Category: Politics
Nursing Fathers and the New Right
Eric Hutchinson first drew my attention to the suggestive description of the government as a “nursing father” in the 23rd chapter of the Westminster Confession. The phrase is in keeping with the Reformed tradition’s sensibilities about the fifth commandment, for...
Gray on Sociology
Gray: If Positivism is the chief source of the twentieth century’s most powerful secular religions it is partly through its impact on the social sciences. For Positivists, modernity is the transformation of the world by the use of scientific knowledge....
Schaeffer’s Legacy
I am a former L’Abri student. Every time I visit Rochester, MN, I make a point of visiting Dr. Schaeffer’s grave. He’s something of a spiritual grandfather to me. My most treasured book in my home library is a copy...
Mark Sayers’s “Sin Chart”
From a recent Rebuilders episode: A frame for understanding how different belief systems see and interpret the world. First, five diagnostic questions: What is the purpose of life? What is sin? What is the world? What is its attitude toward...
CS Lewis on Political Idolatries
From Screwtape Letters: Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of the partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and...
Reading the Pan-Africanists: Julius Nyerere (II)
Continuing: The production of wealth, whether by primitive or modern methods, requires three things. First, land. God has given us the land, and it is from the land that we get the raw materials which we reshape to meet our...
Gray and the Deeply Modern Bolsheviks
John Gray: The roots of the Soviet system were in the Enlightenment’s most utopian dreams. Lenin never gave up the belief that, after a period of revolutionary terror, the state would be abolished. Trotsky defended the taking and killing of...
In Memoriam: Queen Elizabeth II
In the climactic scene of the 1998 movie The Truman Show, the protagonist, a man named Truman and played by Jim Carrey, has recently discovered that this entire life has been a TV show lived out inside a gigantic dome...
Christendom in Winter
There’s a certain sort of mainline Protestant, blessedly rare these days so far as I can tell, who has at times argued that while Scripture might teach that such and such is the Christian teaching on sexuality, we must adapt...
Two Bad Reasons to Oppose Loan Debt Forgiveness and Two Better Ones
Briefly: Bad Objections 1. “I paid all my debt back and it isn’t fair that other people shouldn’t have to do the same.” In interests of disclosure, I have already paid off about 95% of my student loan debt and...