Daniel Strand

Americans fought a revolution over the exercise of absolute power. We should think long and hard about resurrecting absolutist tendencies in the modern presidency and how we can put the genie back in the bottle.

We need a return to a sober Christian Realism that appreciates our fallenness, the fallenness of the world, and our limits in shaping world events.

President George H.W. Bush was a principled Christian politician who was devoted to public service as an outgrowth of his faith, and not in spite of it.

On PBS News Hour, David Brooks quoted St. Augustine to criticize President Trump’s response toward the Saudis for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Was Brooks right about Augustine?

As if the circus-turned-madhouse confirmation process could not get any more bizarre, Amnesty International has demanded that the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing be postponed.

Some evangelicals’ unthinking appropriation of social justice ideas can be faddish, light on theology, heavy on sentiment, and heavy on progressive politics. But John MacArthur overgeneralizes too much and lapses into caricature too often in his critique of “social justice.”

Nobody seems willing to look at their tribe or blame themselves for their role in our current state of national politics.

For American Protestants used to the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom, integralism—the doctrine that the state should publicly support the Catholic Church and protect that faith—sounds strange.

The world still requires order, and that still requires sacrifice. Many now believe we can have world order, peace, stability, and prosperity on the cheap. We can coast merely on soft power (Democrats) or by promoting national interests (Republicans) without the hard work and heavy lifting required to actually maintain that order, whether through diplomacy or hard power.

The United Methodist Social Principles fails to explain how the authors derive their conclusions from the authority of scripture, which should be the ultimate rule and guide for Christian social principles. And it fails even to reference the long and illustrious history of Christian reflection on these questions.