Theology

Day 8: One for All Yule Blog Nationalism Patriotism Israel
Day 8: One for All

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.

Day 7: Meaning in 3-D Yule Blog Trinity Christmas
Day 7: Meaning in 3-D

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.

Day 6: Personal Meaning - The Yule Blog
Day 6: Personal Meaning

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.

To Renew a People: A Wesleyan Political Theology
To Renew a People: A Wesleyan 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.

Look Not to Your Political Leaders for Moral Leadership; Look to the Churches
Look Not to Your Political Leaders for Moral Leadership; Look to the Churches

What sort of moral leadership can emerge when Deconstruction undermines Christianity, as it has?

Herbert Butterfield: Britain’s Reinhold Niebuhr?

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.

Day 11: Sitting in Darkness, Blogging the Light

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.

Augustine the “Liberal”?
Augustine the “Liberal”?

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.

Day 10: The Mother of All Meaning

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.