The Protestant tradition possesses the resources to hold together the epistemological poles of creation and revelation. And it is those resources that Christians must draw upon to build a lasting, theologically compelling rejoinder to what’s commonly called wokeness.
Is Power Abusive?
Repairing Our Cultural Ruins
I think that we would do well to reclaim this Nehemian vision of Eliot’s—rebuilding our culture through rebuilding our families. Perhaps we find ourselves reading about the means for restoring order in our chaotic time precisely because we have not heeded the importance of our homes.
What is a Woman?
For Christians to truly hold fast to what is good, to truly seek the good of their neighbors, then they must hate what is evil. They must hate the evil lies promoted by transgender activists. Out of love for others and love for the truth, Christians must refuse to speak the lies of transgender ideology.
John Witherspoon, Protestant Statesman
John Witherspoon provides a realistic vision of Protestant political engagement which is beholden neither to a belief in national election nor to Enlightenment anthropocentrism with its claim of a neutral public square. In this biography of Witherspoon readers will encounter a model Protestant statesman who embodies both our theological convictions and the principles of government which shaped our nation’s political character.
Church
The Protestant tradition possesses the resources to hold together the epistemological poles of creation and revelation. And it is those resources that Christians must draw upon to build a lasting, theologically compelling rejoinder to what’s commonly called wokeness.
Leaders and messengers of the SBC need to start having reasoned discussions about these matters now. The SBC will need leaders who have discernment, moral clarity and a backbone. Those running for leadership in the SBC must use their platforms in the coming two weeks to lead the way on deliberations about proposing constructive paths forward.
The Church of the New Awakening begins with the desire to make moral stain an “identity group” problem, in the mistaken belief that the world can be purified through group purgation. Absent the One-Sufficient-Mediator, the Divine scapegoat who takes away the sins of the world for all time, new groups will need to be offered up after the first one fades from view.
Protestants can and should use natural law arguments to help society pursue and protect the common good of all people. By pursuing and protecting the common good of society, peace in the earthly realm is promoted and protected. This allows for the freedom peacefully and publicly to present the Gospel to all men, which all Christians should desire. As such, natural law can be used not only to promote civil goods, but also eternal good.
Culture
I think that we would do well to reclaim this Nehemian vision of Eliot’s—rebuilding our culture through rebuilding our families. Perhaps we find ourselves reading about the means for restoring order in our chaotic time precisely because we have not heeded the importance of our homes.
For Christians to truly hold fast to what is good, to truly seek the good of their neighbors, then they must hate what is evil. They must hate the evil lies promoted by transgender activists. Out of love for others and love for the truth, Christians must refuse to speak the lies of transgender ideology.
The average person in America can sense that something has changed profoundly in the era since Obama won his second term. They might not be sure what it is, how to describe it, or what to do about it, but they know it’s there. While the market for denialism and business as usual is still big, it’s shrinking by the day as people look for ideas that will actually help them figure out how to live in today’s cultural moment.
Let the reader understand: although the first sip of deconstruction and postmodernism will taste like mastery and liberation, relativism and nihilism are waiting for you at the bottom of the glass.
Family
When I began my academic career, traditional Christian teachings on sexuality were embraced by the majority of my evangelical students even if they often struggled, as I did, to live up to them. That no longer appears to be the case.
Marriage and family life may be the arenas of human life where the ongoing work of sanctification plays out most vividly. They cannot make human beings holy, but they open the human heart to accept God’s grace and to understand it.
One of the core insights of From Tolerance to Equality is the way in which the homosexual acceptance movement presented itself as a struggle by an oppressed underdog against social injustice even though the core of its support came from corporations, government bureaucracies, the wealthy, and the powerful in society rather than the working classes and politically marginalized.
Many Christians, rightly concerned about the state of society, fail to begin in the very place where they can actually have a significant impact: their own homes. If we cannot get our homes in order what makes us think we will ever be able to get our communities, states, and nations in order? Even more importantly, of course, the eternal well-being of our children is at stake.
Society
There was a time when politics was understood not simply as the maneuverings of special interest groups seeking power, but as a way of talking about the best ways for human beings to live together in the world. Yoram Hazony’s new book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, is firmly situated in this older understanding of politics. It is also a brilliant, moving, and compelling account of what it means to be a conservative in today’s world
Baptists will also be faced with very real questions about who will best represent them in the public square on something as straightforward as abortion. Like it or not, abortion is the area where those who hold the keys to institutional power in the SBC have decided to double-down in defying the will of the messengers.
The view of politics I am promoting here does not mean that the ends justify the means. No; but we need to be clearer about the proper ends of political action. Again, our political stances should not be developed, articulated, and pursued primarily in view of minimizing offense so that the gospel can be heard.
When a problem is posed—for DiAngelo the key issue is race or skin color, but no real solution is offered, we have a recipe for cultural disaster and chaos. It is—in a sense—bad news with no good news whatsoever. Even through DiAngelo’s understanding of the problem is not as deep as Augustine’s, there is no meaningful solution whatsoever.
State
John Witherspoon provides a realistic vision of Protestant political engagement which is beholden neither to a belief in national election nor to Enlightenment anthropocentrism with its claim of a neutral public square. In this biography of Witherspoon readers will encounter a model Protestant statesman who embodies both our theological convictions and the principles of government which shaped our nation’s political character.
Traditionalist conservatives today face a paradox. On the one hand, as conservatives, they have inherited a habit of healthy suspicion toward state power, a sense that much that is wrong with the world today comes from governments trying to do too much. At the same time, as traditionalists, they recognize that there are a great many goods today in desperate need of conserving, which—human nature being what it is—cannot be conserved without resolute government support.
Whatever its genesis and cause—some suggest Karl Barth’s infamous “Nein!” to Emil Brunner—Protestants largely abandoned the natural law tradition sometime amidst the tumultuous twentieth century. It should be noted that this abandonment conspicuously coincided with the advent of a positivist Supreme Court led by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and his militant campaign from the bench to detach law from a “brooding omnipresence in the sky.”
The sects and factions that dominated the socio-political life of the early republic were predominantly of Protestant heritage. Their theological commitments, for better or worse, conditioned the early character and trajectory of the nation. Any who deny this are simply not paying attention to the historical data.