Today would be the 300th birthday of colonial pastor Jonathan Mayhew—a pastor, citizen, and prophet who articulated a rationale for self-defense by British citizens in North America.

Renewed debates over history reveal the narratives that conservatives and progressives employ to justify or decry American history. One narrative insists on lionizing historical figures, the other on demonizing them—yet both distract from the ongoing pursuit of the American ideals of justice, liberty, and equality.

History suffers from an apparently terminal illness—it is quickly dying and dying before our eyes.

Eric Patterson contends in Just American Wars that the US is unique because of how it considers ethical and moral dilemmas when it fights. Particularly, the country’s democratic institutions force any politician who wishes to engage in a war to explain to voters, civil society, and other parts of the government why the war must be fought.

Eric Patterson’s Just American Wars is not only a book about America’s wars. It is also a book about the ongoing moral effect of just war tradition on American values and behavior.

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.

Christian theo-political witness has always contended that political responsibility cannot be had by seeking either greatness or goodness absent the other.

Washington’s model is still within our reach. But it would require a renewed appreciation for the limits of the presidency, the limits of politics, and a renewed focus on the importance of character.

This article, delineating the two kinds of freedom found in the tradition of Western civilization, was originally published in Christianity and Crisis on October 19th, 1942. Editor Henry P. Van Dusen clarifies the two strands of freedom that have developed in European thought. One comes from the Protestant Reformation, a freedom that comes as a result of being created in God’s image and the rights that entail; the other comes from the Enlightenment, a freedom that is intrinsic to man’s nature and “self-evident,” something that is somehow apparent to all.