Political Theology

John Wesley’s basic Augustinianism created a nonconformist populism that was intent on renewing the people. While Wesleyanism did not always live up to its core commitments, the heart of its political theology resides in a fusion of Wesleyan Augustinianism with nonconformist populism.

Rather than taking each other’s strongest arguments, people arguing over Catholic Integralism often defeat straw men or completely dodge arguments. This does not advance the conversation so that learning and mutual edification may occur.

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?

In The Political Theology of European Integration, Mark Royce corrects the political science discourse by explaining how political theology can affect international relations.

Politics is essential for any working society, let alone a thriving one. To the extent that Christians abandon politics or leave it to the jackals, society will suffer.

Christianity’s political theology tips its hand at Christmastide. What’s in the cards for world order? Tidings of a coming “Desire of the Nations.” Songs of how “He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.” Promises of “peace on earth.” Juxtapose all this with our time, when trumpeting “America first” sounds to some like jingoist nationalism and to others like the return of national sovereignty.

The key to a nations ability to administer authority is an understanding among its individual leaders that theirs is not the ultimate authority. And the key to a nation’s ability to harbor morality is an understanding among its individual leaders that their common sense is not the ultimate source of morality. 

On PBS News Hour, David Brooks quoted St. Augustine to criticize President Trump’s response toward the Saudis for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Was Brooks right about Augustine?

Would those Catholics promoting integralism instead of liberalism support a nationalist-isolationist foreign policy, or empire?