Some of us two-kingdom Protestants have been arguing for a while that an approach to U.S. political life based more on duties of citizenship than on the responsibilities of holiness is what American Protestants need. It was altogether true during the days of the Religious Right, who simply picked up where mainline Protestants left off in collapsing national identity with church affiliation. It is all the more true in times of inspecting every nook and cranny of conscience to figure... Read more
Any child in the United States can grow up to be president of the nation. Chances are, lots of children still hear that in the nation’s schools. It speaks to the opportunity, the equality, and the hope of American social ideals. But close to half of Americans today wish that childhood nostrum were not true. Donald Trump proves that anyone can grow up to be president. He is not a career politician. He didn’t spend lots of his own money... Read more
Imagine the savings if we didn’t pump almost two years of political contributions into presidential campaigns. Imagine how partisanship would disappear from choosing a president. This is one of the best reasons for letting Congress choose POTUS. Because POTUS is the only office for which every American citizen may vote, it is not the most unifying but the most divisive of all contests. For four years, people drive around with bumper stickers indicating their political loyalty, and observers who voted... Read more
After meeting at Regent University for the biennial gathering of the Conference on Faith and History (CFH), historians who sometimes identify themselves as evangelical are commenting in ways that raise questions both about evangelicalism and about scholarship from a distinctly evangelical outlook. John Turner for instance agrees with what Jay Green observed, namely, that a gap is emerging between evangelical historians and evangelicals in the pew (as if the Trump candidacy hadn’t made that obvious back in February): Jay Green,... Read more
I do understand the disgust over Donald Trump, though I find it a tad inconsistent that critics of the Republican show no reluctance to speak of him they way he speaks of Mexicans. But isn’t it also obvious how bad a candidate Hillary Clinton is? I mean, can you imagine an evangelical historian writing this of Richard Nixon before Watergate? Hillary Clinton would appear to be a palatable enough candidate. Though reticent about public displays of faith, she grew up... Read more
The news of Donald Trump’s vulgar comments is a little stale but criticisms of the Republican presidential nominee by evangelicals deserve some attention. In fact, the wider world’s dismissal of Trump’s vulgarity is striking because the outrage that folks express makes it seem as if they’ve never seen cable television. If anyone has ever watched Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, that person has some awareness of the way men talk about women both inside and outside locker rooms. That’s not... Read more
Why do American Christians — used to be mainly Protestants but now Roman Catholics are joining in — need to turn the “founding fathers” of the nation into Christians? The political historian, Paul Gottfried, argues that Washington’s faith was irrelevant to the country he led or the significance of the new nation: In point of fact, the depth of Washington’s Christian beliefs is totally irrelevant to his vision of the country he helped found. It is no more relevant than... Read more
Justin Taylor remembered that fifty years ago British evangelicals had their neo-evangelical against fundamentalist moment. For Americans, the split between evangelicalism and fundamentalism came in 1957 Billy Graham Crusade. There Graham enlisted the help of mainline (read liberal) Protestant churches. When Graham did that, Bob Jones and other fundamentalists stopped backing Graham. It took British evangelicals a decade longer to split. In October 1966 Martin Lloyd-Jones issued a call for evangelicals to unite. Sounds good. But he did so by... Read more
Observing Roman Catholics warming up for the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation presents its share of amusements. Are we really supposed to act like it was a misunderstanding? That nothing substantial divides believers on opposite sides of the Tiber? Can a Roman Catholic actually celebrate a group that bishops condemned? So hearing Pope Francis say the following to Lutherans got my attention: Pope Francis urged Lutherans to set aside doctrinal differences Thursday and work with Catholics to care for... Read more
One could well imagine. And if the comments came in a locker room setting, the pious among us may not want to imagine But remember what President Obama said of a woman who has made part of her reputation trafficking in the kind of vulgarity that gets Mr. Trump in trouble. Heather MacDonald (via Rod Dreher) observes the hypocrisy of President Obama praising Beyonce and the press condemning Trump: If any of these newfound exponents of female modesty felt any... Read more
Putting the Protest in Protestant
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