Founded in 2015, Providence examines global statecraft with Christian Realism. We are inspired by Christianity & Crisis, the journal Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr founded in 1941 to argue for the moral and geopolitical imperative of American leadership against totalitarian aggression. We believe American Christians have a special duty to interpret America’s vocation in the world today. We seek to uplift the best of historic Christian political theology, to foster wider conversation about spirituality in politics, and to create a community of serious Christian public thinkers serving America and the world.

We welcome article submissions for our website. Check out our writer’s guidelines.

Masthead

Publisher: The Institute of Religion and Democracy

Editor-in-Chief: Mark Tooley

Executive Editor: Marc LiVecche

Managing Editor: James Diddams

Contributing Editors: J. Daryl Charles, Jeffrey Cimmino, Paul Coyer, Dean Curry, Alan Dowd, Debra Erickson, Garrett Exner, Matt N. Gobush, Rebeccah Heinrichs, Michael Lucchese, Timothy Mallard, Jennifer Marshall, Paul Marshall, Walter Russell Mead, Tim Milosch, Eric Patterson, John Shelton, Miles Smith IV, Joshua Walker, Nadya Williams

Editors-At-Large: Mark Amstutz, Fred Barnes, Nigel Biggar, Thomas Farr, Mary Habeck, Will Inboden, James Turner Johnson, Paul Miller, Joshua Mitchell

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and editor of the Institute’s foreign policy and national security journal Providence. He is also the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church (2008) and The Peace That Almost Was (2015).

Marc LiVecche is the just war and global statecraft scholar with the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the executive editor of Providence. He also currently serves as the McDonald Visiting Scholar at the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life at Christ Church College, Oxford University.  He completed doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, where he worked under the supervision of the political theorist and public intellectual Jean Bethke Elshtain. His dissertation took a classic just war view of the question of killing in its theological and ethical dimensions in part as a response to the crisis of moral injury. It was conferred with distinction in 2015. It was published as The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury by Oxford University Press in 2021. Marc’s work has been published in a number of edited volumes including The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Peace, A Persistent Fire: The Ethical Impact of World War 1 on the Profession of Arms, and Philosophers & War; and in magazines and journals including First Things, The American Spectator, Christianity Today, The Federalist, TGC Online, Salvo, The Stream, The Public Justice Report, and Comment.

James Diddams is the Managing Editor of Providence. His writing has appeared in First Things, Mere Orthodoxy, Providence, Religion and Liberty Online, and The American Conservative. He graduated with honors from Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL with majors in Art History, Economics, and Philosophy and minors in Political Science and Math. He was also a fellow with the John Jay Institute.

Mark Amstutz is a professor of political science and international relations at Wheaton College and has served on the faculty since 1972. His research has focused on the role of ethics in the conduct of foreign relations. His books include International Ethics and Evangelicals & American Foreign Policy. For more than a decade he served as a reserve naval attaché, retiring as a Commander from the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1993.

Fred Barnes was the executive editor of The Weekly Standard, which he co-founded in 1995. From 1985 to 1995, he was senior editor and White House correspondent for the New Republic. He covered the Supreme Court and the White House for the Washington Star before moving to the Baltimore Sun in 1979. He served as the national political correspondent for the Sun and wrote the “Presswatch” media column for the American Spectator. Barnes appears regularly on the Fox News Channel. From 1988 to 1998 he was a regular panelist on the McLaughlin Group. He has also appeared on Nightline, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Barnes graduated from the University of Virginia and was a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University.

Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and Director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, at the University of Oxford. He is the author of In Defence of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and, most recently, Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014).

J. Daryl Charles is an affiliate scholar of the John Jay Institute and has served as the Acton Institute Affiliated Scholar in Theology & Ethics. He is author, co-author or editor of 21 books, including (with Eric Patterson) Just War and Christian Traditions (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022), (with Mark David Hall) America and the Just War Tradition: A History of U.S. Conflicts (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), (with David D. Corey) The Just War Tradition: An Introduction (ISI Books, 2012), (with Timothy J. Demy) War, Peace, and Christianity (Crossway, 2010), and Between Pacifism and Jihad (IVP, 2005).

Jeffrey Cimmino is Deputy Director for Operations and Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a Contributing Editor with Providence. His writing has appeared in The National Interest, National Review, Spectator USA, The Washington Examiner, and other venues.

Paul Coyer writes on foreign policy, with a focus on Eurasia, for Forbes, and is a Research Professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. He has graduate degrees in theological ethics (from Yale University), as well as in international history (from The London School of Economics and Political Science). Dr. Coyer was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., from 2007-2013, and served as a guest lecturer at the University of Florence, Italy, in 2011 and 2012 in the area of Chinese foreign policy and Sino-American relations. He is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Alan Dowd is a senior fellow with the Sagamore Institute, where he leads the Center for America’s Purpose (www.sagamoreinstitute.org/cap). In addition to Providence, Dowd’s award-winning writing has appeared in The Claremont Review of Books, Policy Review, Parameters, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, Military Officer, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The American, The American Legion Magazine, American Outlook, World Politics Review, Current, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Indianapolis Star, The National Post, The Stream, byFaith and the online editions of The American Interest, The Weekly Standard and The National Review. Dowd has been a guest on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Counterpoint.” In addition, he has been interviewed by Cox News Service, CBN, The Washington Times, The National Post (Canada) and numerous radio programs.

Garrett Exner is an adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute, where he writes and comments on US national defense. He is also the executive director of the Public Interest Fellowship in Washington, D.C. He previously served as a staffer to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), as a counterterrorism policy adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and as a special operations officer in the Marine Corps with deployments to Iraq, North Africa, East Africa, and the South Pacific.

Thomas F. Farr is Associate Professor of the Practice of Religion and World Affairs at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He directs the Religious Freedom Project and the Program on Religion and US Foreign Policy at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, where he is a senior fellow. He is also a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ. Dr. Farr has served in both the U.S. Army and the American Foreign Service. Early in his Foreign Service career, Dr. Farr specialized in strategic military policy and political affairs. During the Cold War, he helped develop U.S. strategic nuclear policy and was part of the U.S. negotiating team in the U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva. In 1999 Farr became the first director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, in which capacity he led American diplomatic efforts to promote religious liberty. Farr is a contributing editor for the Review of Faith and International Affairs and has published widely on religious freedom and its implications. His work has appeared in many edited volumes, and in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Houston Journal of International Law, the Drake Law Review, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, First Things, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, America Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Review of Faith and International Affairs, and other outlets. Farr has appeared on PBS, America Abroad, Book TV, Al Jazeera, Alhurra, EWTN, CBN, and many other media outlets. His first book, World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty is Vital to American National Security, was published by Oxford University Press.

Matthew Gobush is the Strategic Communications Advisor of the Afghanistan War Commission and a Contributing Editor with Providence. Previously, Mr. Gobush served as Director of Communications for the National Security Council, and as Foreign Policy Spokesman and Speechwriter in the Office of the Vice President. Prior to working at The White House, he served as a staff specialist for international and commercial programs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. During the Afghanistan War’s initial phases, Mr. Gobush was Press Secretary for the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee minority staff, and later Director of Communications for Senate Armed Services Committee member Joe Lieberman. Most recently, he was Communications Manager at Exxon Mobil Corporation. During his career, Mr. Gobush has been privileged to directly support a sitting President, Vice President, Senator, Congressman, and two Chief Executive Officers, as well as two future U.S. Secretaries of State of different political parties. He has written extensively on foreign policy, military ethics, and veterans affairs, and led the Military Chaplains Just War Education Project for the Episcopal Church. A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Mr. Gobush and his wife Gari Lister have six internationally adopted daughters and live in Urbanna, Virginia.

Mary Habeck is a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she writes on al-Qa’ida, ISIS, and jihadi-Salafism.  From 2005-2013 she was an Associate Professor in Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), teaching courses on military history and strategic thought.  Before coming to SAIS, Dr. Habeck taught American and European military history in Yale’s history department, 1994-2005.  She received her Ph.D. in history from Yale in 1996, an MA in international relations from Yale in 1989, and a BA in international studies, Russian, and Spanish from Ohio State in 1987.  Dr. Habeck was appointed by President Bush to the Council on the Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities (2006-2013), and in 2008-2009 she was the Special Advisor for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council staff.  In addition to books and articles on doctrine, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and al-Qa’ida, her publications include Knowing the Enemy:  Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (Yale, 2005) and three forthcoming sequels, Attacking America:  Al-Qa’ida’s Grand Strategy (Basic, 2016), Managing Savagery: Al-Qa’ida’s Military and Political Strategies (2018), and Fighting the Enemy:  The U.S. and its War against al-Qa’ida (2019).

Rebeccah L. Heinrichs is a fellow at Hudson Institute where she provides research and commentary on a variety of international security issues and specializes in deterrence and counter-proliferation. She is also the vice-chairman of the John Hay Initiative’s Counter-proliferation Working Group and the original manager of the House of Representatives Bi-partisan Missile Defense Caucus.

William Inboden is an associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and executive director of the Clements Center for History, Strategy, and Statecraft at the University of Texas-Austin. He is also a distinguished scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security, a non-resident fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, senior advisor with Avascent International, and an associate scholar with the Berkley Center’s Religious Freedom Project. Previously he served as senior vice president of the Legatum Institute and senior director for the White House’s Strategic Planning on the National Security Council. Inboden also worked at the Department of State as a member of the Policy Planning Staff and special advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom. He is the author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (2008) and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine.

James Turner Johnson (Ph.D., Princeton 1968) is Distinguished Professor of Religion and Associate of the Graduate Program in Political Science at Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey, where he has been on the faculty since 1969.  His research and teaching have focused principally on the historical development and application of the Western and Islamic moral traditions related to war, peace, and the practice of statecraft.

Michael Lucchese is the founder of Pipe Creek Consulting, a communications firm based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, he was a communications aide to U.S. Senator Ben Sasse. He graduated from Hillsdale College in 2018, and in 2017 was a Political Studies Fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is also a Krauthammer Fellow with the Tikvah Fund. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner and National Review

Chaplain (Colonel) Timothy Mallard is a career U.S. Army Chaplain. He holds a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College and certified Army Strategist. He is a former Division Chaplain for the 1st Infantry Division and veteran of five combat and operational deployments overseas.

Jennifer A. Marshall is vice president for the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity and Joseph C. and Elizabeth A. Anderlik Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and a senior research fellow with the Institute of Theology and Public Life at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington, DC.

Paul Marshall is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Religion as well as Jerry and Susie Wilson Professor of Religious Freedom at Baylor University, a Senior Fellow at the Leimena Institute in Jakarta, and a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) in Jakarta. He has written and edited more than twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom. He is in frequent demand for lectures and media appearances, including interviews on ABC Evening News, CNN, PBS, Fox, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Al Jazeera. His work has been published in, or is the subject of, articles in the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, First Things, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Reader’s Digest, and many other newspapers and magazines.

Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College, the Distinguished Scholar in American Strategy and Statesmanship for the Hudson Institute, and the Editor-at-Large for The American Interest, where he writes the respected and popular Via Meadia blog. He previously served as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy for the Council on Foreign Relations. The author of God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (2008), Professor Mead is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs.

Joshua Mitchell is currently a professor of political theory at Georgetown University, and he has been Chairman of the Government Department and also Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. During the 2008-10 academic years, Dr. Mitchell took Leave from Georgetown and was the Acting Chancellor of The American University of Iraq – Sulaimani. His research interest lies in the relationship between political thought and theology in the West. He has published articles in The Review of Politics, The Journal of Politics, The Journal of Religion, American Political Science Review, Political Theory, and The American Interest.  His books include Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modern Thought; The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future; Plato’s Fable: On the Mortal Condition in Shadowy Times; and Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled, Reinhold Niebuhr and the Politics of Hope.

Tim Milosch is a lecturer in the Political Science Department at Biola University and a faculty fellow with Braver Angels’ College Debates and Discourse Alliance.  He completed his doctoral studies at Claremont Graduate University in 2022 where he did research on the effects of political cultures on international crises. He currently teaches courses on international affairs and national security at Biola and writes about those subjects even more on Substack at Tim Talks Politics. He’s also been published on Mere Orthodoxy and appeared on The Babylon Bee podcast (to discuss the serious topic of US-China relations).

Eric Patterson, PhD, is a Providence contributing editor and President and CEO of the Victims of Communisn Memorial Foundation. Previously, he served as President of the Religious Freedom Institute and Dean and Professor in the Robertson School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. He is the author or editor of 11 books, including Ending Wars Well, Ethics Beyond War’s End, Debating the War of Ideas, and, with Timothy Demy, the just-released Philosophers on War.

John Shelton is the policy advisor for Advancing American Freedom. He received degrees from Duke Divinity School and the University of Virginia, and lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Katelyn, and their children.

Miles Smith is a historian of the American South and the Atlantic World. He has taught at Hillsdale College, Regent University, and Texas Christian University. His research interests and his writing focus on intellectual life and religion in the Nineteenth Century United States and Europe. He lives in Hillsdale, Michigan.

Nadya Williams is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (Zondervan Academic, 2023) and Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity ( forthcoming from IVP Academic, Oct. 2024). She is Book Review Editor for Current, where she also edits The Arena blog.