Medievalism as “Source”

Just by way of clarification, I wanted to illustrate what I was thinking when I said that “Roman Catholicism is the source of damage in our culture today”. I did not intend to say that it was the Roman Catholic religion that is causing all of the problems.

My intention was to talk about the “history of ideas”, and in that sense, in the illustration nearby, you can see that in the flow and history of ideas, especially in talking about western Europe, that there was a very long time when Roman Catholicism was the only game in town.

On 4 September 476, one hundred years after the Goths crossed the Danube, the last Roman emperor in the west, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed, and it was the descendants of those Gothic refugees who provided the military core of one of the main successor states to the Empire: the Visigothic kingdom. … (Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire (p. xi). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.)

The papacy after that point held to a “two-swords” theory of power and authority. In 494 AD, not long after the city of Rome was sacked, “Pope Gelasius” wrote to the then-emperor Anastasius “on the superiority of the spiritual over temporal power”:

There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment.

You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honorably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation.

In the reception and proper disposition of the heavenly mysteries you recognize that you should be subordinate rather than superior to the religious order, and that in these matters you depend on their judgment rather than wish to force them to follow your will.

This pronouncement set the tone for political order in western Europe for the next 1000 years.
And so, when I say that Roman Catholicism was THE source for all of our cultural and political difficulties today, it is this event that I had in mind.

* * *
Just to give you a brief outline of the political history of Europe from that point, the pope, “Pope Leo”, crowned Charlemagne as emperor of the Holy Roman empire in 800 AD. By 1054, the eastern and western churches officially split (after much bickering prior), effectively severing the western from the eastern empire as well. The “high middle ages” represent almost a total “reconstruction” of the old Roman empire. Peter Heather cites a letter of Peter Damian, who was one of the Cardinals in the inner circle of the Roman hierarchy in the eleventh century:

Now the Roman Church, the see of the apostles, should imitate the ancient court of the Romans. Just as of old the earthly Senate strove to subdue the whole multitude of the peoples to the Roman Empire, so now the ministers of the apostolic see, the spiritual senators of the Church Universal, should make it their sole business by their laws to subdue the human race to God, the true emperor. (Heather, Peter. The Restoration of Rome (p. 388). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.)

This was a period of period of great accomplishment. Local church and monastic “schools” came together over time, eventually leading to the founding of the great universities of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. New religious orders such as the Dominicans (teachers) and Franciscans (“friars minor”) formed and also developed “schools of thought”. Writers such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and others worked greatly to synthesize what was known of Christian doctrine.

That period also offered many troubles. Thomas Aquinas wrote a long work, “Error of the Greeks”, which gave reasons that the eastern churches should submit to the papacy – it had to be retracted later, because its arguments were found to be heavily reliant on forged documents that were rampant during the prior centuries.

The “great schism” also developed during that time, when political infighting led to a time when there were two and even three “popes” in place. English kings realized that their land-owning allies would not necessarily fight every war without having some say-so, leading to the development of a bi-cameral parliament.

William of Ockham dared to write about “papal tyranny”. Marsellius of Padua wrote a treatise that led to the idea that government involvement of the citizenry that would provide for the best political systems.

* * *
During that 1000 year period, however, there was really only the one source of political power, and its “source” was the papacy. All political and religious thought was either an affirmation of or rejection of the thinking and institutions that were in place at the time.

With this kind of history in mind, it is hard for me to imagine that I “overreact” to Roman Catholicism, by the way. There is such a thing as specialization. Nobody ever said that Stephen Hawking (for example) spent too much of his life studying physics.

It seems to me that most people don’t pay enough attention to it, and in that way, they are missing a lot. The damage is not a surface kind of damage. It lies deeper, in the underlying thinking of things.

That kind of phenomenon is still in place today, although to a much lesser degree. It is the kind of thing I have in mind as I write this.

So, back to First Things. THEY SAY: “Culture is the root of politics, and religion is the root of culture.” For a 1000 year period of time, the papacy was at the root of religion AND politics. Perhaps there is some of that they would want you to stop thinking about. At the time of the Reformation, John Calvin was absolutely right to say that the papacy was the institution through which “satan has polluted every good thing that God has appointed for our salvation.” I did not think it would be controversial on a Reformed blog to repeat such a thing.

The historical papacy has polluted much else, too, and the effects are still with us today, either in the form of affirmations of, or rejections of, papal thinking and teaching.

I say all of this as background for some of the things I hope to discuss going forward. Perhaps I should have outlined it better before I got started. As I said in an earlier comment, I do appreciate your feedback and even your objections. If I’m going to be writing about this topic moving forward (as I hope to do), it is true that “iron sharpens iron”, and you all are helping me to better focus my thoughts.

Sweet land of tyranny

"Sweet Land of Tyranny" (James Hankins)

George Gilder: Human Creativity, Christian Capitalism and “Life After Google”

After the mid-term elections last week, I’m sure we will now find ourselves being cast hot and heavy into the 2020 presidential election. The Democrats are going to have two key areas of focus.

On the economic front, their focus is going to be “Democratic Socialism”. This is portrayed as a “kinder, gentler” form of Marxism – less caustic than Soviet communism, because, well, we’ve got the “kinder, gentler” left-wing Antifa/Resist/“you’re not welcome here” Democrats running the show.

And on the cultural front, their program is “Cultural Marxism”, which is their version of morality. It features Marxism’s classical “oppressor/oppressed” paradigm, supplemented by the aggregation and advocacy of various “victim groups”, and modified what’s known as “intersectionality” – that is, a hierarchy of “the oppressed”, whose opinions, depending upon how many victim identities that they can claim, carry more or less weight vs. the key class of oppressors, largely white men of European descent.

Both of these thought systems are related, and they operate according to well-defined methods, that many of us see, but have historically had difficulty opposing. I’m sure we’ll be writing more about both of these phenomena on the pages of Triablogue.

One key feature to note is that both of these programs have clearly articulated communications objectives, strategies, and even “talking points”. How many of you have been called a “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe”, “Islamophobe”, “xenophobe”, etc.?

This name calling is no accident; rather, the names are the tip of the iceberg of communications efforts that have been borne in university programs, which are repeated ad nauseam by thinkers and politicians on the left, and echoed endlessly in the media.

Too often, this form of juvenile name-calling (which tends to work on the uninitiated, even some Christian writers, because many of us still carry with us our childhood fears of being rejected) is rarely opposed. This is not an accident – it is the predicted outcome of a well-defined strategic and communications program on the left.

Even those Christian writers who ought to know better, when faced with such truly baseless accusations tend to hem and haw and say, “erm, uh, no, we’re not”, and they go to great lengths to explain why Christians are not racists, sexist, homophobic xenophobes” – and in the process, they become “useful idiots” for those on “the Left”, describing how “we support social justice” etc.

For our part, Reformed Christians need not only to be advocating a positive political program and agenda of our own, which needs to feature conservative Christian principles for sure, but which will need to be articulated clearly and winsomely, using Christian language, and not being sucked into using the language of “social justice”, in which case, we would already be cast on the losing side and put on the defensive.

“Christian Capitalism” as an Economic program to espouse

We seem to have a clear vision on the cultural/morality side, which ranges among us somewhere between extremes characterized by “theonomy” and what’s been identified as “R2K” (the “R” standing, alternatively, for either “reformed” or “radical”, depending on who is doing the writing). The notion is that Christians can and should be working at some level to have a positive (and Christian) influence on the broader culture.

However, one thing we don’t seem to have a good handle on, and that’s the economic program that needs to oppose “Democratic Socialism”. We seem to keep that under the heading of “Conservativsm”, and we have tended to allow that to be the realm of the “country club” Republicans, but in the Trump era, that positive program seems to have shifted somewhat, and the messaging that used to clearly advocated as “conservative” has now become somewhat muddled.

Reformed Christians need to advocate a particularly winsome economic program that Christians can espouse and advocate. In not doing so, those of us on “the right” often tend not to have a cohesive communications message – a positive program that is easily articulated and one that Christians can understand, espouse, and more importantly, advocate.

I believe that George Gilder, as a writer on business and economics over the past 40 years, is a seminal thought leader who can provide language and ideas, based in Biblical, Christian morality and even language, that we can use in the public sphere, that can clearly and succinctly serve as messaging that we can use (and more importantly, that politicians can use) to craft counter-messaging to “the Left’s”.

I think that program can be called something like “Christian Capitalism” – a free-enterprise system that’s based on Biblical principles of private property, hard work, thrift, the deferment of rewards, and sharing – all values espoused by Calvin and re-articulated in the form of “the Protestant Work Ethic”.

George Gilder: An Introduction

George Gilder is a prolific writer in the field of business, economics, and technology. I hadn’t heard of him until just recently, having read his work “Life After Google”.

He was a writer for Forbes Magazine, and also a thing called “Forbes ASAP”, which I had never checked out. It always seemed like an add-on to the real thing. Later he had his own technology newsletter, “The Gilder Technology Report”, his own publishing firm, and he later became a venture capitalist.

He is a co-founder of “The Discovery Institute” – yes, THAT same Discovery Institute that advocates for Intelligent Design (Stephen Meyer) and other leading conservative thinkers are represented (Michael Behe, William Lane Craig, Michael Medved, Nancy Pearcey, Bill Walton, and others).

Gilder writes on the business and technology side of that organization. Below are some brief descriptions of his works.

Wealth and Poverty

Gilder’s 1981 book “Wealth and Poverty” (which was not his first book, by a long margin) “advanced a practical and moral case for supply-side economics and capitalism during the early months of the Reagan administration and made him Ronald Reagan's most quoted living author”, according to Wikipedia (citing the publisher of the work, and probably echoing “a study of presidential speeches”).

I don’t own the book, but here is a YouTube video on “Wealth and Poverty” that has been edited down to provide the high points. These include such notions as “Capitalism was not simply a practical success. It is the supreme expression of human creativity” – it is not simply an efficient way to allocate goods and capital. It is “a moral good”.

Gilder explains:

Capitalism is ultimately altruistic; capitalists begin with an imaginative response to the needs of others. They have to forego their own consumption and save to assemble resources to deploy for a process, the outcome of which is determined not by themselves, but by customers and investors, neither of whom are under the control of the entrepreneur himself. The entrepreneur has to collaborate; the entrepreneur follows “the golden rule”. He wants others to succeed. Any business is completely dependent on the success of all the other around it. (adapted from the video).

On the other hand, while “greed” is often mis-attributed to Capitalists (who often become wealthy, but who more frequently see their businesses fail), is better attributed to socialism and the welfare state, where:

They seek comfort and security first. They collaborate with government to get special privileges and contracts (“crony capitalism”) and seats at the public trough … (adapted from the video).

From what I’ve read, Reagan purchased copies of this book and handed them out as gifts to many of his senior advisors. Here is a positive review of the book. Citing Gilder:

“Capitalism offers nothing but frustrations and rebuffs to those who wish because of claimed superiority of intelligence, birth, credentials, or ideals to get without giving, to take without risking, to profit without sacrifice, to be exalted without humbling themselves to meet the unruly demands of others in an always perilous and unpredictable life. It is not surprising therefore that the chief source of the misunderstanding of capitalism is the Intelligencia, one of the many aristocracies that preen themselves on the contempt for bourgeois or middle class values and that refuse to acknowledge the paramount role of individual enterprise in the progress of the race.”

Men and Marriage

In 1992, his “Men and Marriage” (which I have not read yet), some part of which Swindoll had cited approvingly, Gilder makes the following comments:

The crucial process of civilization is the subordination of male sexual impulses and biology to the long-term horizons of female sexuality. The overall sexual behavior of women in the modern world differs relatively little from the sexual life of women in primitive societies. It is male behavior that must be changed to create a civilized order…

In creating civilization, women transform male lust into love; channel male wanderlust into jobs, homes, and families; link men to specific children; rear children into citizens; change hunters into fathers; divert male will to power into a drive to create. Women conceive the future that men tend to flee; they feed the children that men ignore. George Gilder. Men and Marriage (Kindle Locations 160-165). Kindle Edition.

In this 2010 interview of Gilder at Acton.org, Gilder summarizes his beliefs about the destructive nature of feminism:

the woman holds in her very body a link to the long term future of the race. Her sexuality determines her long term goals. As a very physiological consciousness, she knows she can bear and nurture children. She has a central role in the very perpetuation of the species. The man is estranged from this process; his sexuality arises merely as a compulsive drive to pleasure. It’s short term by nature. It’s predatory and quickly gratified.

The Women’s Movement tragically reduces female sexuality to the terms of male sexuality. When this happens, she reduces herself to the male level of recreational sex. Paradoxically, when that happens the woman loses all her power over men and the reverence and respect toward the procreative potential of woman is lost. And that really destroys the family. But if the power of “choice” is given up, the woman actually ascends to a higher level of sexuality and her body attains an almost mystical power over men.

See also his more recent National Review article, “The Feminist Economy”

I haven’t noticed that Gilder cites Scripture, but he certainly advocates a robust Christian morality. Here is a summary of Christianity and the family:

Giving, beginning within the family and extending outward into the society, is the moral center of the system. It does not succeed by allowing the leading capitalists to revel in riches; if they hoard their wealth the system tends to fail. It succeeds by inducing the capitalist continually to give his wealth back to the system in the form of new gifts and investments. George Gilder. Men and Marriage (Kindle Locations 2363-2365). Kindle Edition.

The Israel Test

In his “The Israel Test”, Gilder suggests that Israel is hated (and anti-Semitism exists) not because the Jews have been dishonest or have dealt unfairly with the global culture at large, but because of the jealousy and envy of those who fail to put in the efforts to duplicate Israel’s successes.

… Israel represents one of the most extraordinary transformation stories in the history of economics. Just over sixty years old, with a population slightly over seven million, and located in a hostile region, Israel is home to more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth and has surpassed the combined venture capital investment of France and Germany…

In a decade, Israel went from being a nondescript industrial economy to one of the world’s leaders in research and technological creativity on a per capita basis. Then-senator Joseph Lieberman, from Gilder, George. The Israel Test: Why the World's Most Besieged State is a Beacon of Freedom and Hope for the World Economy. Encounter Books. Kindle Edition.

Gilder himself posits the difference:

The central issue in international politics, dividing the world into two fractious armies, is the tiny state of Israel. This central issue is not a global war of civilizations between the West and Islam or a split between Arabs and Jews. These conflicts are real and salient, but they obscure the deeper moral and ideological war. The real issue is between the rule of law and the rule of the leveler, between creative excellence and “fairness,” between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it. Gilder, George. The Israel Test: Why the World's Most Besieged State is a Beacon of Freedom and Hope for the World Economy (p. 1). Encounter Books. Kindle Edition.

“Life After Google”

“Life After Google” is Gilder’s most recent work (very impressive, given that Gilder is now 78 years old), describing both the limits of Google and the new technologies in its wake.

In the work, Gilder first provides a history of Google, its ideas, its pseudo-religious underpinnings; then he shows the weaknesses of the system, the ways in which it is “maxing out”, and finally, he points to emerging technologies (such as virtual reality and blockchain) which are already in growth mode, and in which entrepreneurial Capitalists are creatively devising a new “distributed” computer architecture that is going to be more secure and more equitable than the mountainous system where all roads lead to Google.

Google has certainly had an impressive run. They have pushed existing technologies to their limits, and in the process, they have not only created the second wealthiest company in the world (with market capitalization second only to Apple’s), but they have also created what Gilder called “a new system of the world”, which supplanted the old (monetary-based) system, to create a system “where everything is free, you are the product” for sale, in the form of your privacy and the accumulated data they own on you, which is sold to advertisers.

On a deeper level, the world of Google—its interfaces, its images, its videos, its icons, its philosophy—is 2D (compared with a 3D world). Google is not just a company but a system of the world.

And the Internet is cracking under the weight of this ideology. Its devotees uphold the flat-universe theory of materialism: the sufficiency of deterministic chemistry and mathematics. They believe the human mind is a suboptimal product of random evolutionary processes. They believe in the possibility of a silicon brain. They believe that machines can “learn” in a way comparable to human learning, that consciousness is a relatively insignificant aspect of humanity, emergent from matter, and that imagination of true novelties is a delusion in a hermetic world of logic.

They hold that human beings have no more to discover and may as well retire on a guaranteed pension, while Larry Page and Sergey Brin fly off with Elon Musk and live forever in galactic walled gardens on their own private planets in a winner-take-all cosmos.Gilder, George. Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy (Kindle Locations 129-136). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

All of these notions may be challenged, and in the process, Gilder deals with them. The foil for this kind of dull and deterministic technology is one that is distributed, entrepreneurial, and dependent more on human inventiveness and entrepreneurial creativity and generosity. My hope is to provide some overview of this vision in the near future.

Is George Gilder the C.S. Lewis of Christian Capitalism?

C.S. Lewis was an original thinker. But more than that, he characterized the Christian faith in ways that, even though he was a brilliant scholar, virtually anyone could understand what he was talking about.

The economic system that we live in has always had tendencies toward “Christian Capitalism” (with a “C”) – this is inherent in Calvin’s views of biblical wisdom, thrift, saving, and perhaps reinvestment – via “the Protestant Work Ethic”.

I think that because Gilder writes primarily in the Business/Economics space, folks in our circles (Reformed Christianity) haven’t run into him a lot, but there are cross-overs.

Gilder takes difficult financial and technological topics and explains them in relevant ways. He views human beings (“man”) as created in the image of God, and human creativity to be an analog to God’s creativity via, among other things, the mechanism of science:

Real science shows that the universe is a singularity and thus a creation. Creation is an entropic product of a higher consciousness echoed by human consciousness. This higher consciousness, which throughout human history we have found it convenient to call God, endows human creators with the space to originate surprising things. Gilder, George. Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy (Kindle Locations 1579-1581). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

I believe that Gilder’s work gives us the kind of language that Reformed Christians can use in the public sphere, and to which we can attribute the various attributes of God (and to God Himself). Lord willing, I’ll be writing more about this in the coming weeks and months.

Toward a Philosophy (Theology) of Christian Voting

The Scandal of the NeverTrump Evangelical Mind

This is an excellent analysis by Thomas Bradstreet, who examines some recent articles on why “NeverTrump” should be the default position for Christians, and shows clearly why this kind of thinking is so vacuous.

One of the things about politics (vs theology, I suppose), is that in theology we can often cite chapter and verse, or we can cite some prior theologian who said such-and-such, and that can be used as real evidence to support a position.

In the realm of politics, everyone has an opinion, but there are no chapters-and-verses (which aren’t taken out of context, or which aren’t subjected to the kind of rigorous thinking that you’re doing here). Rather:

What’s striking about the writing of [many of the] NeverTrump evangelicals generally is the utter absence of any theoretical discussion of what would seem to be a foundational issue, namely, how one would go about determining how one should vote. Why would a movement, one that so values truth and honesty, give so little attention to what is most necessary to prove their conclusions? The answer is this: NeverTrump evangelicals exist in a sea of rhetorical devices, tricks, moralisms, and pithy lines. The moment that they get precise they disclose their vacuous reasoning and the emotive foundations of their unthought and, in consequence, lose their cheering crowd.

It’s that same thing that we see a lot and have described in the past ... someone may be a competent scholar in one field, but that almost never seems to translate to being particularly insightful in a field that’s not that person’s field of scholarship.

This article, on the other hand, is a model of clear thinking that will benefit many evangelicals (I hope) as we move into the 2018 and 2020 election cycles.

(Thomas Bradstreet is a Ph. D. candidate in political science and teaches at a university in the southern United States.)

When the evangelical "vote" is conflated with Christian witness

Insofar as Christians conflate the causes of “the political left” with the witness of the Gospel, Christians are being manipulated into becoming “useful idiots”.

The evangelical support for Trump is a “sin [that] is collapsing the Evangelical moral witness,” says David French in a recently published open letter. “Moral witness” has become an important term in the evangelical NeverTrump rhetorical arsenal. Whatever it means, it has been lost or harmed since evangelicals chose to pursue “political expediency” at the expense of “moral principle,” as many have recently claimed. Evangelical politics ought to be witnessing faith and not have a lust for power.

Thomas Bradstreet has helpfully criticized some of the language of these evangelicals and has described the innovative theology that underpins it. Still, more needs to be said. In particular, this term, “moral witness” needs to be unpacked. What is the nature of “moral witness”? Who is the audience? Why is it so often juxtaposed with political ends and “political expediency”? What are its dangers and disadvantages? In this essay, I provide a theory on the meaning of “moral witness” in contemporary evangelicalism.

...

[Evangelical] political activity, ..., is ultimately a project of moral witness, calling for Christians to live up to a selected and particular set of moral principles/language intended for a particular audience as part of evangelism. Political activity itself is just another means of showcasing an other-worldly, Christian gospel-morality in order to demonstrate the winsomeness of Christianity.

So the governing principle of political action is not the necessities of civil order, but the necessities of witness; and those two – order and witness – are not entirely coextensive. In other words, the actions necessary to ensure order are not always the sort of actions that make for an effective witness. Consequently, the witnessing-purpose of Christian politics largely sidelines questions concerning civil order, for Christian politics just is evangelism by other means.

...

The evangelical moral platform then is highly constrained and partly dictated by secular moral posturing, since the winsomeness of Christianity is the ultimate end of the evangelical political platform. It seems inevitable then that the respectable evangelical moral platform will become and partly is already in conformity with the secular approved list of just social causes. In witnessing to them, evangelicals work for them, and in consequence become the unwitting advocates for and censors on behalf of secularist interests.

Read more at https://sovereignnations.com/2018/05/15/state-evangelical-moral-witness/

On abandoning moral principles for political power

by Stephen Wolfe:

https://reformation500.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/on-abandoning-moral-principles-for-political-power/

Exactly what power are evangelicals seeking by favoring Trump and Moore over others?

The answer is this: the power not to listen to the dictatorial moralizing of the East Coast liberal elite who claim hegemony over the general will of the nation.

This is what evangelicals like about the Trumps and the Moores of American politics. They are willing to challenge the hegemony of the elite and disregard their calumnies and moral denunciations. Instead of “witnessing” to the elites by public demonstrations of weakness (i.e., selective “humility”) and by caring about the same issues (and not caring about the same issues), evangelicals would treat them as opponents to be defeated...

So what power are evangelicals seeking? The countervailing power that disrupts the moral hegemony of the elite.

Poo-poo on egalitarianism

Social Hierarchy in the Christian Tradition.

Were the Confederates traitors?

One allegation I run across is that the charge that the Confederates were traitors. That depends on whether you think a state has a right to secede. That, in turn, depends on your political philosophy. Are you a social contract theorist? If so, which version?

Do you take the position that an earlier generation has the moral authority to make binding choices on all future generations? That's pretty paternalistic. Surely that's rather extreme. Surely that invites many counterexamples. That's a Hobbesian view of the social contract, in contrast to a Lockean view–which grants the right of citizens to revolt. 

The allegation is rather ironic considering the origins of the American republic:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them…

For that matter, is nationalism an end in itself? What's the value of a "union" if, say, a sizable majority in one region doesn't wish to belong? That's an extrinsic union which must be imposed from above. Why compel people to belong who don't wish to belong? Is that worth killing for?

Suppose a sizable majority of Alaskan or Hawaian residents voted to secede. Should we use military force to keep them part of the US? If so, why so? What's the value of coercive membership? Isn't that like empires with vassal states? Doesn't that reflect an imperialist outlook? 

I suspect the allegation has less to do with an argument from principle than the specific case at hand. I think secession and states rights are valid principles. But the South squandered its moral capital by invoking those principles to legitimate an illegitimate position. That discredited the principles by association. Brought them into disrepute. The high-minded rhetoric was belied by the sordid cause. 

I think the principles are still valid. But a justifiable principle doesn't ipso facto justify any particular exercise of that principle.  The dilemma for the Confederate argument is its selective appeal to popular sovereignty. If that applies to Confederates, that applies to slaves. Either both "unions" are dissoluble, or neither are. 

Confederate apologists could never square that circle. Either freedom for all or freedom for none.

Is the United States a “Christian Nation”?

From Stephen Wolfe:

In the next few weeks or months, I plan to review the book The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, and Revolution, chapter-by-chapter. It is written by Gregg Frazer, a Master’s College professor of history and political science. The book has caused a stir among those who have an interest in the United States being a “Christian nation” and those on the other side who claim that it is a “secular nation.” His central thesis is that most of the Founders were religious yet unorthodox. The dominant view among the Founders was what he calls “theistic rationalism.” …

* * *

In my own study, I’ve noticed that the shift from Calvin’s more conservative understanding of social and political inequality, gave way in England to an emphasis on equality and social contract, leading ultimately to John Locke and Algernon Sidney. The shift, to my mind, concerns reason and revelation. Calvin, in his Institutes, argues that revelation, far from being opposed to reason, is a further accommodation to man’s fallenness. In other words, revelation is, in a sense, right reason. Revelation serves as spectacles to show what ought to have been in the world through reason alone. In this sense, revelation is not to be privatized in a secularized state. It is not to be relegated to personal, individual opinion. Revelation gives us principles for a pubic (or political) theology.

Part 1 is here.

You, Triablogue reader, need to read every word of this

You, Triablogue reader, need to read every word of every link that's contained in the link below. You need to understand it, to own it, to share it, to tweet it. Google+ it. To spread this understanding as far and wide as possible in this great and free country of ours.

http://www.johnbiver.com/the-information-war/

Here is the premise:

On a daily basis I’m deluged with great commentary, research and analysis via the World Wide Web. On every topic imaginable there is an enormous amount of good information available authored by those who believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and work to support and defend the Constitution (especially the Bill of Rights).

The problem is that very little of this material ever sees a large enough audience. Until we all learn how to reach more of the uninformed with the facts we will see neither political nor policy reform.

This, of course, applies to Christianity, to the Great Commission. But as we read Steve complain, "Here we go again", we can realize that this is the nature and root of so much of what we find to be wrong with the culture around us.

George Will, Philosopher/Journalist, on the American Political Philosophy

What do Dwight Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Fleming West, James Madison, Oxford University, Princeton University, William F. Buckley, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, William Jennings Bryan, William Howard Taft, Niccolò Machiavelli, Immanual Kant, Martin Luther, and Rene Descartes all have in common?

Answer: They all appear (with correct citations) in the following George Will speech, December 4, at Washington University in St. Louis:

http://www.c-span.org/Events/Conversation-with-George-Will-on-Religion-in-Politics/10737436348-1/

I'd encourage you to watch the whole speech. It runs about an hour and a half [There is a Q/A session afterward]. Here is a .pdf text of the speech.

If you don't have time, here's a selection: