Christian Realism

Assassinating Iranian Major General Qaseem Soleimani was a justified act. But it took place within the context of a largely unjust and strategically indefensible grand strategy, so it is unlikely to be a net positive in the long run.

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

Several Christian pacifists have warned against celebrating the death of ISIS terror chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who blew up himself…

What is the role of moral values in the conduct of foreign relations? Although many answers have been given, three…

A version of this book review of Timothy Keller’s Prodigal Prophet first appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of Providence‘s…

Is Christian realism enough? Providence, the magazine to which I am a contributing editor, had Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism very…

Cultivating the garden of world order includes tending to the tasks that uphold public safety, execute justice and promote human flourishing.

We need a return to a sober Christian Realism that appreciates our fallenness, the fallenness of the world, and our limits in shaping world events.

Two Christian schools of thought might support covert operations and espionage: the just war tradition and a kind of “dirty hands” moralism. The dirty hands view says all those in political power must unavoidably resort to evil for the common good. The just war tradition has a different approach.