Politics and Public Life
No Christian—and for that matter, no “soldier worth his salt” (as General Schwarzkopf put it)—will proclaim himself to be “pro-war.” We desire peace. And yet we disagree on how to achieve the peace we desire.
At one end of the spectrum, pacifists refuse to participate in wars of any kind, for any reason. At the other end of the spectrum, crusaders seek final peace by waging war on behalf of an ideal. In the middle of the two views are just war proponents. Unlike pacifists, they are willing to wage war, but unlike crusaders, they are not willing to do so to achieve ideological perfection.
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In the midst of the carnival-like atmosphere of the 2016 election cycle, evangelicals run the risk of allowing one thing to slip their attention: Hillary Clinton’s enthusiastic acceptance of Planned Parenthood’s endorsement and Planned Parenthood’s heightened efforts to expand its abortive territory.
In light of Planned Parenthood’s aspirations to recruit and train “tens of thousands” of persons to further its mission, how should evangelicals respond? In short, we should continue to seek both legal reform and cultural renewal, and should do so not only by articulating the Bible’s teaching about human dignity but also by enumerating the ways abortion corrupts society.
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Yesterday, Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund held a crusade in Pittsburgh, PA, recruiting and training volunteers to further its mission. “We brought 1,000 people here to train them,” said Deirdre Schifeling, the Action Fund’s executive director. “These 1,000 people are a key. These folks are going to go back, and they’re going to reach tens of thousands of other people” with Planned Parenthood’s “mission.” This crusade and others like it provide evangelical Christians another opportunity to reflect our own mission to make a mother’s womb the safest place in America.
How does the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) implement its mission, for which it is recruiting “tens of thousands of other people?” It does so not only by terminating babies but by creatively recycling and selling organs harvested from the babies’ dead bodies. Although the public has always known abortion to be PPFA’s rainmaker, only recently—through the release of undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP)—did the public become aware of PPFA’s practice of reselling infant body parts.
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“Public righteousness” is not a phrase Christians talk about very often. But we ought to. If God created the world through Jesus—and he did—then Jesus’ Lordship is as wide as creation. And if Jesus’ Lordship encompasses the entirety of creation, then it extends beyond our private lives into our public words and actions.
For this reason, local churches should be “formation centers” for public righteousness. There are two main ways that the church serves as a formation center, and three types of fruit that will be borne when it does so.
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Donald Trump is now the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. For those of us who supported other candidates for the nomination, the question remains: what should we do now? Late Tuesday night after the primaries, I posted an initial response at Fox News, in which I wrote that this political moment is an opportunity for [ Read More ]
Robert P. George, a professor of law at Princeton University, is an especially incisive and articulate proponent of pro-life, pro-family, and pro-religious liberty causes. If you are interested in those and similar issues, you should consider following Dr. George on Twitter and reading his books and articles. Who is Robert P. George? He holds Princeton’s [ Read More ]
Following his victory in the Indiana primary, Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for president of the United States. In upcoming days, many of us in the evangelical community will be tempted to be despondent, maybe even to detach ourselves from the political process out of a feeling of helplessness. And [ Read More ]
The 1 Thing Jeb Can Teach Us, Even in Defeat Even months after his withdrawal from the 2016 primary race, Jeb Bush has something to teach us: that a leader should possess a full wealth of conviction, but should express his convictions in ways that are not uncivil, unfair, and otherwise demeaning to our country’s [ Read More ]
Here are twelve books I recommend to pastors, professors, and students who wish to be Christian witnesses in politics and public life. I will describe each book and then rank its level of difficulty on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the most difficult. Level 1 is the category for a book you could give [ Read More ]
The United States must immediately wage a more comprehensive and wholehearted war against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and wherever ISIS might be found. Terrorist events of recent weeks remind us that the longer we wait to launch a full-fledged assault, the more our nation and its allies will suffer and the more our [ Read More ]
