Issues

We would benefit from the unique and particular blend of the Greek and Roman inheritance with the dawn of the Christian age found in the work of Augustine of Hippo.

Orthodox Christianity does not demand liberalism, but it can provide an alternative grounding for a form of liberalism that respects religious beliefs and institutions more than the early twenty-first-century version does.

Liberalism, at least some version of it, remains the best option for organizing modern society. The real question is which version of liberalism is best. In this symposium, a variety of authors take up the idea of Augustinian liberalism.

We need a theological critique of American nationalism and the way it shapes the American foreign policy. Such a work must be theologically grounded but also historically informed and politically aware. Peter Leithart’s book Between Babel and Beast meets the first criterion but fails on the second.

Matthew Kroenig’s The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy provides an immensely important and forceful rebuttal to those nuclear scholars who have gained influence among average American citizens as well as within the walls of the Pentagon where nuclear strategy is conceived and carried out. In doing so, the central theme in Logic also exposes the vacuity of the moral “arguments” mainline Christian “thought leaders” have pushed in the name of US disarmament advocacy.

The study of international relations history, history in general, and the origins and nature of diplomacy and international law reveals the absolutely central role that Christian faith has played in the development of these concepts.

The most profound and powerful reasons for religious freedom are Christian reasons, and they extend not only to Christians but to all people. In my view this means that there is also a deep theological warrant for international religious freedom.

For Kuyper, governance is an opportunity to plant Christian truth in another part of the world’s soil. It is about giving others a chance to flourish.

The United States can protect its interests and promulgate its values at the same time. If we are to be exceptional, we must live in the tension that exceptionalism brings.