President and Editor-in-Chief @AmReformer
Joined December 2018
- Tweets15.7K
- Following1.1K
- Followers3.7K
- Likes43.4K
Teaching college students at big state university validated this claim. When we debated free speech, women were always more adamant about the need for censorship and creating policies against "hate speech"
Wow. FIRE data shows male students are more tolerant of ideological enemies than female students are of ideological allies. Read that again and then click the link.
expression.fire.org/p/male-s…
Reinhold Niebuhr, the great Cold Warrior, publishing a positive essay on American Nationalism in the middle of WW II as the US fights Nazi Germany. What's not to love!!
Nationalism, which has been perverted and degraded by ugly foreign ideologies to such an extent that the name has come to have dismal associations, may still retain for Americans its true meaning and be for us a thing not only sane but even sacred. It means for us devotion to the general welfare, to the good of the whole nation as distinguished from any exclusive class or caste or bloc or section in it. And it may mean for us a consciousness of a covenant relationship to God and of national mission in accordance with His will.
—
Howard C. Robbins (1942)
Common perspective amongst evangelicals. They blur the line between Christian piety and the public vocation of a politician. You can be a good Christian and a terrible politician. Piety does not guarantee skill and competence in politics.
The more history of mainline Protestantism I read the more I have come to one conclusion: Liberal Protestants were, and still are, Christian Nationalists but you aren’t ready that conversation.
America is spiritually Reformed less in doctrine but more in ethos. The sense of being the “almost chosen people” in Lincoln’s words, who was raised a Reformed Baptist and attended a Presbyterian church, is deep in our bones.
Ross is right about the vibrancy of evangelicalism. But a distinction needs to be made. The strongest currents of Protestantism in the US are Wesleyan, not Calvinist, Pentecostal rather than Presbyterian. When intellectual Protestants wax triumphant about an “evangelical century,” they are celebrating the success of a form of Christianity that differs in significant ways from their own.
I was raised in a non-denominational evangelical church. When I became “young, restless, and Reformed,” my parents were alarmed. They asked the pastor how to handle my evident defection from the faith. Whatever I believed, they thought, it wasn’t true Christianity.
Intellectual Protestants—the kind who attend Anglican churches or imbibe high-proof Calvinist texts—represent traditions of belief that have helped shape this country. But in terms of sociology and doctrine, they are alienated from the most vigorous contemporary expressions of American Christianity.
Bought a $3 coffee and the terminal recommended I tip a dollar. What are we doing here? You poured me a cup of coffee and I’m supposed to tip 33%?
This is to say: the recent spate of works denouncing so-called Christian nationalism among evangelicals have it precisely backwards.
Nothing brings me more joy than seeing my children succeed and thrive. Watching young men mature into responsible and capable adults is truly a blessing and we need to talk about it much more. I love it.
This a very American impulse. Reinhold Niebuhr deftly analyzes the phenomenon in the Social Gospelers and mainline social reform movements that tended towards a highly moralistic account of politics that ignored human nature and history. Still relevant.
Thesis: evangelicals are interested in morality, not politics. Power is a dirty word. Compromise is bad. That is the lifeblood of politics but they generally find it all distasteful and immoral.
Instant Karma is going to get you
BREAKING: Virginia Democratic state Sen. Louise Lucas, 82, has been indicted on federal drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud and firearms charges. Prosecutors accuse her of helping run a marijuana distribution operation with family members and using her position to protect it and profit from it. Lucas was a leading advocate for legalizing marijuana in Virginia.
Here’s the thing: if you do biblical studies you will, no doubt, use scholarship by non-Christians, atheists, and theological liberals who are heretics. Some of the best scholarship comes from the unredeemed. That’s a fact. But nobody is making a stink about it. No one.
Redemption does not ensure intellectual brilliance. Many of holiest people I know are the least intellectual. That’s the beauty of the gospel. But God distributes intellectual capability how He wills.
