Introduction: If you assume that secular society is an actual possibility, which is a big suppose, one of the first things you have to do is ignore the outliers. In other words, diversity is great, and will continue to be great, just so long as nobody leans too far to the right or left in …
Natural Marriage and the Obergefall
Introduction: I confess myself a bit surprised at the reaction I have gotten from my recent interaction with Russell Moore’s apparent position on the aftermath of Obergefell. But what that reaction confirms to me is that the Christian opposition to secularism really needs to work through some of the foundational issues of political theology. Those …
A Most Crucial Hyphen
Stop obsessing about the election. Let’s talk about something else for a bit. I tell you what, let’s talk about church unity. Let’s divide over it! Actually, Peter Leithart continues to be kind enough to engage with my critiques of The End of Protestantism, which he has done most recently here. There are any number …
The Purported End of Protestantism
Introduction: In the Acknowledgments of The End of Protestantism, Peter Leithart mentions the privilege he had of debating with me at New St. Andrews last year on the issues surrounding the thesis of this, his most recent book. Now that I have the book, I have to say the privilege is all mine—but the debate …
Russell Moore’s Tectonic Plates
Introduction: So I watched Russell Moore’s Erasmus Lecture for First Things, which you can see here, and there are many things to say about it. But many of them are, truth be told, positive, and so I would like to begin with that. His talk was informed, learned, thoughtful, insightful, and balanced. I would want …
7 Encouraging Words in Case 2016 Has Got You Down
So the best thing to do is assume that if you have any sense in your head at all, you are reluctant even to turn on the news anymore. “How could they possibly have made things worse?” seems like it ought to be a rhetorical question. But every single night they are up to the …
The Ponies Are Free
Thomas Sowell has done wonderful work in describing the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives. He describes it as the difference between an unconstrained vision of man and a constrained vision. The French revolution was a model of the unconstrained vision, and the American revolution was a model of the constrained vision. In the former, …
500 Pounds of Stratosphere
We are now at that stage of our cultural devolutionary farce when, any day now, some bright kid is going to wear a tee-shirt to his government school, and on that tee-shirt a message will be emblazoned, and the message will read “endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and he will be sent …
Tearing Up the Pea Patch
Introduction When Ben-hadad came against Israel, this is how the Scriptures describe the set up. “And the children of Israel were numbered, and were all present, and went against them: and the children of Israel pitched before them like two little flocks of kids; but the Syrians filled the country” (1 Kings 20:27). Appearances can …
Too Many Delicatuli
The central thing that believing Christians have to learn in our current cultural challenges is how to deal with the full court press. We have to learn how to break the press. At the same time, in order to do this successfully, we have to learn how to dismiss irrelevancies. We do not need to …