Here… • America has changed a lot since the last time the Cubs won the World Series. • As I finished one book project and contemplated others, I found myself asking a big mid-career question: “What comes next?” • Evangelicals — and especially those of us in Christian higher ed — ought to pay attention … More That Was The Week That Was
Thanks to conservative intellectual Eric Metaxas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become a member of this crazy election’s extended cast of characters. At multiple points this year (most recently in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and then a series of tweets), Metaxas has hearkened back to his Bonhoeffer biography in order to make the case for supporting Donald Trump. We ARE responsible for … More The Bonhoeffer Effect, “Unpleasant Parallels,” and the 2016 Election
Here… • I’m mostly past worrying about pageviews, but if you missed my observations about the past and politics in southwestern Virginia… I do think it deserves more attention than it got. • But more importantly, Andy Crouch’s Trump editorial in Christianity Today got a huge readership. • Reader Sean O’Neil suggested that Christian intellectuals are actually planting some important seeds during … More That Was The Week That Was
One of the benefits of working at a place like Bethel is that I get to learn from brilliant colleagues like Adam Johnson, who teaches cognitive neuroscience in our psychology department. Adam’s research focuses on memory, decision-making, and moral psychology and has been supported by grants from BioLogos and the National Institutes of Health. In this guest post, he draws on insights … More Moral Psychology and Politics: Why Is the Trump Tape Such a Revelation to Evangelicals? (Adam Johnson)
I had intended to write a series of these “dispatches,” and I still might have one or two more things to add before we head back to Minnesota. But for now, I put together a few observations about our time in one of the most strongly pro-Trump parts of the country. For my fall sabbatical, my … More Dispatches from Trump Country: The Past and Politics
Today Andy Crouch, the editorial director of Christianity Today, managed to do two things with a single essay: make me look much smarter than I am, and give me hope that the evangelical movement might actually learn something from this debacle of an election. First, making me look smart: I’m in Denver to speak at one of … More “Strategy Becomes Idolatry”: Christianity Today Against Evangelical Support for Trump
With just over a month until Election Day, I hope that lots of fellow Christians paid attention to Miroslav Volf’s interview with journalist Jonathan Merritt, since the Yale theologian makes a plausible argument that Hillary Clinton is not only the more competent of the two major party presidential candidates running for office now, but that the kind of vision she stands … More Have Christian Intellectuals Made Any Difference in This Election?
Heading into Monday night’s first presidential debate, an ABC/Washington Post poll found Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton among white evangelicals, 71%-22%. Much though Trump’s boorish, unprepared performance in the debate embarrassed even political conservatives, I’m not sure that my fellow evangelicals learned anything new that night that shouldn’t already have dissuaded them from backing Trump. As a FiveThirtyEight profile pointed out Tuesday, his support from … More One More Reason Evangelicalism Needs Fewer White Men in Leadership
I’ll leave it to my colleagues on Election Shock Therapy to engage in rigorous, trained analysis of American politics. But I have reached one conclusion based on my observation of the 2016 presidential election campaigns: Evangelicals need a political “third way.” I’ve never liked the idea of evangelicals being too closely identified with either of our two major … More Three “Third Ways” for Evangelicals in Politics
Last week my family completed a rambling journey and arrived safely in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where we’ll be spending my fall sabbatical as I continue work on a couple of writing projects. Believe it or not, this will be my workspace until December: As we passed through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, I was … More Dispatches from Trump Country
The Pietist Schoolman 