Mark Tooley

Mark Tooley is IRD’s president and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence. Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and is a native of Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church, published in 2008; Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century, published in 2012; and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War, published in 2015.

Follow Mark on Twitter: @markdtooley

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The Iran War’s “Bad Theology”?

Arguably the Iran War is America’s first post-Christian war, heralded with brutalist rhetoric, not a moral vision. The problem is not so much “bad theology,” but no theology.

Iran War and Public Opinion

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. – Abraham Lincoln

The Case Against Christian Nationalism

A Christian Realist view, different from nearly all forms of Christian Nationalism, is that social righteousness advances haphazardly and providentially.

Romans 13 & Minneapolis etc

Even in the enforcement of just laws, state authorities can be captive to their own hubris.

Riefenstahl’s Nazi Ambivalence

A new documentary confronts Leni Riefenstahl’s lifelong denial of complicity in Nazi crimes, revealing how artistic brilliance and moral blindness can coexist—and why forgetting history invites its return.

The “Unnecessary War” 80 Years Later

America could have prevented World War II and, with benevolent wisdom and fraternal strength, can forestall another.

Meeting Monsters?

Monsters must be dealt with. But there should never be confusion about what they are.

Last of Great Global Political Thrillers?

In Cold War literature, Forsyth was a sort of Homer of popular but sophisticated thrillers that demonstrated what made and sustained the West.

Timeless Whiggish Principles of Liberty

May we all strive to be a “sincere Lover of Liberty.”

July 4: “Liberty as Independence”

“The Founders way of thinking about liberty is much more alert to dangers to liberty in civil society.”