{"id":600,"date":"2014-06-15T21:58:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T21:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/06\/david-brat-theological-conundrum.html"},"modified":"2014-06-15T21:58:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T21:58:00","slug":"david-brat-theological-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/06\/david-brat-theological-conundrum.html","title":{"rendered":"David Brat, Theological Conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
David Brat, the surprise Republican primary victor over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has also stated that he had at one time wanted to\u00a0teach systematic theology<\/a>\u00a0and ethics anddescribed his win<\/a>\u00a0as a God-given \u201cmiracle:\u201d \u201cGod acted through the people on my behalf.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Based on this, it would be natural to\u00a0wonder<\/a>\u00a0whether Brat intends to legislate his religious beliefs if elected\u2014and more to the point, what those beliefs actually are.<\/span><\/div>\n
Turns out that\u2019s a tricky question. Since Brat has only recently come to national attention, the source material here is pretty thin, and as Candida Moss has\u00a0pointed out<\/a>, it\u2019s characterized by deep intellectual incoherence. There\u2019s his\u00a0PhD dissertation<\/a>\u00a0from American University, of which the last chapter is a discussion of Protestantism and science in the nineteenth century. There\u2019s his\u00a0unpublished textbook<\/a>\u00a0on economics and philosophical ethics,The Philosophy of Economics: A History of Science, Method and Ethics. \u00a0<\/em>And there is also the article he wrote in 2011 for the journal\u00a0Interpretation<\/em>, entitled \u201cGod and Advanced Mammon \u2013 Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?<\/a>\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
In that article, Brat defends usury against unnamed \u201ctheological types\u201d who believe it un-Christian to charge interest on loans based on the historic proscription of usury. Here, curiously, Brat describes himself as an \u201corthodox Calvinist\u201d and describes his theological tradition as \u201cthe Reformation,\u201d even though his\u00a0campaign site<\/a>\u00a0says that he attends a Roman Catholic Church.<\/span><\/div>\n
His\u00a0Curriculum Vitae<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0does little to shed light on the matter of his ecclesial home. Under \u201cAffiliations\u201d are listed four different congregations: St. Michael\u2019s Catholic Church, Christ Church Episcopal, Third Presbyterian Church, and Shady Grove Methodist Church. (No dates or locations are given.) Brat\u2019s\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0The National Review<\/em>\u00a0supports this picture of theological eclecticism, inasmuch as he cites John Calvin, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr as influences. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Lastly, we have his own words during the campaign, in which he\u00a0bemoans<\/a>\u00a0the dearth of philosophical and theological celebrities. Via\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em>:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
Who is [sic] our great moral teachers these days? Every generation has always had great theologians or philosophers by the century that you can name. Who do we got right now? [Audience: Jay-Z] Right. Right. [Audience: Beyonc\u00e9] Right. Beyonc\u00e9. When you can\u2019t name a serious philosopher, a national name, or a serious theologian, or a serious religious leader, at the national level, your culture\u2019s got a major problem. We got a major problem.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Brat, the surprise Republican primary victor over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has also stated that he had at one time wanted to\u00a0teach systematic theology\u00a0and ethics anddescribed his win\u00a0as a God-given \u201cmiracle:\u201d \u201cGod acted through the people on my behalf.\u201d \u00a0 Based on this, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDavid Brat, Theological Conundrum<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"David Brat, the surprise Republican primary victor over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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