God has fashioned the world in such a way that we always have to come down to the point. However much we might want to obscure the issues, however much we might build great universities with trained brains to cover everything in a dark mist, however much we reward those pundits who make ample room …
Tolerance as a Christian Virtue
There are two basic points to make about tolerance as a civic virtue. The first is logical and the second historical. The logical point is that tolerance cannot be a free-floating virtue. This is because no virtue (or vice either) can be found in a transitive verb. It is not a matter of whether you …
A Decorated Altar is Still a Cold One
From the very beginning the Christian faith has had to deal with imposters who gain control of the governmental mechanisms of the church, doing so in order to undermine the entire point of the Church. Think, for example, of Diotrephes, who would put out of the church anybody who had even voted in favor of …
The Tallest Pole Out There
Temptations in the arena of worldly striving and carnal ambition do not cease simply because you have “left the world,” and have joined the perfect church, or attached yourself to some edgy inner city monastery, or have become a hermit in a hut. You might go clean outside the city, like St. Simeon Stylites, and …
Crooked Little Hearts
I believe I have done more than my share of trying to damn and blast the idolatrous notions of American exceptionalism. Americans have ten toes like everybody else, Americans put their trousers on one leg at a time like everybody else, and Americans have crooked little hearts like everybody else. The Founders were exceptional men …
Blood Up to the Horses’ Bridles
So what do I mean by mere Christendom exactly? I mean a public and formal recognition of the authority of Jesus Christ that repudiates the principles of secularism, and which avoids both hard sectarianism and easy latitudinarianism both. Easier said than done, but there it is. That is what we have to do, and we …
News Flash: Secularists Support Secularism
To believe in the inevitability of anything is to have a doctrine of history. To deny that one has a doctrine of history and yet to hold to the inevitability of anything is to take back with one hand what you gave with the other. Secularism, the idea that a civilization can function for an …
European Style Cancer
A common rallying cry for conservative activists, including Christians, is that we need “to take America back.” Okay, sign me up. Take America back where? Generally the point is that we need to take America back from the liberals and progressives — the secularists in the academy, the homosexuals in the streets, and the raunchy …
A Carnival of Pillage
“And thus all have confessed that no government can be happily established unless piety is the first concern; and that those laws are preposterous which neglect God’s right and provide only for men” (Calvin, Institutes 4.20.9). And, as we see unfolding in Congress right this minute, a group of men who have no fear of …
Tackle Gear Attached to Head and Neck
Just a few more comments about The Manhattan Declaration. I was asked to respond to John Stackhouse’s dismissal of the whole thing as just one more iteration of “been there, done that” Religious Rightism. There are two things to say about his reasoning. The first is that he maintains that he is on the side …