Marginal Christianity

It might be a division between social identities based on class or region or race or gender, but it is certainly not a clash between different ideas.        Crispin Sartwell Jun 20 2014, 12:02 PM ET   The French Estates-General in 1789 (Isidore-Stanislaus Helman via Wikimedia Commons) Americans are more divided than ever by political ideology, as a recent Pew Research Center study makes clear. About a third of people on each side say of the other that its proponents "are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being." They're both right about that. My prescription isn't civility or dialogue, which though admirable are boring and in this case evidently impossible. Rather, my approach is “philosophical”: to try to confront both sides with the fact that their positions are incoherent. The left-right divide might be a division between social identities based o...

From contraception to climate change, the quest to master nature will always put autonomy first. By Patrick J. Deneen • September 25, 2014    Official White House Photo by Pete Souza In 2008, Sens. Obama and Clinton fell over each other with promises to “follow the science.” They were speaking particularly in criticism of President Bush’s ban on stem-cell research and Republican resistance to the widespread findings regarding anthropogenic climate change. By “following the science,” they promised, policy would no longer be the prisoner of “political” considerations—it would be decided based upon scientific findings. Supporters of candidates Obama and Clinton knew exactly what was implied by that phrase—”following the science”—thus short-circuiting any real discussion of what, precisely, that phrase meant, and whether there was in fa...

The Truth About Our Libertarian Age Why the dogma of democracy doesn't always make the world better By Mark Lilla It is time, twenty-five years on, to discuss the cold war again. In the decade following the events of 1989, we spoke about little else. None of us anticipated the rapid breakup of the Soviet empire, or the equally quick return of Eastern Europe to constitutional democracy, or the shriveling of the revolutionary movements that Moscow had long supported. Faced with the unexpected, we engaged in some uncharacteristic big thinking. Is this the “end of history”? And “what’s left of the Left?” Then life moved on and our thinking became small again. Europe’s attention turned toward constructing an amorphous European Union; America’s attention turned toward political Islamism and the pipe dream of founding Arab democracies; and the world’s attention turned to Economics 101, our global Core Curriculum. And so, for these reasons and others, we...

 A post by Charles Self, Professor of Church History,  Assemblies of God Theological Seminary “Some are for the left wing. Some are for the right wing. I’m for the bird flying.” (E.V. Hill) Evangelicals are often paralyzed and polarized by ideological differences, with serious consequences for mission in 21 st century America and around the world. People who affirm the historic creeds, take Scripture seriously, engage in service and witness and care deeply about the world are often sidetracked from shared missional aims by ideological captivity. Witness the rancor between conservatives and progressives concerning current cultural, moral and political issues. Beyond these simple political groupings we have a host of subcultures all vying for prominence and redefining reality to suit their narratives. In several of his writings, the late Donald Bloesch, eminent 20 th century American theologian, warned Christians that human ideologies are one of the great...