Mark Tooley: Our first speaker is an old friend, Eric Patterson, who has had a very diverse career. He is now head of the Victims of Communism Museum, so effectively, he’ll be your host for the reception this afternoon. Eric has written extensively on issues relating to Just War and Christian ethics in the area of global statecraft, so you will be very interested in what he has to say. Each speaker will talk for approximately 20 to 30 minutes, and then there will be about 15 minutes afterward for questions. Eric, thank you so much for joining us.
Eric Patterson: Well, everybody, it’s great to see you. There are so many colleges here that I love, including some of my students who just walked in, and I’m delighted to see you.
As Mark said, later this afternoon, we’ll host you at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in our museum. If you take a left out the doors and you’re right here on the street corner, then take a left and go two blocks down towards the McPherson Square Metro. You can’t miss it. We’re right on that corner, on your left.
At about 5:00 p.m., we’ll take a group picture on the steps of the museum. So, head down there after the time that’s here today. The reception at the museum is going to be open to you. There will be some light refreshments upstairs, but the museum will be open for you to explore. It’s a beautiful art museum; it’s also a history museum, and there’s a current affairs exhibit about Venezuela upstairs. So, I welcome you to that.
Again, my name is Eric Patterson. I serve as Scholar-at-Large at Regent University, as well as President and CEO of the Victims of Communism Foundation here in Washington, D.C.
This conference, in a sense, has a sinew that binds it all together, or maybe better to say, a kind of skeletal framework that all of us agree upon—largely among the speakers—even if we have some differences on specific policy issues. This framework is what President Tooley called “Christian Realism.”
Some people might call it something like “Augustinian Realism” or perhaps just “Statecraft.” But Christian realism, in the words of a theologian from the 1950s, said something along these lines. What we were talking about in the 30s and 40s when we said Christian Realism was at the same time about biblical Christian doctrine and (these were his words) the latest news from the Asiatic battlefront. And what he was trying to say was authentically Christian in its themes and, at the same time, applying a Christian worldview—that’s the term we’d use today—to foreign policy and national security affairs, the current events of the day. That’s really what we’re talking about here.
So, whether it’s Rebecca Heinrichs tomorrow, who’s going to talk to you about nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, or a presentation on AI and technology, or a discussion on intelligence, surveillance, and statecraft, or a presentation on moral injury, the just war tradition, or how these things apply in the Middle East, Ukraine, or competition with China, the thing you’ll hear over and over again as a hidden framework is this thing we call Christian realism.
Now, where did it get its name? On the one hand, a Judeo-Christian way of thinking prudentially about society, law, peace, war, etc., has been around since Joseph, Nehemiah, and Joshua—all the way through the biblical period. I’m not going to explain something to you that is alien to the statesmen and stateswomen of biblical times or Christians over the past 2,000 years.
But in the last century, we focused on this term as opposed to idealism, utopianism, or pie-in-the-sky thinking. Rather than wishing the world was a different place and trying to create policies based on unicorns instead of reality, Christian realism is about reality.
This term, in its historical context, came from the 1930s. Let me remind you: at the end of the First World War, there was a sense in the West of, “We cannot do that again.” Hence, they called World War I “the war to end all wars.”
There was a sense in public life, particularly among pastors, theologians, and statesmen at places like the League of Nations and in Washington and London: “How do we ensure that a war like this never happens again?”
The decision that many Western leaders made was to focus on the world as they wanted it to be and make every effort to live that way. They thought, “We don’t believe there should be a lot of weapons killing people, so we will disarm.”
The U.S. and British policies after World War I limited the size of their navies, reduced their armies, and limit to avoid appearing threatening to anyone. They invested in collective security measures like the League of Nations. They made promises that if someone were attacked, someone else would save them.
They outlawed aggression through the League of Nations Charter and a variety of international laws and covenants. They put their faith in pieces of paper that were aspirational, such as the Paris Treaty of 1925, which you all know as the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
This beautiful document outlawed war. The thinking was, if you outlaw war, then no one will go to war because doing so would make them criminals—and no one wants to be a criminal, right?
This set of disarmament, international covenants, and international organizations—by the way, it’s not that those things don’t have their merits—but a set of promises on paper led to the 1930s. In 1933, as the Nazis took over in Germany, as the fascists took over in Italy during the 1920s, and as the Empire of Japan became more and more aggressive—engaging in actions like the so-called “Rape of Nanking” and taking over Manchuria in the 1930s—each of these idealistic blueprints for world peace fell apart.
I have to tell you, Christians were complicit in not standing up. The philosophy of the day was not a principled theological pacifism (of which, by the way, there are hardly any adherents even today). Instead, it was a kind of wishful thinking: “Can’t we have a moral imagination about a world that would be different? A world where we would love our neighbor and seek the common good? We could never go back to war, so we will give up just about anything to demonstrate that we are nice.”
The thought was that if we just show them that we’re nice and reasonable, they won’t feel threatened. So, the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, and others would not go to war.
Let me remind you how that turned out. By September of 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the weak, ailing, good-hearted Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prided himself on his actions during that time. In his two major speeches that September, he said, “I have flown to Germany three times to meet with Herr Hitler.”
By the way, he had just sold out the Czechs. He had told the Germans they could slice Czechoslovakia in half. They didn’t even let the Czechs come to the meetings, by the way. Chamberlain returned to Britain and said, “I think it’s all just a big disagreement. I’ve done my very best; my conscience is clear.”
Then, he waved the piece of paper—you’ve all seen this in movies, right? He said, “Hitler signed here, next to me. This is peace in our time.” That’s how it went down. That’s idealism.
During the same time, a set of theologians and political leaders started to ask themselves, “Is that all we’ve got? Is that the only thing we have to confront evil and tyranny in our time?” It turned people away from being pacifists—guys like Dietrich Bonhoeffer—to a much more prudential approach.
Perhaps the greatest theologian of that time, and for the next 30 years, was a public theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr. That’s where this modern framing of just war, statecraft, Christianity and power politics, and, specifically, the term we use at Providence—Christian Realism—comes from.
Now, very quickly, I’d like to share eight quick points about a framework for thinking about Christian realism. It’s not a doctrine, really; it’s not a theory. What it really is, is a community of practice. What I mean is, it’s faculty like many of us in this room, as well as thinkers, theologians, philosophers, and practitioners who operate from these shared assumptions.
Number One. Christian realism is a way of thinking about IR theory realism, or political science realism, or social science realism. For those of you who have taken a class in those areas, what we’re discussing is largely in the realm of foreign policy and IR theory—a type of realism that’s a moral realism.
Second, Christian realism is theologically Augustinian. Here, I’m talking about Saint Augustine—or Augustine. By the way, happy Reformation Day! Augustine is really the great patron saint of all major Christian traditions, with the exception of a very small group of Anabaptists who don’t care for him so much.
If you’re Orthodox, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, Catholic, etc., we all look back to the writings of Augustine in the 4th century as a critical interlocutor on so many topics.
When I say Christian realism is theologically Augustinian, there’s a lot that could be said. But let me point out that, at its heart, it’s about anthropology. It’s about how to think about men and women.
What Augustine reminds us, in contrast to the idealists—remember, the idealists say, “Oh, we can do better. We can perfect society over time. We can learn our lessons.”—Augustine says you have to start with sin and human fallenness.
If we’re talking about social life, you start with the reality of human sin. Mixed into society are pride, ego, lust, greed, and vengeance.
But that’s not all, right? That is not all. The other side of the Augustinian anthropology is this: we are made in God’s image, and we have a responsibility because we’re made in the imago Dei. God raises us up in certain vocations. By the way, some of you will end up in public service vocations. You’ll be in law enforcement, in the intelligence community, running for office, serving a president, or even becoming the president.
All of these are legitimate, good, common-good vocations. Augustine reminds us, yes, humans are sinful, and you have to start with that. But at the same time, we have a responsibility to promote the good.
That’s quite different from an idealistic sense that, “Oh, humans are perfectible. We can get better over time—assume the best.” No.
Third, Christian realism emphasizes political order when thinking about social life. Think about how much effort was made to create political order in the kingdoms of the Old Testament. Think about the teaching of Romans 13, which emphasizes that, first and foremost, government has a role to play in terms of order, security, and justice.
Christian realism emphasizes that the way you love your neighbor is through protection, defense, and seeking justice. That’s how we practice love of neighbor in social life.
Fourth, Christian realism emphasizes power. Now, I’m waiting for the great church sermon by a pastor on power, because power is not necessarily a bad thing. Any set of social relations may have a power dimension. Your dad had a dimension of power in your family. Your mom did, your pastor does, and the church board does in a church. Social life has relationships of power.
But Christians often get weirded out, saying things like, “I don’t know about imposing my will on somebody,” or “That’s not nice.” Power is simply about responsibility. Power is exercising stewardship and authority in the domain where you have been entrusted with that authority. That’s what power is.
A famous social scientist said there are three ways of thinking about power and action. The first is: I force you to do what I want you to do. By the way, there is a place for that—think boot camp or parenting little kids.
The second type of power, a richer and more mature level, is when I persuade you to do what I want you to do. There’s a role for this, too; we call it diplomacy or deterrence.
The third type of power is when I convince you that it’s actually in your own interest, because it’s a mutual good—a common good—to have that outcome. That’s a very powerful way of thinking about influence: helping others to see that you are seeking a common good.
These are Christian ways to think about power depending on the level of authority and responsibility you have. Power can be exercised for the good.
Fifth, Christian realism is very critical of collective chauvinisms. The old Christian realists used this word all the time: chauvinism. What they meant is something we might call today racism, ethnonationalism, or violent Islamism.
In other words, it’s when a group says of itself that its members are morally superior to people outside the group. Christian realists writing in the 1940s and 1950s were particularly critical of this.
Whether it was national socialism or Nazism with its racial preferences built into it, they were highly critical. Here’s why: individuals will sin, right? But groups—something happens in a mob mentality where restraint falls by the wayside.
Christian realists of that era were deeply concerned about how good, common people got swept up in Nazism. How did good, common people look the other way when the Communists dragged their neighbors out in the middle of the night?
It’s because of this tendency humans have to fall into great sin when swept up in a group identity that justifies prejudice and sinful differentiations.
Sixth, Christian realism considers all three levels of analysis. This is important if you’re thinking about pacifism or wondering, “Aren’t I supposed to turn the other cheek?”
Christian realism looks at what social scientists call all three levels of analysis.
When analyzing social phenomena, societal interactions, and the global stage, you must consider the interpersonal level which is the individual dynamic between you and another person. But there’s also all that happens within a society, the second level of analysis. Then, at the international level, there’s everything that happens above and outside of any one government.
All you IR theorists are probably saying, “Yeah, anarchy!” Not chaotic anarchy, but meaning the absence of overarching government at the international level.
Christian realists think about all three levels of analysis. On the one hand, classical strategic studies realists say, “Who cares what individuals do? All we care about is government-to-government relations.” While that’s important analysis, it’s not the whole picture. A lot of well-meaning Christians say, “I’m just supposed to love my neighbor one-on-one and turn the other cheek, right? Isn’t that how we’re supposed to do this stuff?”
And we have to be thinking: what’s the right way? How do I love my neighbor in the setting that we’re in? Take the policeman in uniform who sees one of his neighbors being beaten up. He has a public role to play: to intervene, to help, to protect, and to defend, right? That’s how he loves his neighbor because he has taken on the vocation—the role—of public service.
Now, that same policeman at 7:30 p.m., when he’s off duty and driving home, has a different responsibility. If somebody cuts him off, he’s not supposed to curse them out or anything like that. That’s when he says, “Okay, it’s not my ego; I got my toes stepped on. I don’t act out in anger or vengeance.” He acts as a private citizen in those moments.
Does that make sense? In other words, mature ethics recognize that there really is a difference between interpersonal interactions and interactions between governments, between societies, and so on.
We want to be smart about thinking: how do we love our neighbor? How do we protect and defend in each of those categories?
Two more points.
Seven, Christian realism is very skeptical of all totalizing ideologies. In other words, Christian realism is skeptical of “isms”—communism, socialism, Nazism, fascism. All of these are idealistic blueprints that a small group of elites wants to impose on society and plan everything.
Christian realists are very skeptical of these grand plans. One reason is that they are contrary to human nature. These “isms” are not just ideologically driven but also idolatrous. Each of them is driven by a totalizing claim: “We know better than everybody else. We have the new religion.”
In a sense, their ideology claims to answer all the questions about life, the universe, and everything. But Christian realists say, “No, there’s only one true answer to those questions, and that is found in Christianity.”
Last point. Christian realism emphasizes limits and restraint. Sometimes people say about guys like me and some of the other writers for Providence that we’re warmongers or that we don’t have a healthy respect for military power. I would say it’s exactly the opposite.
Christian realists are very concerned about limits and restraint. You’ll often find in their writings words like “unintended consequences.” We don’t trust idealists with their grand plans to impose them by force. Christian realists famously wrote in the 1950s about the importance of democracy—not because human beings are so valuable that we must always listen to their opinions, but because democracy includes checks and balances, separation of powers, and federalism.
In other words, democracy as a procedure limits the centralization of power. Christian realists love recognizing that humans are flawed—as Madison said, “If men were angels, we wouldn’t need government.” But men aren’t angels, so we need government.
The best way to restrain government today is through mechanisms that separate powers, enforce limits, and promote restraint. You’ll find in Christian realist writings a humble emphasis on limits and restraint.
It was this type of thinking in the 1930s that began to galvanize people in the United States and elsewhere to take a stand against tyranny. By 1940–1941, it motivated many people to change their views and realize that there really was evil in the world—and that sooner or later, the United States and other Western countries would have to stand up against it.
The best illustration of this was the British people, who more or less threw Neville Chamberlain out of office, allowing Winston Churchill to take the stage. Now, I don’t say that Winston Churchill was a great Christian, but he was operating within this kind of Judeo-Christian framework. He was the inheritor of this type of civilization when he took over as prime minister.
Others, whether they were explicit Christians like John Foster Dulles (Eisenhower’s Secretary of State) or those who leaned in the direction of Christianity like Harry S. Truman, operated within similar principles. These principles guided their decision-making while in office.
With that, let me transition and open it up for your questions or comments in the time that we have.
Q&A
When you’re called upon, we want you to stand up, quickly tell us who you are and what your school is, and let us know whether or not you love the Dodgers. I’m from California. Then, ask your quick question.
Who’s first? And, by the way, we’re going to try to privilege students over faculty if we can. Hand right back there, would you? Right in the middle.
Question: Abilene Christian University. What would you say, among the eight framework points of Christian realism, that Christians today struggle with the most?”
Answer: Yeah, thank you. Thanks. So the question was: where do I think Christians struggle the most?
I really do think the struggle that many younger Christians have is that they’ve, in some ways, rightfully been taught to be nice. And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with being nice. But we’ve substituted an ethic of ‘be nice’ for ‘love your neighbor.’
We’ve substituted an ethic of individual interactions for thinking hard and taking stands on the moral issues of our time. Many of us have written—including Paul Ramsey—about what might have happened in the Good Samaritan story had the Samaritan arrived a bit earlier. If the Good Samaritan had gotten there a few minutes earlier, should he have said, ‘Hey guys, beat me up too. Here’s my other cheek. Come on, take me down too,’ right? I mean, it’s ludicrous, right? But that’s the kind of immature thinking we often find from “be nice.”
Instead, he should have whipped out his first-century cell phone and called the police, or intervened, or made a loud noise, or driven his car—or donkey—right into the middle of them. There are a lot of positive actions he could have taken. By the way, he might have used force to try to do that.
So, I’d say the biggest challenge is this desire to be nice, and honestly, to be liked, rather than to take a harder stand and ask, ‘How do we arrive at a policy answer to the problem in front of us?’—even if it means disagreeing with someone. And then, once you disagree with somebody, you move on.
Question: Hi, I’m studying international relations at Liberty University. My question is regarding international policy. As an international relations student, do you think Christian realism can function in, for example, Muslim-dominated countries or countries such as those in Asia? Because I’m actually originally from South Korea, which is not based on a Christian foundation but other religious foundations.
Answer: Thanks, and thanks for working with my dear friends at RFI. So the question is: can Christian realism function in a non-Christian environment?
The purpose of this conference, first and foremost, is to empower you as Christian leaders of tomorrow with a framework and tools for thinking about social, political, and legal phenomena. That’s what this conference is really about.
We’re trying to tell you that you don’t have to make this up as you go. By the way, what is the great sin of evangelicals? I would say novelty. Evangelicals are always asking, ‘What’s the new thing? What’s happening at that church? What’s the latest fad?’
Here’s the good news: when it comes to law, politics, and society, we have the Bible plus 2,000 years of Christians thinking about these issues. How do we do law enforcement? How do we seek peace? How do we manage the military? This tradition goes all the way back to the first century.
Part of what we’re doing here is initiating you into that tradition. It is a Christian tradition. Now, part of the good news is that elements of that tradition—what we call the ‘just war’ or ‘just statecraft’ tradition—have actually become the basis for international law today.
The old just war tradition, which is still very relevant, says that if you’re going to use force, it should be done by legitimate authorities acting on a just cause with the right intent.
Now, in international law, we see principles of national sovereignty reflecting the authority principle. We see principles of just cause baked into the Geneva Accords, the Hague Accords, the Additional Protocols of 1977, and the UN Charter.
Most countries around the world have signed onto these principles by signing onto those laws. Now, that said, a secular, atheist, materialist society that believes the ends justify the means—like the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing—does not operate from this framework. Violent Islamists, like Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Ayatollah in Iran, do not operate from this framework.
They are idealists. They operate from revolutionary worldviews they want to impose on everyone else. But the good news is that these principles—developed within Christian traditions—have been a gift from Western civilization over the past 2,000 years.
Question: Thank you for your remarks. You had me at Bonhoeffer. I love talking about Bonhoeffer, partially because he confuses me and perplexes me. I think that, though he attempted to live into the greater good by killing Hitler, he also thought he was sinning—I think, if I read him correctly—in doing something wrong by attempting to assassinate Hitler.
So, I’m wondering if you think that Bonhoeffer, if I’m reading him correctly, thought he was sinning, and also if you think he was wrong in that regard, if he thought he was doing something wrong.
Answer: Thank you for raising this, because you’ve brought up an issue that is at the heart of what many of us think about a lot. There are two ways of thinking about the question you just asked—about getting involved in public life.
One view is that when we get involved in law enforcement, or we become the President of the United States, or a state governor, or the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, or a member of the military, any of those jobs inherently involve a level of force being applied. It could even be lethal force—killing the enemy who is attacking you, for example.
Therefore, if you participate in that, you sin; you have ‘dirty hands,’ to use the language. But it’s a lesser evil. By the way, I used to think that. I don’t anymore.
The classic just war tradition more or less doesn’t fully go in that direction. Instead, the alternative view is that people in those public service vocations are acting virtuously by protecting, guarding, and defending.
In other words, they have a calling to protect and defend the vulnerable, the weak, the innocent, and the unarmed. They don’t sin by protecting them, even if they have to use lethal force. At the root of your question—and there’s more to it, including an important distinction between force and violence—is this issue: Can force be employed morally, even to the point of death?
The just war tradition, and this Christian realist way of thinking, typically says yes. That’s possible. Yes, we need protectors and defenders.
Question: I’m Eli. I work for Dr. Patterson at VOC. With the idea of intervening and protecting others: we’ve seen when we’ve gone into the Middle East over the last 20-plus years how it has turned into a disaster in many cases. We’re there forever. What do you think about whether we should keep trying to intervene? Should we pull out? How should we deal with people under unjust governments around the world when we don’t think we can win—or when we’re not winning?
Answer: There’s a lot of things there, Eli, that you’ve wisely raised. I have to say that, when I hear the question put that way, I’m reminded of what Neville Chamberlain said to the British people. What he said, after allowing Hitler to annex Austria and then bully and annex part of Czechoslovakia, was: “Why would we fight for a people far away that we do not know?”
He was talking about the Czechs. These were their friends. This wasn’t someone on Mars. It wasn’t someone in Eastern China. These were their European neighbors.
And yet, that’s what he said about them. He told the British people, ‘We’re going to only look to our own interests, and we’re literally going to turn our eyes away from our European neighbors. We don’t know them.’
What Chamberlain was repudiating was the Kellogg-Briand Pact. He was repudiating the League of Nations. And you see that there’s a cowardice there.
Now, it’s a cowardice informed by how terrible the First World War was. Chamberlain could not imagine going through that again, so he abdicated the responsibility of what was ostensibly the most powerful country on the face of the Earth and said, ‘We don’t know our neighbors.’ So, I’d say we just need to be cautious about all the counterfactuals that might arise from the ‘if we did’ or ‘if we didn’t’ arguments.
From a U.S. perspective, I would say this. First, we have a responsibility to protect our own citizens. Second, every government has a responsibility to think about policing its neighborhood. What do its borders look like? What do its neighbors look like? Are its neighbors threatening? Just as you think about the neighborhood where you live, governments should be thinking about their neighborhoods for the primary responsibility of being good neighbors and to take care of their citizens. Third, are we meeting our treaty alliances and obligations?
In other words, if we’ve made a promise—and there are two kinds of promises that we in the U.S. have made—one type of promise is to our allies, such as in NATO. An attack on NATO is considered an attack on us. So, if France is attacked, if the Netherlands are attacked, it’s treated like an attack on the United States, and we go to war.
A second promise we’ve made is through commitments like the Genocide Convention, which says that if we determine something terrible is happening, we commit to act. Now, countries do not have to make such commitments, but if they do, they should fulfill their promises in those cases.
So, I haven’t answered specifically about the Middle East, but I am talking about a framework for thinking through protection and meeting your promises. If you make commitments, you follow through on those commitments.
Let me just end by mentioning some famous Christian realist thinkers like Jean Bethke Elshtain and J. Daryl Charles, who are anchors of this tradition. They’ve written extensively—including in Providence—about how to think about the needs around the world.
We need to recognize and not turn our faces away. Jean Bethke Elshtain calls this “equal regard”—recognizing that everyone is human. So, if there’s a terrible need abroad, we give, in our hearts, a sense of equal regard to the needs that they have.
But that doesn’t mean we can solve everyone’s problems. There really is a difference between choosing not to act while recognizing the gravity of the situation and turning away entirely, as Chamberlain did.
Question: My name is Maria Barnell. I’m from Wyoming Catholic College, and I was wondering about how, after World War II, the United States established an anti-communist policy. That anti-communist policy got us into Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
I was wondering—was that Christian idealism? And where do policies against destructive ideologies like communism fit into Christian realism without becoming idealism?
Answer: Yeah, well, those are two very large questions. Thank you.
Let me start with the first one. The policy of the United States—pursued by both Republican and Democratic administrations—was largely anti-communist on both sides. It was a policy of containment, not allowing communism to spread into free countries or newly liberated, former colonial possessions.
Remember, the policy was never rollback. There was not a single instance of the United States—or us with our NATO allies—attacking to roll back communism. It was a policy of vigilant economic, political, and armed containment to try to preserve the status quo.
When it comes to what had been French Indochina, remember the Geneva Accords of 1954—a treaty you’ve probably never heard of. The accords sought to settle the Korean War and also facilitated the departure of the French from countries like Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
What came out of that treaty, signed by both the West and the East, was an agreement that Vietnam would be divided—just like the Indian subcontinent in 1948, Palestine and Israel in 1948, Berlin, and Korea. Vietnam would have a democratic South and a communist North, and they would work things out through future elections. The Communists signed onto that agreement. That’s the real history there.
So, it was a policy of containment that did get us involved in these wars. If you look at South Korea today, you see a huge difference between life in South Korea versus North Korea, life in Taiwan versus mainland China, and life in Western Germany and West Berlin versus East Germany. So, a policy of containment.
Now, I realize I haven’t fully answered your second question, which is: how do Christian realists avoid falling into a totalizing ideology?
I think it’s in two ways. First, recognizing that although there are lessons to be learned from history and other contexts, no two contexts are exactly the same. Having a flexibility of mind about these differences is key. Second, avoiding a crusading blueprint to apply here, there, and everywhere. Approach even audacious political and strategic action with a level of humility, recognizing unintended consequences and things of that nature.”
Let me close with this, and it’s really a resource for faculty. A couple years ago, we published a reader that would be appropriate for a political science or international relations course. It’s a collection of writings from the last 80 years of Christian realism.
In other words, it’s all primary sources: Reinhold Niebuhr, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Mark LiVecche (who you’ll hear from at this conference), Nigel Biggar, J. Daryl Charles, George Weigel, and so many others.
It’s 80 years of Christian realism, available from Wipf and Stock. It’s pretty inexpensive—I think it’s $18—and it’s called Power, Politics, and Moral Order.
It’s been a pleasure to see so many old friends here today. I look forward to seeing you at about 5:00 p.m. down at the museum. We’ll take a big group picture on the steps at that time, and, of course, we’ll do more Q&A.
President Tooley, thank you very much.
