Reflecting on Israel at its seventieth anniversary, I wonder why Reformed Christians, or Calvinists as they are sometimes called, are more reluctant and timid about their views on Israel. 

Both the Jacksonian and Progressive persuasions that Michael Doran describes exhibit symptoms of secularized politics. Neither articulates a truly Christian view of politics or foreign policy.

Ultimately, why Americans see the world through one theological lens or another has a lot to do with whether they identify more closely with a Hebraic or Hellenic kind of Christianity. Put another way, American Christians view the world differently depending on how much they read the Bible, believe the Bible is divinely inspired, and accept the Bible as authoritative in their lives.

While there is enormous merit to Michael Doran’s binary and overall thesis in his First Things essay, there are some complicating factors that obscure the “wondrous chasm” between Jacksonianism and Progressivism.

Rather than simply securing our borders or pursuing our interests, Americans continue to believe that what happens here is the fate of the earth. The real challenge to this consensus would be a view of America as just another country, neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally evil.

While the triumphal procession of Christ into Jerusalem marked the beginning of the end of the problem of Sin for eternity, it didn’t quite attend to the problem of human evil in history. But God’s grace has a plan to partially address that too. And he gave us a sword to help carry it out.

The historic event grounding Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk involved a military crisis that was, in its beginning, as dark, desperate, and seemingly hopeless as it was extraordinary, full of heroism, and even miraculous in its conclusion. Whether his film captures any of that sufficiently is an open question.

This week in Moscow there was the usual lavish military parade, bristling with missiles and other weaponry, commemorating victory in…

Joy to the World: 25 years ago this Christmas, the Evil Empire Fell. Ronald Reagan helped shove it over.