Christian Ethics

What will be lost to many—including too many Christians—is the fact that this pledge of “never again” is, if it is to mean anything at all, a promise to fight if, in the last resort and with the aim of peace, nothing else will protect the innocent, requite an injustice, or punish evil.

How should Christians respond to the killing of someone so monstrous that their death seems to be a net gain for the world, a victory for the goods of justice, order, and peace?

The debate in America about Iran is not about war vs. peace. That is not the debate because that is not the choice.

Is there a definitively Christian response to impeachment? I cannot draw a straight answer to that question from the Bible.

If we are going to get anywhere in this debate about liberalism, we should take on the strongest arguments from our opponents and not their weakest or most caricatured. While I do not think Christians should see liberal democracy as the enemy, I do think its critics often have a point.

This week I attended in Washington, DC, the annual gathering of the International Democratic Union, a coalition of over 70…

A basic rule of discriminating moral reasoning is that we are only obliged to do an action that we are able to do. That is, an ought implies a can.

The United States was the first modern polity to claim political legitimacy on the basis of its recognition of certain truths, hard-wired into the human condition, about the human person and freedom. It would be unworthy of us not to take that history seriously as we think about our responsibilities in the world in the twenty-first century.

The pontiff is right to express concern about the risks of accidental detonation and the employment of nuclear weapons. He’s just wrong on how best to increase the chances of preventing their employment.