Martin Luther

The most profound and powerful reasons for religious freedom are Christian reasons, and they extend not only to Christians but to all people. In my view this means that there is also a deep theological warrant for international religious freedom.

To get any insight at all into what Jesus’ childhood and upbringing were like, you have to do something that sometimes makes Protestants uncomfortable: study Mary.

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.

Four hundred years ago, the Second Defenestration of Prague occurred when a Protestant mob threw the Austrian emperor’s representatives out of a castle window. The Bohemians then started the Thirty Years’ War, which changed the course of world history and led to today’s nation-state world order.

If Michael Doran and Walter Russel Mead insist that Christian eschatology is relevant to American foreign policy, it makes sense to at least mention and analyze amillennialism and preterism.

The long history of Christian reflection does not share Mark Labberton’s confidence that “God so loved the world” means the rejection of power and worldly politics.

Following the Christian just war tradition, could the assassination of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad be justified, despite its illegal nature?

Ironically, it is possible to boast of one’s humility. In this article, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on April 19, 1943, Paul Ramsey aims to explain why. While Ramsey advocates constant repentance as a logical consequence of a Christian self-evaluation and imperfect humanity, he portrays such repentance as moral hygiene rather than attitude. He avoids the divestment camp, which prioritizes a clear conscience over achieving moral good at the cost of personal iniquity. In its most essential form, this is repentance for our assumption of righteousness. 

Too often in our contemporary discussions about justice, Christians have turned to the idea of the “image of God” as the grounds for our social and political ethics.