never be used as an excuse for lazy reasoning or unthinking ideology. A good place to start, at least as it relates to the question of citizenship, is not to settle for paradox but think coherently about our earthly and heavenly citizenships such that we rightly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.

Last week, I focused on the future of the American family, natalist politics, and how Christians can think about the role of the family in public life.

This essay, on the future of American power, presents a unique challenge. The reason, simply put, is that the Bible does not speak directly on matters related to foreign policy like it does to the family.

Still, that does not render Christians silent on this issue. One of the guiding principles of The Public Theology Project is to be biblically informed without being biblicist. In other words, we may also ask if there is anything in our rich, theological heritage and its reflections on natural principles that might help us think Christianly about American power and geopolitics. And the answer to that question is a resounding, “Yes!”

Why is this a zone of political opportunity?

Throughout the campaign, President Trump touted his record on foreign policy. “I won’t start wars, I’ll stop them,” was a big part of Trump’s pitch to an American public tired from protracted campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and increasingly skeptical of the establishment in charge of managing the situation in Ukraine and our “strategic ambivalence” toward Taiwan and China.

The President will try to keep his campaign promise despite a tenuous geological landscape. The turn from counterinsurgency operations against non-state actors to strategic concerns with sovereign nation-states like Iran, Russia, and China represents a new chapter in the history of American foreign policy—what some call “the return of great powers” and others “Cold War II.”

What does a just end to the Ukraine War look like? Does China represent a legitimate threat to U.S. interests? How should America respond if Iran obtains nuclear weapons? These are legitimate questions but ones best left to statesmen, not pastors. Scripture being relatively silent on these matters means prudence shall be our guide more so than biblical prescription. However, there are some theological resources for Christians to consider when thinking about the future of American power.

The chances of war

Presidential promises aside, we should be clear-eyed about the possibility of our nation finding itself in a large-scale conflict the likes of which we have not seen since Word War II.

Russia threatens nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe. President Xi has directed the People’s Liberation Army to prepare for war, most likely with the goal of bringing Taiwan into closer union with mainland China. Though not inevitable, conflict with either of these powers would require levels of manpower and weaponry far beyond anything we saw in our recent fights in the Middle East. Though we pray for peace, and clearer heads to prevail, realists understand that escalation by any party, be it China, Russia, a NATO ally, or the United States itself, can trigger events that are hard to undo.1

If Christians wait until the bullets are flying to develop theologies for war and suffering, they will be too late. They should be thinking now about the resources Christian theology offers both for the present strategic environment and the possibility of being at war with a near-peer rival. Moreover, Christians can ask in what ways their churches are ready to meet the needs of a nation at war if that be its future. Let us consider each question in turn.

Just war

One way Christians could shape the future of American power is by embracing and applying its just war tradition. Tracing its origins in the thought and work of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the just war tradition is a theological paradigm for determining the Christianly way to wage war.

To some believers, “the Christianly way to wage war” is nothing but a case of Orwellian double-speak. After all, they might say, one cannot possibly “love thy neighbor” and wage war against him at the same time. There is no such thing as just war because war, by definition, is un-Christian and therefore unjust.

Thus many Christian pacifists, to my question of what Christians may offer to this particular zone of political opportunity, would simply answer: Nothing! Or perhaps, Resistance!

While it is not my intention to make a comprehensive case for the just war tradition at this moment, two things may be said to quickly vindicate it on biblical and theological grounds.

Christians acknowledge we live in a broken world, corrupted by sin, in which people made in the image of God often unjustly attack, oppress, and do violence to other people made in the image of God. This is reality. What would God have us do?

While not all Protestants agree, the Reformed tradition has typically answered one way: you defend the innocent and, if necessary, with violence.

In his Institutes, Calvin writes:

We are accordingly commanded, if we find anything of use to us in saving our neighbors’ lives, to faithfully employ it; if there is anything that makes for their peace, to see to it; if anything harmful, to ward it off; if they are in danger, to lend a helping hand.2

Commenting on the passage by Calvin, Marc Livecche says, “This is not merely permission to employ force to protect the innocent, it is a mandate. To not come to the aid of the innocent is a violation of charity because it ignores the desecration of the imago Dei.”3

For Calvin, waging war in the defense of the innocent in no way contradicts Christian charity. In fact, it is a legitimate expression of neighborly love!

We find biblical warrant for such an idea in Jesus’s interaction with the Roman centurion (Matthew 8:5-13). Nowhere does Jesus urge the man to give up his military vocation. Instead, Christ calls the centurion to wield the state’s power of the sword justly in accordance with God’s law.

Clearly, the just war tradition is a sound theological resource for Christians to draw upon in shaping the future of American power. Should the United States go to war, our prayer would be that it do so on just grounds (jus ad bellum) and that we would wage it justly (jus ad bello).

Pastoral care

In this final section, I want to consider the pastoral responsibility of the church during war time.

Even during “the surge” of the Iraq War in 2007, most people did not personally know someone in the conflict. In all likelihood, the same would not be true of a conflict with a near-peer rival like China or Russia. Should that happen (and we pray it doesn’t!) congregations ought to consider the possibility of most (if not all) of their military-age friends, neighbors, and parishioners going to war. What could Christians do in that situation?

Firstly, Christians need to be equipped with a coherent theology of suffering. This is not just true for times of war. In times of great tragedy including car wrecks, school shootings, and cancer diagnoses, believers and nonbelievers alike often look to the church for answers.

The Sunday after 9/11, many New Yorkers flocked to Redeemer Presbyterian Church. That morning, they heard pastor Tim Keller deliver a powerful sermon on the Gospel’s answer to inexplicable evil and the horror of death based on John 11. Because of the meaningful answer to suffering, and Redeemer’s pastoral concern for their neighbors, many people returned week after week.

A sound theology of suffering is critical for those grieving violence after the fact. It is also vital for those preparing to wage war on the enemy.

Since the Vietnam War, many Americans have become familiar with post-combat stress diagnoses like PTSD. Further study with those who came home changed by war have expanded our understanding of what goes on in the human psyche when it is exposed to combat.

A particularly haunting field of study is what everyone from psychologists to philosophers and pastors now call moral injury. In short, moral injury is “soul wound” or “psychic trauma resulting from doing, allowing to do be done, or having done to you that which goes against deeply held normative beliefs.”4

For example, we are all taught early on that hurting others is wrong. Even those completely unfamiliar with the Bible know at least one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shall not murder.

But what do you do when you are suddenly handed a weapon and told by your leaders to kill a stranger? For many, the contradiction between their actions and what they know to be right and wrong is enough to tear their souls in half. I imagine the feeling is similar to Paul’s anguish in Romans 7:19-24:

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

How will we, as Christians, minister to those who may come home from war with crushing soul wounds?

Many may return with legitimate moral injury. They did things in combat that were wrong and they know it. The answer is the free gift of grace and the pardon of sins through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

However, others will have justly wielded the power of the sword but still feel spiritually crushed. In those cases, chaplains, pastors, and Christians need to be prepared to vindicate the righteousness of the soldierly vocation.5 Again, a sound understanding of just war is helpful since it will be a trustworthy guide in discerning what is and what is not truly morally injurious.6

Conclusion

These are just a couple ways Christians may contribute to the future of American power. It is no way exhaustive.

Believers should always pray for their civil authorities and that the Lord would give them wisdom and discernment to promote justice and punish evil in accordance with God’s moral law. Moreover, we should pray for peace in our communities and across the globe so that the Gospel may go forth unhindered and peoples may flourish.

The postmortems are too many to count and, quite frankly, beyond the scope of a blog about public theology. Even the matter of the New Right, what it is, and whether Christians should play a part in it are questions I’ll leave to more able thinkers.

Rather, this series will focus on the issues which apparently matter to a majority of voters and what Christians can contribute to what I’m calling new “zones of political opportunity.” There are three worth discussing at length: the future of the American family, the future of American power, and the future of American citizenship.

But first, a point of clarification.

It would be inappropriate for me, as someone in pastoral ministry, to bind anyone’s conscience on policy or tie their salvation to the ways they participate in the political sphere. Indeed, one of hopes of this project is to think critically about political theology without confusing the two kingdoms. The institutional church is ill-equipped to do politics (regardless of whether it’s of a left or right wing variety) even as individual Christians cannot escape their political calling.

Therefore, what follows is not a ten-step program or political agenda but simply identifiable areas where Christians, guided by conscience, may find opportunities to help shape and lead the debate.

With the necessary throat clearing complete, let us focus on the first of three zones of political opportunity.

The future of the American family

Perhaps no single issue has captured the evangelical political imagination more than abortion. It was the exciting promise of justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and the subsequent delivery of said promise, that led many conservative Christians to vote for a twice-divorced television personality in 2016 and again in 2020.

But ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, the pro-life movement has undergone something of an identity crisis. Some want to push for a federal, nation-wide ban. Others are content with leaving the issue to the states where more aggressive laws against abortion may be possible.

With disunion comes diminished power. For many years, the powerful bloc of pro-life evangelicals grew accustomed to the Republican Presidential hopefuls currying favor by promising to undo the constitutional right to abortion. When Roe fell, the leverage flipped and all of a sudden what some called the best option for pro-lifers was a candidate defending a policy of safe, legal, and rare. Unsurprisingly, some conservative Christians are despondent over accomplishing so much only to return to the status quo of Clinton’s America.

What the future of pro-life politics looks like is hard to discern except that it will almost certainly be absorbed into a larger pro-family coalition and agenda. Driving this emergent zone of political opportunity is a combination of existential anxiety over America’s falling fertility rate and resentment against the cultural and economic conditions that, to some, make family formation too difficult.

As of 2022, the fertility rate in America was 1.66 births per woman—far below the 2.1 replacement level necessary for a nation to thrive (the last time America hit replacement level was 2007). That by itself is cause for concern, but it’s not the only troubling statistic. On average, American woman say they want 2.5 children. The gap between desired children and actual fertility represents countless unmet hopes and expectations.

We cannot easily explain the economic, political, and cultural toll this toxic combination of national decline and individual discontent has on our country. All signs point to a new political movement committed to reviving everything from marriage to family formation. #MakeAmericaFecundAgain. You see it in the online pronatalists but also from more mainstream voices like Brad Wilcox and Tim Carney.

So what could a discerning Christian contribute to such a movement?

Christian contributions

The first, and most obvious, thing to say is that Christians offer a coherent critique of family un-friendliness and a positive vision for family life.

Pundits and commentators point to several factors that could explain low fertility rates. Rising housing costs, women participating in the workplace, climate doomer-sim—all of these, we’re told, make family formation more difficult.

In his book on American families, Tim Carney turns our attention away from politics and economics and towards what he calls our “culture of sterility.” It is a product of concerted efforts to sterilize us from any and all obligations, be that tradition, religion, or even family. Once we are free from all restraints, we’re told, we will experience true freedom and achieve happiness. Children have no place in a culture of sterility because they are the ultimate strain on independence (ask any parent).

The problem, of course, is that true happiness will always escape the isolated and atomized individual because we were made for connection. Man is a social creature, says the Lord, it is not good that he should be alone (Genesis 2:18).

Contrary to the what the culture of sterility says, it is in fact those things which obligate us to others—religion, tradition, family—which give our lives purpose and meaning. Yes, marriage can be difficult, and parenting is often thankless work. But family life is also one of life’s most rewarding experiences. There is no other feeling like the joy of being loved unconditionally. Nor can one replicate the experience of seeing the world through the eyes of your child to whom a leaf, a sunset, or the waves at the ocean are fresh and new and mysterious. Earthly marriage and family life point us to Christ’s love for his bride, the church, and our Heavenly Father from whom and through whom and for whom are all things (Romans 11:36).

Families also play an important role in God’s redemptive mission. “I will be God to you and to your offspring after you,” says the LORD to Abraham (Genesis 17:7). In the Reformed tradition, we acknowledge that the promises of God extend to our children.

Having children is a common grace for all people and one way we fulfill the creational mandate, “to be fruitful and multiply,” and spread God’s image throughout the world (Genesis 1:28). But it is also the normative way by which God grows the church: “for I am a jealous God,” says the Lord, “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Deuteronomy 5:9-10).

Christians, however, also recognize that sin and brokenness may prevent some from ever attaining marriage or children of their own. But being stitched together in Christ, the responsibilities of child-rearing are diffused throughout the church. Yes, parents own primary responsibility over their children, but the church has a duty of its own—to help and assist the parents, to teach children the Word of God, and pray for them that they may come to full, communing membership in the covenant community. It really does take a village!

The same principle extends to life in the kingdom of man. Even if couples married and began having kids at dizzying rates, it won’t do to replace a bunch of isolated individuals with a bunch of atomized families. Thick social bonds beyond the nuclear family are, and have always been, the strongest bulwark against tyranny and oppression. Within this zone of political opportunity, Christians can be lights in their communities to share the blessings of association and connection and help promote the common good.

As one chapter ends, another begins.

Though The Public Theology Project’s independence is new, we remain committed to the same beliefs and mission as articulated in our inaugural essay: “that the Christian faith does have something to say about engaging society; that society ought to heed the Christian witness as a normative claim to truth; and that public theology is the enterprise of relating the two together faithfully.”

As we also stated from the beginning, we do not claim to have all the answers; only an eager desire to learn. Our hope is that The Public Theology Project will remain a communal learning space where the inquisitive reader will be challenged by a wide array of opinions.

As some of our subscribers may have noticed, it has been a long time since our last piece. The delay was unfortunate but necessary to discern what our future as an independent ministry would look like. That delay is now over. Expect more regular pieces moving forward including a post-election essay by our project leader later this week.

Much has changed, and continues to change, even in the short lifetime of this project. Still, the “many-sided debate about the relations of Christianity and civilization” rages on.1 There remains much to do.

Inspired in part by the acrimony experienced at his own day job as a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Inazu wrote this book with a deceptively simple premise: “to change the way you engage with disagreement”^[1] Of course, delivering on this task is not an easy achievement. With an unwieldy mission before him, Inazu’s Learing to Disagree follows an unorthodox structure. The book itself is a window into the author’s life as a professor with each chapter corresponding to a month of the academic calendar. The book’s opening chapter on August, for example, contains vignettes from that month, such as Inazu cold calling shell-shocked students entering their first year of law school.

Each chapter, centered on a specific value or concept, also draws upon Inazu’s plethora of life experiences and legal expertise. This unique structure foundationally changes the book’s effectiveness. Instead of simply preaching at readers like a rulebook to just be more agreeable, Learning to Disagree itself is a partner in learning. By coming alongside the reader, Inazu illuminates how difficult conflict can be and shows that a personal touch can be the antidote needed to overcome it.

To demonstrate how confusing conflict can be, in the first chapter of Learning to Disagree, Inazu throws the reader a curveball even the best of MLB pitchers would envy. While teaching his criminal law class, Inazu offers a story from nineteenth century England in which three men who were hopelessly lost at sea killed and ate a member of their crew (7). Suffice to say, this book is not for the faint of heart. Inazu asks one of his new students, “Is there any way to justify the actions of these three men?” (8) This is a surprising twist for a book published by Zondervan. Nevertheless, Inazu’s underlying point stands as insightful. Even in the very worst circumstances, we ought to try and understand the unique experiences of other individuals.

This is not to say we will end up agreeing with them. (Cannibalism isn’t something that I suspect Inazu will be endorsing any time in the near future). However, by assuming the best of another individual, their argument may make more sense. In certain cases, empathy may make vital flaws in an argument more apparent. I suspect Inazu places this story at the start because its lessons act as themes throughout the entirety of the book. The story and Inazu’s reflection on it illuminate the importance of epistemic humility, empathy, and acknowledging our opponent’s humanity. While Learning to Disagree calls on its readers to focus on the humanity of others, the author’s own humanity comes through in its pages.

Because of the structure of Learning to Disagree, the book feels like an encounter with Inazu himself. The reader comes into contact with a unique individual with unique experiences that have led to unique beliefs, many of which the reader is likely to disagree with. Inazu in fact counts on the fact you will disagree with him. The book, focused on practical application, includes a reflection guide. One of the questions asks: “When did you disagree with the author?” (180) Not if, but when.

It’s easy to see when readers will bristle at Inazu’s own beliefs. If you are politically on the left, you will grow frustrated at Inazu’s opposition to social activism. Likewise, Inazu’s commitment to no longer swearing the pledge of allegiance (despite previously serving in the military) will irk right-leaning readers. Inazu’s openness with these unpopular opinions is didactic. Inazu’s concern is reversing the cultural tide and bringing a culture of civility and grace. To do so requires practice.

With an eye toward application, as Inazu’s own opinions and humanity are embodied in the pages of Learning to Disagree, the reader is forced to put into practice the very lessons espoused within the book while reading it. When conservative readers become aghast that Inazu demonstrates a measured openness to Critical Race Theory, they themselves must practice empathy and consider what experiences have led to Inazu’s conclusion. While explanations and insights come, Inazu lets the reader sit in discomfort. Even before setting the book down, Learning to Disagree itself proves to be a practical and helpful tool to building empathy and humility and sitting in the discomfort of disagreement as you learn to understand another individual. Hopefully, readers, I foremost among them, can learn to put into practice the important lessons from Learning to Disagree and contribute to a culture defined by civility and grace.

John Inazu’s Learning to Disagree will be released by Zondervan on April 2, 2024.

^[1]  John Inazu, Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2024), xi. Hereafter, page references to this work appear in parentheses within the text.

The attendees included pastors, professors, pundits, and policymakers, each one interested in the central question of the conference: What answers can the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition provide to questions about the common good and national flourishing?

Noticeably absent, however, was any mention of Donald Trump or Joe Biden. The overall indifference to an election cycle currently dominating the media landscape was an implicit acknowledgement that the issues facing our culture are bigger than who wins in November. Ironically, such a dire diagnosis mostly came as a great relief. Unburdened by the noxious debates that fill our social media feeds, the conference was free to address weightier themes like secularization, liberalism, and transhumanism with more time and nuance than is allowed in a typical tweet.

The speakers all seemed to agree that something new is happening in the public square. Each of them identified marriage law and transgenderism as the primary cultural concerns for Christians today. Greater attention to the natural order represents a real development in the public square. Since the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy of the early twentieth century, American evangelicals have felt the most tension with the culture over their beliefs about the supernatural. Whether by free choice or institutional barrier, affirming things like creationism and the historical resurrection of Jesus increasingly prevented many Christians from participating in elite circles of government, academia, and the fine arts. 

Today, however, it is not what Christians believe about the supernatural that ostracizes them from the public square but what they believe about nature. Go tell someone today that you believe Jesus was born of a virgin and you might be dismissed with a polite nod. Tell him you believe God made man and woman in his image, distinct, and complementary for union in marriage and you might lose your job.

Recognizing this real change in Christian public witness, most speakers focused their remarks on creation. Jennifer Patterson discussed incorporating the “grammar of creation” into public policy. Dr. Scott Redd similarly argued for “creation theory” as a more biblical account for what the classics often described in terms of natural law. Dr. James Wood, though more sympathetic to natural law, reminded us of God’s ordered relationship between church and state as revealed in Scripture and exposited by the best in the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition. Jake Meador of Mere Orthodoxy represented something of a middle ground, wanting to appropriate the best of natural law but reminding us that Christian views about marriage and gender are based in God’s love for his creation. In other words, we believe these things not simply because they’re natural but because God tells us they’re good.

Even amidst so much agreement, the conference still featured major differences between speakers and the camps within the Presbyterian and Reformed world they represent. 

In his survey of Presbyterian political thought, Wood emphasized the doctrine of circa sacra, a recognition that the civil magistrate, while not holding immediate authority over spiritual things, is responsible for upholding the conditions in which the church can flourish. Wood frequently invoked the idea of civil magistrates as “nursing fathers,” a theme Calvin pulled from Isaiah 49:23 and and the Westminster Divines confessionalized in 1643.

What implications does circa sacra have on matters like establishment, law, and religious liberty? While the tradition largely attests to the civil magistrate’s obligation to enforce both tables of the Decalogue, how does he or she do that in a pluralistic society like the one we have today? Equally important, noted Redd, was the Bible’s normative proscription against coercing faith. So what exactly constitutes coercion in modern America remains one of the major questions of our time. Are Sabbath laws coercive? What about prayers in public schools? Or, perhaps getting really practical, should Satanist statues be protected under first amendment law?

The conference also frequently returned to the issue of strategy. Patterson made the case for an “intrinsic” approach to public theology. Christians, gifted by God in particular ways, need to become experts in their fields and re-enter the public policy ecosystem. This she purposefully pitted against the “extrinsic” approach reminiscent of a certain type of mid-twentieth century evangelicalism. One might reasonably ask whether Patterson’s strategy can work in an increasingly hostile and ideological public sphere. Still, there is overlap with Aaron Renn’s hope for a new generation of Christians adequately equipped to do excellent work in the institutions and industries they once filled. 

Similarly, Meador focused most of his remarks on strategies for overcoming the deleterious effects of modern liberalism. Especially insightful was his penetrating dissection of both left-wing woke-ism (what Meador prefers to call the “successor ideology”) and Christian Nationalism. In Meador’s opinion, the two are simply different sides of the same coin. While Christian Nationalism promises to overcome the successor ideology, it will ultimately fail as it grows increasingly authoritarian and intolerant. Instead, argued Meador, Christians should resist the temptation to trade one illiberal ideology for another and focus on rigorous Christian formation and institutional management.

Despite these substantive–and sometimes pointed–critiques, the conference never once mirrored the frustration, impatience, and ad hominem attacks emblematic of similar debates online. Certainly, the event’s cordiality speaks to the character of the speakers and the attendees as well as the negative nature of online discourse. But the decision to return periodically to devotionals and the doxology also gave the conference a certain pastoral mood.

On Friday night, Rev. Porter Harlow, a PCA minister in the Washington suburbs opened the conference with remarks on the spirituality of the church, a doctrine hotly debated but undeniably true. Yes, the institutional church ought to speak on ethical issues like slavery, abortion, and gender-assignment surgery. It cannot, however, write the laws and enforce them. Those are not its duties. 

Yet, God has called many in his church into offices and vocations that directly engage the public square–elected officials, policy experts, teachers, soldiers, laborers, artists, and academics. It is imperative, Harlow argued, that Christians perform their vocational duties as obedient servants of God’s Word. There is no escaping the fact that each of us is to be like a city set on a hill wherever God has placed us.

And perhaps we have finally arrived at a more personal, existential impulse for the conference and the need for further reflection on public theology: Being a Christian is really hard right now.

Questions still need creative answering. Strategy remains a priority. But ultimately, we need the hope that flows from the grace of the Gospel. God has not given up on his creation nor his church. There is no Plan B. With his grace and the encouragement that comes from Christian fellowship may we continue to be salt and light in the public square whatever may come our way.

The game, the musical performances, and the dozens of eye-catching commercials ensures that there is something for everyone. Record-breaking numbers tell us that this year’s Super Bowl was the most popular telecast ever. As new media speeds us toward fragmentation, the Super Bowl provided a much older service—it brought us all together.

And into this American assembly spoke the He Gets Us campaign, a group of well-funded evangelicals attempting to share the story of Jesus in a new way to new generations of None’s (people who do not self-identify as part of any organized religion).

One ad in particular generated a wave of online chatter and featured several AI-generated slides depicting various scenes of foot-washing. The reference is the account in John 13:1-20 when Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. In the passage, we get a glimpse of the Savior’s humility and love for an imperfect people which is fully revealed in his atoning sacrifice on the cross.

Building off the drama of that passage, the ad idealizes modern applications including one in which a Christian cleric washes the feet of a gay man and another in which a woman has her feet washed outside an abortion facility. The point was surely a shock-and-awe tactic of showing Christian love for individuals who the culture typically perceives as victims of religious intolerance.

However, I do not wonder so much about what the campaign says about those represented in the advertisement as much as it does about those who are glaringly absent.

Missing from the campaign is anything or anyone representing the institutional church, Christ’s ordained means of gathering his people and ministering to them through Word, sacrament, and prayer. Though purportedly sharing the story of Jesus, He Gets Us presents a mostly church-less form of Christianity. There is the Jesus, the bridegroom, but where is his bride?

Of course, there are several reasons why He Gets Us would make such a choice. The first is demographics. It is no secret that younger millennials and Gen-Z are highly distrustful of institutions. Organized religion, we are told, is the source of so many calamities—abuse, violence, bigotry—that no wonder the number of de-churched and un-churched people continues to rise. Perhaps by downplaying the relevance of the church, they think they can open up opportunities to reach new groups who would otherwise never darken the doorstep of a cathedral.

The second reason is simply the nature of the group behind the campaign. He Gets Us is a project of loosely tied evangelicals working through marketing firms and unaccountable to any single Protestant denomination. As such, He Gets Us operates similarly to several evangelical efforts from the mid-twentieth century. Just as the early evangelicals wanted to differentiate themselves from the socially stigmatized fundamentalists, so too can we assume from the ad that He Gets Us wants to distinguish itself from the rest of conservative Protestantism.

Though we may applaud their evangelistic impulse, the unfortunate reality is the ad either signals that the church is irrelevant or embarrassing, neither of which is a great posture for a group trying to market itself as the truly faithful remnant.

Keeping in mind real demographic changes and assuming a noble desire to reach new people with the gospel, what would a better approach look like?

It is worth comparing the efforts of the evangelical He Gets Us campaign with its Roman Catholic counterpart. Like the foot-washing He Gets Us ad, many of the Roman Catholic Church’s Come Home videos highlight Christian acts of mercy and service to outsiders. However, the videos quickly transition to scenes from the inside including worship, the administration of the sacraments, and Christian fellowship. The message is clear: you do not get the former without the latter.

The divergence in Roman Catholic and Protestant ecclesiology certainly explains some of the differences but not all of them. Fundamentally, the contrast is that of a mood—Roman Catholics lead with their love for the church while He Gets Us, either out of indifference or embarrassment, has decided to get to that part later.

This is especially surprising considering the abuse scandals which the Roman Catholic Church has faced in recent decades as well as its adherence to many traditional doctrines about life and sexuality despite internal and external pressures to change. Generally speaking, Roman Catholics have found a way to both admit their faults and be social pariahs without compromising their views of ordination, marriage, and sexuality. And the most interesting thing is that it is working! Though the overall decline of Roman Catholic registries mirrors a similar collapse in many Protestant denominations, they are making significant inroads with younger people disillusioned by modernity and looking for antidotes in things like the Traditional Latin Mass.

Protestants can learn something here. Our culture continues to rush toward fragmentation. As it does, people will look to satisfy their natural desire for community and belonging in other things—Super Bowl’s if we’re lucky; Super PAC’s if we are not

In this ecosystem, the institutional church could prove itself a compelling witness as we gather for worship, are nourished by Word and sacrament, and equipped for every good work.

In the February, 1991 issue of The Atlantic, Wendell Berry published his essay “Out Of Your Car, Off Your Horse.” The essay is a magisterial statement on the dangers of “global thinking” and the damages that are done—ecologically, economically, and socially—to local communities in the name of corporate profit and global or national progress. For Berry, the modern industrial economy is so abstract that it does not “distinguish one place or person or creature from another.” In other words, from a global, corporate, or national perspective, people and places are mere statistics, workers are easily replaceable, and land is a simple commodity.

But Berry’s essay is not completely bleak. On one hand, he wants us to see that what we ultimately lose by thinking globally is our sense of place, purpose, and intimacy with both the land and the people around us. But, on the other hand, he also wants us to see that if we can break through this modern enchantment we will find that this sense of emptiness is a fabrication. He writes, 

“Global thinking can only do to the globe what a space satellite does to it: reduce it, make a bauble of it. Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. If you want to see where you are, you will have to get out of your space vehicle, out of your car, off your horse, and walk over the ground. On foot you will find that the earth is still satisfyingly large, and full of beguiling nooks and crannies.” 

I am bringing up Berry’s essay because it gives voice to the very real angst felt by the average modern worker who is living and working at a time when broad global thinking is the norm. If we are honest, most of us do feel the weight of the all too true reality that we as workers are easily replaceable and that the work we are doing is often itself very impersonal and abstract. This is, perhaps, doubly true for Capitol Hill staffers and those who work in public policy, for their work largely consists of analytical thinking, statistics, and mass communication. In Washington, “global thinking” is the status quo.  

But I am also bringing up Berry’s essay because I believe that its basic message in many ways mirrors the message of Psalm 90. While Berry gives voice to the feelings of futility that often accompany life and work within the globalized world in which we live, Psalm 90 gives voice to the ephemeral feelings that accompany life as a limited mortal being. In a very similar way, the psalm seeks to ground us. 

The psalm begins by contrasting the infinitude of God with the finitude of humanity: while a thousand years for God are but like a single nights watch for humanity (v. 4), our years by comparison are filled with “toil and trouble” and are “soon gone” (v. 10). In this way, the psalm echoes a broader theme within the wisdom tradition of Israel (for example, Ecclesiastes 2:20-21), noting that our life and work can often feel fleeting. Over and again, Scripture asks us to sit with the reality of our own mortal limits and the apparent meaninglessness of our life and work.

However, along with the rest of the wisdom tradition, Psalm 90 also wants us to learn a crucial and paradoxical lesson: it is only when we learn to embrace our limits that our life and work will truly begin to feel meaningful. The psalmist prays, “teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (v. 12). Armed with such wisdom, the psalm then invites us to worship God: “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” (v. 17)

By humbling us this way, Psalm 90 leads us to see that it is only by God’s grace that our life or work will bear any fruit or have any lasting impact. Such insight allows us to rest in him (rather than ourselves), trusting that he can establish the work of our hands. To the degree that we are able to do this is the degree that our work can be worshipful. 

Towards the end of his essay, Berry writes that many who want to make a difference in the world often get distracted by the “glamour” of global thinking. For Berry, those who truly wish to make a difference will have to come to terms with their own limits: “The real work of planet-saving,” he writes, “will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.” 

Psalm 90 gives us the correct framework to pursue such humbling and unnoticed work. If we can embrace our limits and trust God with the outcomes, our work then becomes an act of worship. Only then will we give ourselves over to pursuits that are far more personal and loving than they are grand and self-promoting. Only then will we begin to work primarily to the praise and glory of God. 

I picked up Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt’s latest book with trepidation. The Neo-Calvinist explosion in American evangelicalism has led to a new crop of Kuyperian disciples developing Christian visions of everything from plumbing to physics. I am thankful for their commitment to see God’s Word applied to every aspect of life. And yet, sometimes I wonder how much the Bible speaks to some of these things.

Similar thoughts raced through my brain when I opened Redeeming Vision. Does Christian theology have much to offer appreciators and patrons of art? I am pleased that Weichbrodt ably proves it does.

From the start, Weichbrodt makes it clear she is developing a theology of art for viewers. A theology of making art is an interesting concept and worth exploring but not one Weichbrodt focuses on in this book.1 Instead, her project is to articulate a theology of art for those with the task of looking at a piece of art and discerning its meaning. 

The very idea of prescribing the viewer’s role is itself fraught with assumptions and expectations. Who decides the art’s meaning? Is it the artist? The curator? Or is it each individual onlooker? Is meaning and beauty completely objective, or is there a subjective aspect? 

These are important questions which Weichbrodt addresses albeit in a slightly indirect but more interesting way. 

Three components come together to form Weichbrodt’s redeeming vision: embodied vision, loving vision, and transforming vision. 

Embodied vision recognizes the reality of our creatureliness. “We know through our bodily experience of the material world,” Weichbrodt reminds us (13). God made man and woman with limits and called them good. We exist in time and space, we think and we feel, and we are born into situations and circumstances beyond our control. Rather than vainly detach ourselves from these realities, embodied vision leans into them as we consider a piece of art which is itself a material object created by another embodied soul. 

If embodied vision recognizes who we are, loving vision acknowledges what we were made to do. Thus, loving vision “addresses our motivation,” says Weichbrodt (15). As disciples of Christ, we take our cue from Jesus who summarized the entire law as loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind and loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40). Love for God and neighbor draws us out of ourselves. When applied within a theology of viewing art, it means “that we refuse to make ourselves the center of an encounter with an artwork” (15). Thus, loving vision (emphasizing the value of the object) moderates our embodied vision (emphasizing the value of the subject). 

Finally, vision cannot be redeeming if it is not transforming. In other words, the act of viewing art is never static but always “generative” (12). Something happens, or at least should happen, if we are looking with redeeming vision. “We should expect to be changed,” says Weichbrodt (17). Here Weichbrodt refreshingly articulates a thoroughly Protestant metaphysics: we believe spiritual truth and change can be mediated through material things. As heirs to the Reformation, we stress the doctrine of justification, but we should never forget that it was our sacramentology that separated us from Rome as much as anything. As the author and theologian Brad Littlejohn has argued so well, it is not that Protestants reject Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. We simply wonder why Catholics deny the real presence of bread and wine.2 

Art is not a divinely ordered sacrament, but the Holy Spirit works through art to grow our appreciation for God’s holiness, challenge idols, convict us of sin, and sanctify our hearts just as he uses other created things like the stars in the sky (Psalm 8) or a needy adversary (Proverbs 25:21-22). Of course, natural revelation is insufficient on its own—a point Weichbrodt emphasizes again and again. Redeeming vision remains Word-centric, testing all things against God’s supernatural and inerrant Word.

The rest of the book applies redeeming vision to a plethora of examples. Weichbrodt helpfully demonstrates that the great diversity of art is not a barrier to redeeming vision. Both Polykleitos’s Head of a Youth and Piet Mandarin’s Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red and Gray can challenge our idols; it does not matter that one is a very old statue while the other is a relatively modern painting. Genre paintings and photographs can equally soften our judgment of others as we humbly acknowledge people are far more complex than we sometimes allow. 

Overall, these chapters are incredibly effective. They successfully inspired in me a desire to go out and practice the skills I had learned throughout the book. But perhaps even more than that, Redeeming Vision is an exciting alternative to the two fronts of the culture war which wages on within the art world. 

On the one hand, it is a positive approach for judging specific pieces of art, giving us a substantive criterion for evaluating art that does not revert to blanket rejection or approval. We need not look at the entirety of visual art and determine every piece equally capable of inspiring holiness. Nor must we reject all non-Christian art as incapable of mediating spiritual truth. Applying redeeming vision leads us to evaluate art based on how well it accomplishes the artist’s goals or on the merits of those goals themselves.

And on the other, it is a constructive attitude to the world of art which right now rewards deconstructionism.

As the late, great aesthete Roger Scruton once remarked, so much of modern art is intoxicated with its own ugliness. Such is the case not simply because modern artists deny the transcendentals (In fact, I doubt very few would outright reject categories of goodness, truth, or beauty). Rather, so few artists today reach beyond the ambition of provoking discomfort. Deconstructing is the point. The art rarely speaks to the possibility of a more humane future other than by adopting the political persuasions of the artist. Thus, it is really propaganda and propaganda is so rarely inspiring. 

Redeeming vision challenges both patrons and artists to reach deeper, to the very depths of the human soul, and to investigate our shared human nature, our mutual need for salvation, and the universal hope of redemption.

Photo by Anthony Gucciardi on Unsplash

In this story, the man had agreed to be a reference for his friend and was subsequently contacted by the FBI, or the CIA, or the DoJ, one of the alphabet soup agencies. During the conversation he was asked a set of questions that were by and large predictable, but at the end, before the conversation concluded, he was asked a question he did not expect: Had he ever been inside his friend’s home? A bit confused he asked the caller why that mattered. This person responded that over time the agency had learned that while applicants may have a personal reference with social relationships, many of these contacts had never actually been into their friend’s home. So while it was possible to get to know someone over a coffee or beer, as part of a club or rec league, knowing someone in their own home was indicative of a much deeper sort of relationship. 

Homes are meant to be places of safety and security; we are discerning about who we let in. They are places of rest; we want to leave work at the office or close the laptop for good. They’re a retreat from the world; a place where we don’t always have to be on guard. But they can also be places where we isolate, hide, and keep people out. To let someone in is to risk vulnerability. And if the old jokes and jabs are right, men are especially wary of relational vulnerability. 

In its own way, this fear of being known revealed itself on the national stage several weeks ago when Rolling Stone wrote a piece on the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. The subject of the article was a story, which when properly interpreted, was about the Congressman and his son’s relationship and how he sought to be an example for him in terms of living according to the Christian sexual ethic. However, in what was either utter negligence or deliberately misleading the reader, the Rolling Stone said that Mike Johnson “admitted that he and his son monitored each other’s porn intake.” The journalist went on to call such actions “creepy Big Brother-ness.” There’s no need to give further in depth analysis of this hit piece. But suffice it to say, Mike Johnson, regardless of what you may think of his politics, is not an Orwellian arch-villain  or parental deviant. 

What the Representative and his son were practicing is what Christians normally refer to as “accountability.” This is a practice engaged by Christians as they pursue progressive sanctification and seek to be more like Jesus in their daily lives. It is an openness with a brother or sister in Christ to protect oneself from sin and live unto righteousness. It is a way to live in the light. It is a type of confession among the priesthood of all believers. It is a way of practicing spiritual hospitality and allowing someone into the home of your soul. 

The author at the Rolling Stone, and a fair number of readers, were apparently shocked that self-identifying Christian men would download an app on their phones in order to allow a friend to surveil them. Why would anyone do that? Why give up that sort of privacy? Why allow someone that level of access to your life? Why risk the embarrassment? Such questions betray the sad reality that men are missing out on or avoiding close confidants and substantive friendships. 

The answer to these questions are given to us by Scripture. Proverbs 18:24 says, “there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” While there might be fear around the sort of vulnerability accountability entails, our souls deeply desire this. One can only imagine the joy and awe that overcame the apostles when, in John 15:15, Jesus told them, “I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” In our desire for friendship, we cannot expect the depth we hope for without disclosure. 

One thing this article and its response illustrated was that intimacy, especially the intimacy that comes from accountability, is missing from the lives of most American men. To many, this comes as no surprise. There has been an increasing number of articles and books and media reports on the phenomenon of male loneliness. In his recent book, Of Boys and Men, Brookings scholar Richard Reeves reports, among other things, that men report far fewer friends than their demographic from several decades ago. Earlier this year Christine Emba of The Washington Post wrote a piece entitled, “Men are Lost: Here’s a Map out of the Wilderness.” I cite these two authors, who are on the left end of the spectrum, because concern around men falling behind, or male loneliness, or “the war on men” has traditionally been the concern of conservatives. But no longer it seems. It seems that secular outlets are picking up on something that many Christians have known for a long long time: that men need close relationships with other men. 

This concern around male loneliness is unlikely to resolve itself anytime soon, but Christians should be encouraged that we have practices to help us and those around us. Accountability is one way we can do this. It might seem foreign to the world, but so too did caring for widows and orphans at one point. Unfamiliar does not mean ineffective. Let’s engage with the brotherhood of believers with depth and transparency in order to be a shining city on a hill.

As Charlie Brown intuits, consumption is too small a reason for the season. We recognize this as well. Concerns about the commercialization of Christmas are now so frequent they’re become almost cliche. Many families have already taken a stand against commercialization, limiting the numbers of gifts that go under the tree and re-directing more of their money and attention to charity and community service.

More prescient in A Charlie Brown Christmas is the subtle critique of another claim on Christmas. Early in the special, Charlie Brown seeks assistance from his “frenemy” Lucy. He’s depressed, and Lucy offers “psychiatric help” for the bargain price of five cents.

After hilariously rolling through a list of possible phobias which might be causing Charlie Brown’s distress, she eventually diagnoses him with a lack of involvement. The reason Charlie Brown feels as if there’s no real meaning to Christmas is that he hasn’t fashioned one for himself yet.

Though commercial therapy was relatively new when A Charlie Brown Christmas was released, it rightfully foreshadows our own therapeutic age—not being in therapy is just as stigmatized today as seeking psychological care was in the sixties!

For Lucy, and the modern men and women she represents, the meaning of Christmas is whatever we make it. On her invitation, Charlie Brown throws himself into directing the school Christmas play. He soon realizes, however, that the children aren’t concerned with getting the biblical narrative right. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the angels are simply the raw material for telling their own story—one that apparently includes Beethoven, penguins, and a Christmas queen.

That same meaning-making approach to Christmas persists today. Consider Marks & Spencer’s recent “Love Thismas” commercial. In the advertisement, prominent celebrities are shown preparing their homes for Christmas celebrations. Many of the traditional elements are present—ornaments on trees, the construction of gingerbread houses, and family gatherings. Except, there are other things that the spokespeople are obviously tired of doing. The commercial ends with the celebrities gleefully destroying Christmas cards and elves on shelves, often at another’s expense. Do you hate playing silly board games with your nephew? Then just chuck it into a fish tank!

The message is clear: This Christmas, make the holiday meaningful for you. Do the things you want to do. The reason for the season is you.

Ironically, Lucy’s meaning-making advice is more indulgent than commercialization. The reality is that we can’t fashion a private meaning to Christmas that ends in anything but complete narcissism. The meaning of Christmas, if it should be meaningful at all, must be something we receive.

The Marks & Spencer’s commercial upends the point of Christmas. Far from being about self-indulgence, Christmas celebrates the greatest act of selflessness in cosmic history (Philippians 2:5-11). The holy Son of God took on human flesh and came to dwell among us. Jesus was born to die so that he might save his people from their sins. This is the meaning of Christmas which Linus so humbly and beautifully articulates at the end of the film.

The meaning of Christmas is objective—something we either receive or reject. Regardless, the incarnation is reality and bears upon our lives. As Daniel Doriani has said so well, “God entered human history, declaring that he is the God with whom we have to do. Immanuel is more than a title: it is a declaration that God has entered our realm and that we must reckon with him.”1

That is the meaning of Christmas. Jesus has entered the record of human history so that he might transform our little Charlie-Brown-tree-like hearts into magnificent Tannenbaums to our salvation and for his glory. This is what Christmas is all about.

Image credit: Flickr

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly—John 10:10 (KJV)

Around the year 544, a Roman statesman named Cassiodorus founded a new monastery near the city of Squillace in southern Italy. He was determined to advance an ambitious new vision of Christian education. His curriculum consisted of two parts: biblical study and exploration of the liberal arts. After mastering both, his students would join “a new generation of Christian scholars” equipped for a life of excellence in this life and the life to come.1

Cassiodorus called the monastery The Vivarium. A vivarium is an enclosed space where creatures are given the resources for their own flourishing and observed so that we can learn more about what kind of thing they are and what they are meant to do.

The Vivarium was a profound statement by Cassiodorus about what he believed humans needed to thrive, what learning those things revealed about the human condition, and what man could accomplish when he was equipped with such knowledge. Scripture and the liberal arts. Not two isolated enterprises but distinct disciplines each mutually reinforcing the others. Knowing God and knowing man.

While the Bible certainly teaches us a lot about what it means to be human (See Genesis 1-3 for example), the liberal arts (or humanities as we often call them today) “grasp human things in human terms.”2

In other words, the humanities help explain humanity to itself. So, it is no surprise that the terribly anti-human culture we inhabit today coincides with a complete destruction of the humanities across the West.

Humanities departments are failing to attract students. Speaking about his own discipline, Wilfred McClay credits capitulation to political ideology for the decline. The study of history has been “weaponized” to placate the new progressivist gods and useful for the “mindless sloganeering of protestors who can only repeat a memorized chant.”3 Activists obsessed with intersectionality and critical theory actually tear down monuments and statues in the name of history. The discipline has cannibalized itself.

What is true of history is true of other fields. Just as history has become anti-history, so have the humanities become anti-human. In their delusion, they think human nature is infinitely malleable and demand utopia now. What is the result of their efforts? Moral relativism, an oppressive speech regime, and a debased culture of self-gratification mirroring the worst horrors of Orwell and Huxley.

We ignore the wisdom of our fathers at our own peril. We might think we are morally superior to those who have gone before us, but there are timeless truths to learn from the likes of Aristotle, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and others—lessons about pride and power, virtue and love that do not change from one generation to the next.

This connection between education and culture that I am describing is not original to me. The idea is as old as Plato and runs through C. S. Lewis.

In Book II of The Republic, Socrates asks Glaucon, “How will the men of their ideal city be educated?” If he is serious about having a just city, Glaucon must commit himself to forming just men. According to Socrates, pedagogy determines your polis.4

Lewis agrees. In Abolition of Man, Lewis begins by noting a lesson in a particular grammar textbook for secondary school students. The authors of the textbook submit that a truth claim like “The waterfall is sublime” only conveys sentiments. We can’t actually speak objectively about the good, the true, or the beautiful because they are simply an expression of subjective feelings.5

Lewis, of course, saw through the authors’s scheme. While rejecting the traditional values under the guise of subjectivism, they were really asserting their own set of values as objective. For Lewis, it was an obvious form of tyranny that would tear apart the social order and eventually lead to the complete destruction of mankind.

Plato and Lewis help us understand the inherent connection between liberal education and culture. But grasping human things on human terms, as necessary as it is, is not enough. There is another, much more spiritual connection between the humanities and the good life. Plato and Lewis understood it. So did Cassiodorus. It is why he had his students as The Vivarium study special revelation as well. True knowledge of man leads us to the higher knowledge of God.

Calvin gets at something similar in the first chapter of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. “The whole sum of our wisdom,” Calvin says, “broadly consists of two parts, knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves.” The latter will inevitably lead to the former since its purpose “is to show us our weakness, misery, vanity and evilness, to fill us with despair, distrust and hatred of ourselves, and then to kindle in us the desire to seek God, for in him is found all that is good and of which we ourselves are empty and deprived.”6

Determining what is good starts in one of two places. Either we seek the answer within or find it outside ourselves. The former inevitably leads to subjectivism and the destruction of the very thing it seeks. Therefore, the good must be objective. And if it is objective, it must stand outside ourselves. We can’t manifest it. It must be received: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).

So let’s connect the dots.

Culture mirrors education. If man grasps the immutable facets of human things on human terms, he will order society accordingly. But true knowledge of humanity culminates in the knowledge of God. The two are inseparable.

The breakdown of our social order parallels a similar interruption in the chain above. For too long, we have tricked ourselves into thinking we could have the benefits of a God-fearing culture without fearing God. We have partitioned off the knowledge of man from the knowledge of God and lost both in the process. The high wall of separation between the sacred and the secular has grown so tall that it has blocked out the light. We are restless, and so we will remain until we find rest in God.

Possible solutions abound. Let me propose one for the church: we need to facilitate new vivariums.

Such a task is not a repudiation of the sufficiency of Scripture. After all, human reflections on the reality of human nature should never contradict the Bible but complement and apply it. Still, we need to be the place where those who seek answers find them: answers about who man is and how he finds his ultimate end in the glory of God.

Writing at Mere Orthodoxy, Stiven Peter also encourages the church to embrace helping humans with human things:

Our Culture does not give guidance on how to interact with the opposite sex.  The Church should aid in modeling romance, flourishing marriages, and fulfilling family life.  Zero-child households are becoming the norm. The Church, in response, should be saying, “Here is how you date. Let us help you. Here is how we've married. Let us help you. Here is how we've parented, let us help you." Our Culture is marked by profound loneliness. The Church should model generous hospitality and deep commitment to the community. Our Culture does not know how to have hope in times of adversity. The Church should model suffering and perseverance. No one else is going to repair these institutions. Only the Church can.7

But helping humans with human things requires a shared language of human nature. We cannot administer CPR to a dying culture if we haven’t been taught the proper techniques. We need to build up those muscles that have atrophied under liberal secularism with a steady diet of nutrients (Scripture) and exercise (liberal arts). Perhaps then we will be ready to take on the anti-human culture with a better vision of the good life and point them to the source of every good gift.

A number of thinkers and academics have written extensively about our attachment to screens and social media. In May 2022 Jonathan Haidt published a widely circulated piece in the Atlantic describing the social and politically fragmenting effects of social media. In his own words, “The story I have told is bleak.” Indeed it is difficult to find someone who isn’t looking to decrease their daily screen time. This generation’s devices are the last generation’s cigarettes. 

When it comes to Christian publications and websites we find similar responses. Concerns are raised around the consumption and creation of online content. It is rightly understood that we are too attached. The cautions offered often include community considerations. The more time we spend on our cell phones the less time we spend interacting with one another. Conversations with people thousands of miles away anger us like they’re sitting across the living room. Devices so often remove us cerebrally even while we are present corporeally. 

To name another, there are concerns around covetousness. Whether it be Amazon or Instagram, our interaction with the app puts on parade what we don’t have. A vacation someone else took that you cannot afford. A standard of beauty or physique that is unrealistic and most often unattainable. A new item drastically marked down on Cyber Monday that looks amazing. We’re made to want. 

At root, or beneath these concerns is the fear that in using our devices we are actually worshiping them. But is this actually correct? Is there possibly a different danger to the way we use our technology? 

I believe there is and that it is just as pernicious and perhaps even more damaging. It seems that inasmuch as cell phones can become objects of worship, they are just as often objects of our deification. That is, our cell phones and computers make us think we’re gods. 

As with other gods, their perceived power is equivalent to the devotion of its worshipers. The greater the worship, the greater the power. And so we catch ourselves reaching unconsciously for our phones, tablets, or computers. We need them not always because we worship them, but because they give us a sense of deification that, once we’ve tasted, we find difficult to live without. 

The power and control I have at my fingertips, or in my palms, is truly awesome. In terms of place, I can be omnipresent. In just a few clicks I can be anywhere in the world, or even the universe, thanks to the new Webb telescope. In terms of knowledge, I can be omniscient. A few google searches and I’ve found the answer to most anything I want. In terms of power, well at least socially I can control whatever image I want people to have of me. Even on Zoom, I can make myself invisible by turning off my camera or silence anyone I don’t want to hear. We haven’t even mentioned the added power of augmented and virtual reality. 

In addition to control, technology and cell phones train me to expect my demands will be immediately met. Long gone are the 5-7 day shipping times. Thanks to Amazon, if I don’t get my cat coasters by tomorrow I’m going to lose my mind. There is a demand for my desires to be met without delay, and in a sense technology delivers on this. From streaming music and movies to clothing purchase and plane tickets, I can get what I want the moment I want it. 

A problem arises when we step away from our screens and onto the streets, or even into the homes and communities in which we live. The power we assumed we had does not bear itself out in the real, flesh and blood world. The importance of patience, a virtue unbecoming a god, is required to love our neighbor as ourselves. Kindness is needed when dealing with others that does not make sense when interacting with chatbots and algorithms. 

Too much attachment to technology causes us to forget the words of Psalm 8: “What is man that you are mindful of him?” Used in the wrong ways, ways alluded to above, and we forget that we are creatures inhabiting a world given to us by an omnibenevolent Creator. To remind ourselves of this we need to make a deliberate practice of doing without digital technology for some portion of our week. Even if it’s only hours in a day.  

I’m a luddite more in function than in principle. I barely tap into all the potential my phone and computer can do. And while I wonder about the implication of a storm of images and constant intake of videos, I like being able to call my parents while walking through D.C. and FaceTiming my nephew. 

There is certainly reason to question the moral limits of technological advancement, but that’s not this essay. The question for this essay is how are our technologies changing the way we see ourselves. We are finite, we are mortal, we are needy. Much of technology wants us to forget this.

One aspect of modern evangelicalism that would benefit from the “clean sea breeze” of historical perspective is its conception of politics, specifically the relationship between church and state.2 As I’ve written elsewhere, concern for being labeled a “Christian Nationalist” has led some evangelicals to make wildly ahistorical claims, like calling “antichrist” any combination of civil and religious power.3

To anathematize everything but the absolute separation of church and state makes sense for certain theologically-committed Baptists, but what about those who claim the inheritance of the magisterial reformers—Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians?4 Why must we accept a baptized version of radical secularism?

The simple answer is that we don’t.

Several theories have tried to explain the predominance of anabaptist political theology, some better than others.5 Below, I’ll try to offer my own which focuses less on denominational or socio-political differences and more on historical and theological presuppositions. By reexamining the history that grounds evangelical politics, my goal is to clear the dross for a coherent political theology—what I call Reformation politics.

In 2015, Russell Moore published a provocative column arguing against cultural Christianity. “Mayberry leads to hell just as surely as Gomorrah does,” Moore wrote.6 Key to Moore’s argument is one of the core commitments of separatism, namely that cultural or political establishment necessarily corrupts the church:

Christianity isn’t normal anymore, and that’s good news. The Book of Acts, like the Gospels before it, shows us that the Christianity thrives when it is, as Kierkegaard put it, a sign of contradiction. Only a strange gospel can differentiate itself from the worlds we construct. But the strange, freakish, foolish old gospel is what God uses to save people and to resurrect churches (1 Cor. 1:20-22).

For Moore, Christianity thrives when it is an antithesis to the culture. And as far as he is concerned, history is on his side:

Christianity didn’t come from Mayberry in the first place, but from a Roman Empire hostile to the core to the idea of a crucified and resurrected Messiah. We’ve been on the wrong side of history since Rome, and it was enough to turn the world upside down.

Moore’s view is representative of the popular evangelical historiography taught in many Christian schools, seminaries, and churches today. Per this narrative, the early church was independent and uncorrupted, washed pure by the blood of its martyrs. Its ethic, radically different from that of the Roman Empire, won many adherents to its cause. Then, Constantine the Great converted (a dubious claim at best) and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christendom sullied the church’s purity with political power, led to missional drift and theological compromise, and culminated in ecclesial atrophy and political violence. If not for the resistance of a few, brave churchman, the flame of the true Gospel would surely have died out. Sound familiar?

One consequence of the evangelical narrative is that it implicitly turns America’s own founding 1,500 years later into the restoration of the evangelical ideal. Disestablishment and the separation of church are no longer understood to be prudential judgments by statesmen of their time but biblical prescriptions for evangelical witness and doctrinal purity. Ironically, in the hope of disentangling the church from American politics, it baptizes a form of American exceptionalism.7

The problem with the evangelical narrative, however, is that it is wrong—or, at the very least, missing some crucial facts. A more informed understanding of church history offers significant counterfactuals.

The first point of the evangelical narrative worth interrogating is the assumption that ecclesial independence necessarily leads to doctrinal purity.

Passages like Acts 15 indicate that the early church existed independently of political authority. But apparently independence did not prevent theological innovation. Over and again, Paul warns his audience about “false teachers” and encourages them to hold fast to the Gospel they received from him. Clearly, rampant heresy was already an issue long before Constantine became a Christian.

America’s own strange history with religion reveals a similar pattern. Our nation has been home to Unitarians, Universalists, Quakers, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses—not to mention more nefarious sects like the Branch Davidians and The Peoples Temple. But proving separatism’s impotence against heresy does not prove the opposite, as if establishment always prevents it. Deviation from true doctrine seems inevitable in a fallen world. The question is how to best limit its reach.

The second feature of the evangelical narrative is not so much an assumption as it is deliberately erasing the role of civil magistrates in theology and history.

According to the evangelical narrative, true Christianity always overcomes its opponents (usually civil authorities) by the faithful witness of believers and the audacity of extraordinary churchmen. But is that the whole story?

In his new book, Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, historian Peter Heather investigates that very question: Did Christianity take over the European continent solely because of its superior ethic and persuasiveness? If so, why are so many in the West de-converting from the church in such staggering numbers?

Heather offers enough evidence to suggest other factors contributed to Christianity’s initial popularity. Key among them was the establishment of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire which significantly lowered the barriers to conversion, especially among the movers and shakers of Roman culture. While we ought not discount the powerful witness of martyrs willing to die for their beliefs, we cannot ignore the fact that Constantine’s conversion “provided an extremely powerful mechanism that dramatically accelerated the overall process of elite conversion.”8

Moreover, political establishment actually bolstered theological orthodoxy. It was Constantine who convened and oversaw the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, providing able theologians like Athanasius the platform to roundly disprove heresies like Arianism. But the fledgling church also benefited from Constantine’s enforcement of Nicene orthodoxy through anti-heresy and blasphemy laws.

In fact, the history of theology demonstrates that those who successfully defended doctrinal purity almost always had the protection of dependable civil magistrates. Martin Luther was a formidable challenge to the papal see, but it is hard to imagine how successful he would have been without the support of Frederick the Wise. Calvinists in France, England, Poland, and Hungary learned quickly that “the new faith would only go as far as rulers would allow.”9 Where civil magistrates supported Reformation, the Protestant faith flourished.

So how should we understand America’s own history of disestablishment? Most importantly, America’s unique religious policy was not so much a repudiation of Christendom as it was a prudential judgment by its founders for the sake of a pluralistic nation’s common good.10

Remember that the first amendment originally only applied at the federal level. State governments retained church establishments long after it was ratified. Even the decision by early American Presbyterians to revise Chapter XXIII of the Westminster Confession of Faith did not prevent them from affirming a symbiotic relationship between church and state.

For example, the first General Assembly of the newly formed Presbyterian Church in the United States wrote to President George Washington and gave thanks for their mutual commitment to the Gospel:

We therefore esteem it a peculiar happiness to behold in our chief Magistrate, a steady, uniform, avowed friend of the christian religion, who has commenced his administration in rational and exalted sentiments of Piety, and who in his private conduct adorns the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ, and on the most public and solemn occasions devoutly acknowledges the government of divine Providence.11

Athanasius and Constantine. Luther and Frederick. Witherspoon and Washington. The overwhelming evidence of church history is a pattern of faithful civil magistrates defending and promoting faithful churchmen in their efforts to proclaim the Word of God and preserve orthodoxy.

The best historical examples, though imperfect in their own ways, comport well with the biblical ideal. Far from being antitheses, Scripture imagines a symbiotic relationship between church and state. The church preaches the Gospel, administers the sacraments, and disciplines her members. The state supports her work by defending her right to do so (at the very least) as well as punishing wickedness and promoting good (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:14). In return Christians humbly submit to their political authorities (1 Peter 2:13; Titus 3:1) and pray for them (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

The implicit idea is that Christian magistrates best secure the conditions for human flourishing because they govern justly according to God’s moral law. And Christian citizens are the best guardians of freedom because their public virtue supports their capacity for self-government. Together, they both rely on the power of the Word to transform hearts and bring Christ’s kingdom to bear on earth as it is in heaven.

This is Reformation politics.