Integralism

Christian Realism works to harmonize and reform society through mediating rival interests and leaning into Providence.

The Christian challenge is to identify a role for good government to restrain evil alongside other God-given institutions while at the same time establishing robust means to check the evil of government.

From 1945 to 1947 as the United States and Soviet Union moved toward the Cold War, Christian realists writing for Reinhold Niebuhr’s journal, Christianity and Crisis, responded to global dilemmas. Here are five impressions of those articles, along with lessons for today.

Once again, public opinion polls have disappointed isolationists and others who want the United States to have a minimalist foreign policy. Almost overnight, a large swath of America now wants to counter Russia, and elected officials who want to keep their jobs have responded.

The New Right cannot be bothered with foreign threats because they are rationing political capital for an ideological fight at home. That’s bad enough. Even worse, they seem less interested in transcending tyranny and more interested in learning from it.

Providence does not favor nations that imagine they can pursue holiness while escaping reality and responsibility.

Either Catholics consider the genius and limits of both Charles De Koninck and Jacques Maritain, or they disregard them both. The latter is unacceptable, given that surrendering the genius is too high a cost.

“The Unbroken Thread” by Sohrab Ahmari shows us that our human capacities and loves are not and cannot be strictly contained within the horizons of philosophic liberalism.

Proponents of religious economy theory point to evidence suggesting that religious adherence decreases when a government actively promotes a church or hinders other beliefs.