Category: Politics
Education, Catechesis, and the State
Just before starting second grade, my grandmother Mary died. Though her death was a deep grief to me—we had been quite close and many of my earliest memories involve her—it was not unexpected. She had a myriad of health issues,...
Decadence, Joe Rogan, and Non-Anxious Authority
I’m an old-cohort millennial or, if you like, part of the Oregon Trail generation. I graduated college in 2010. At that time, I was definitely aware of transgenderism, for example, because I was an English major and I worked at...
Tolkien, Marriage, Liberalism
A number of questions have come up in response to the piece on the main site concerning the Respect for Marriage Act and what I guess one might call the political theology of Tolkien, who I built the essay around....
Alternatives to Culture War
One of the lines we have taken for a long time at Mere Orthodoxy is a skepticism about culture war strategies and motifs in Christian public speech and Christian political strategy. (This is one of the first pieces I wrote for...
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...