The Christmas story doesn’t tell us how to reconcile the virtues and the vices of universal cosmopolitanism and local loyalty. But it suggests that we can somehow try to be true to both ideals: to be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes—and at the same time to reach out to the broader human community of which we are also a part.
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 1, 2021
My goal is much more modest: to help Christian and non-Christian readers understand what classical vanilla Christians mean when they identify the baby in the manger with God on high. That means taking on the most controversial and complex idea in Christianity; the doctrine of the Trinity is wrapped around that baby in the manger even tighter than the swaddling clothes.
Walter Russell MeadDecember 31, 2020
For believers, the question isn’t why there are presents under the tree. It is whether the love around the family circle speaks of a larger reality and in some way reflects the meaning inherent in the universe as a whole, or whether that happy Christmas morning feeling is nothing more than the biologically conditioned response of a collection of primates in a kinship setting.
Walter Russell MeadDecember 30, 2020
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.
Dale M. CoulterSeptember 15, 2020
What sort of moral leadership can emerge when Deconstruction undermines Christianity, as it has?
Joshua MitchellJuly 8, 2020
Herbert Butterfield’s Christian faith essentially inspired his view of history and government and made him the English forerunner of a hopeful Christian Realism as an alternative to both Western secular materialist liberalism and collectivist atheist Marxism.
Tobias CremerApril 20, 2020
If we leave religion out of our national conversation, we end up with a vapid conversation that doesn’t address the deepest realities that move most of the people in this country.
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 4, 2020
In a recent issue of Providence, several scholars presented a defense of liberalism that cited Augustine. Daniel Strand responds that many things about Augustine are not liberal at all and would probably set him deeply at odds with American liberal democracy.
Daniel StrandMarch 4, 2019
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.
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 3, 2019