Freedom of conscience is an indispensable right that we cannot jettison. Yet, does a commitment to soul liberty require what Williams said he abhorred, namely, “an infinite liberty of conscience”? Can any society, including our own, withstand unlimited religious and moral pluralism?
The scientist is not a disinterested observer but employs a variety of non-scientific sources of knowledge, including intuition, imagination, tradition, and faith. A detached approach to science is impossible.
Reactionary pandemic policies have prevented us from maintaining our friendships as required for true human flourishing.
As a mother nothing could be more contrary to my innate impulses than to sacrifice my baby for my own preservation. I am not a hero; any parent would say what I’ve said now, should they see their baby born rather than make a disembodied calculation en utero.
Human, Forever is indisputably a must-read for those concerned about what human existence will look like “after the digital turn.” Not only is it a penetrating diagnosis of the contemporary condition, the book is a distinctly Christian-inflected chastening of some of the more audacious “postliberal” political philosophies out there, those that fail to take seriously what the digital disruption has wrought. Freedom from technology, Poulos submits, must also mean freedom from the dreams of empire, and a return to the limits of the local.
Generating a dissident appeal to normal people is difficult. The dynamics of social media reward conflict and transgressive content that turn off a lot of normal people. And mainstream institutions are hostile to any dissident thinking that appeals to normal people. But figuring out how win over normal people is critical.
The logic of anti-abortion and COVID-19 precautions cannot be considered “the same logic.” The question of abortion is fundamentally not a prudential, scientific question. COVID-19 measures, on the other hand, clearly depend in part on input from science and goods balancing.
If you were asked to compile a list of Christian virtues, I suspect that rather far down on that list (or perhaps absent altogether) would be the virtue of shrewdness. I further suspect this is because shrewdness is often conflated with a kind of sly dishonesty and is therefore thought unable to bear the Christian name.
When "Christian nationalism" and "white Evangelical" are increasingly nothing more than imprecise and vaporous taxonomies it’s important to not concede certain rhetorical anathemas to what is actually contemporary political partisanship disguised as scholarship.
Whether they be theological seminaries, liberal arts colleges, or research universities, institutions of higher education have a telos apart from the public square which involves recognizing revealed truth, not merely pursuing it.
