Creating Genocide

Last updated on: August 12, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Emmanuel Katongole (A Future for Africa, 98-101) argues, as others have, that the racial division behind the Rwandan genocide was forged during Western colonization. “Before the colonial occupation of Rwanda,” he writes, “the Hutu and Tutsi were not ‘clearly distinct and rigidly separated ethnic groups.’” The distinction existed, but it was fluid and based more on economic status and power relations. Europeans treated the difference as “an essential racial difference; one that reflected ontological superiority and inferiority, and one that... Read more

What Cantwell Achieved

Last updated on: August 12, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

David Sehat (The Myth of American Religious Freedom, 222-3) observes that Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940) was the first Supreme Court decision to incorporate the religion clause of the First Amendment to the States. In the case, Jehovah’s Witnesses were denied a license to proselytize. The Court struck down the decision, arguing that the State had violated the Witnesses’ free-exercise rights. Sehat suggests that Cantwell “began to to dismantle the moral establishment in several ways at once.” For starters, “it weakened... Read more

What We Can Learn From Africa

Last updated on: August 11, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

At the end of his Word Made Global, Mark Gornik lists a number of the gifts that African churches can offer to the rest of the church. One is “an invitation to name ourselves by Pentecost”: “Through the name of Jesus, African Christians believe that the Spirit brings forth new birth, heals the sick, makes days new, conquers the past, casts out evil spirits, answers prayers, speaks in dreams, and raises to new life” (269). African Christians also offer “a sacramental... Read more

Triune Atonement

Last updated on: August 11, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When the Lamb takes the book, the angels sing a new song, a song of kingship (Revelation 5:8-10). In it, the sum up the work of the Lamb in a triadic formula that expands to a quaternity. The Lamb 1) was slain 2) to purchase for God from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation and, having purchased, 3) to make them kingdom and priests. The subject shifts in the final clause of verse 10: It is a statement not about... Read more

The Anti-Scapegoat

Last updated on: August 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The received wisdom is that Donald Trump has ridden a wave of voter anger to the top of the Republic polls. That’s superficial, too easy, and misconstrues the cultural import of Trump’s appeal. Trump is popular because, billionaire though he is, he plays the populist who gleefully bash the elites. America regularly produces characters like Trump – big, brash, glitzy, loud, straightforward, unsubtle. But there’s also something deeper going on. It’s all in Girard. Trump is the candidate who refuses... Read more

Myth of American Religious Freedom

Last updated on: August 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Religious freedom is basic to American freedoms, conservatives say. Bringing religion into the public square violates the separation of church and state, liberals say. Both are wrong, says David Sehat in his The Myth of American Religious Freedom. Conservatives are wrong to think that American religion has always been in service of freedom (at least, not freedom as we now conceive it). Liberals are wrong to think that religion has no place in American public life. The myth of American religious... Read more

America and Uniracial Christianity

Last updated on: August 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Back in 1960, less that 15% of the population of the US was non-European. Most of that minority were blacks. That proportion has more than doubled in the fifty years since: “the growth of non- Europeans is expected to continue at an accelerated rate. In just the last twenty years (1980 to 2000), while the non-Hispanic white population grew about 8 percent, the growth rate of other groups is far larger. During the same period (1980 to 2000), the African... Read more

Recapitulating Israel

Last updated on: August 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The early life of Moses anticipates the later history of Israel. Moses is rescued from water, flees from an attack by Pharaoh, finds water in the wilderness, meets Yahweh on the mountain of God, moves to a new land. The life of Moses also looks backward, recapitulating the life-history of Jacob. Moses is a new Jacob as well as the head of a redeemed Israel. Here are a few of the parallels: 1) Jacob struggles in the womb with his... Read more