Calvinism

Burke is a defender of the institutions of Christian civilization. Understanding this liberates us from the need to defend failing institutions simply because those institutions happen to exist.

Man is troubled—more troubled than at any previous time in the brief sojourn of his kind on this planet. Wars, revolutions and social convulsions all indicate the depth of his disquiet. He is troubled because he does not know, and he wants to know, the meaning of his own life.

After traveling through Europe in 1947—including to Scotland, Amsterdam, and Switzerland—Reinhold Niebuhr wrote some reflections, including on state churches, the Truman Doctrine, Christian political parties, and more.

As we remember Archbishop Desmond Tutu, we should, amongst many others, also remember the great Reverend Beyers Naudé.

Michael Sandel’s “The Tyranny of Merit” is an invitation to rethink a seemingly self-evident thought, that our social and economic position should be dictated solely by whether we deserve to have that position.

Goldman responds to commentators who believe that Americans must return to some overarching identity and purpose. He argues that this task is difficult when the conditions that allowed previous unity no longer exist. Moreover, nationalists do not reasonably explain programs that could reignite a meaningful shared identity.

Eric Nelson’s newest book, The Theology of Liberalism: Political Philosophy and the Justice of God, is a compelling and fascinating dive into the theological origins of liberalism.

We have an introductory, if provisional, picture of anti-Revolutionary foreign policy and Abraham Kuyper’s platform coming into the highest political office in the Netherlands in the early twentieth century. How did this platform fair? What “necessary adjustments” (as Kuyper called them) did he need to make between his Calvinistic international theory and the actual work of foreign policy?

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.