Herman Cain

Evangelical Christians long for the day when they can, in joy and a clear conscience, cast a vote for a presidential candidate that they fully endorse. With each election they look to see how faithful the professing Christian candidates are. But seldom do they find a man that enables them to check off everything on their list of essential and hoped for reasons for voting. One by one, election after election, the Christian candidate becomes the one that they “have to” vote for to keep the really bad candidate from the other party out of office. The lesser of two evils dilemma.

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“Now for something completely different!”

When I started to take history seriously as a young adult, I read as deeply as I could in the history of the Reformation on both the European Continent and in England. For most of the last 25 years I’ve held the view that Oliver Cromwell was a Christian hero, a Puritan fighting the Protestant cause, a pious and godly man that was used of God to establish the Protestant faith in England.

I don’t believe that any more. From my reading in the last few years I come to see he was something other than I was led to believe.  I most clearly came to my new opinions while studiously preparing to go to Ireland.

Instead of Cromwell living up to the virtue of his title of the “The Lord Protector,” Oliver Cromwell was a persecutor the likes of which England had never before or since seen. Instead of someone committed to building the Kingdom of God using the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, Oliver preferred to use swords of steel. Instead of being an agent of God’s peace on earth – he was a monger of war.  So, with playful song, I offer to you the Monty Python summary of Oliver Cromwell

E L Hebden Taylor (1925-2006)

I have recently begun The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, by E.L. Hebden Taylor He wrote:

“One of the great tragedies of the Protestant Reformation was the failure of the great Reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther to develop a doctrine of law, politics and the sate upon truly reformed and biblical lines…[because] they  were so involved in theological disputes, religious controversy and the very struggle for survival that they did not have time left in which to develop a reformed and biblical theory of politics and government.”

For this reason, Protestant Christians in the years following the Reformation relied on medieval and scholastic conceptions of society based on Natural Law, resulting in an inability to provide an explicitly biblical and Reformed view of politics, science, art, etc. Consequently, in the tidal wave of the Enlightenment forces, “protestant Christians were unable to withstand the onrush of the new secular humanist conceptions of law, politics and the state.”  Taylor quotes James Hasting Nichols History Christianity 1650-1960:

“In the seventeenth century, for the first time in a thousand years in Western history, a deliberate attempt was made on a grand scale to organize a religiously neutral civilization…independent of Christianity.”

Peter Leithart

In an article published in First Things called Solicitous Nation, Peter Leithart recently wrote of The United States of America:

“We are founded on principles, not nationality, and the founding principles, we claim, are universal ones. “All men are created equal” and all are endowed by the Creator with natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we take the Declaration of Independence at all seriously, we cannot remain neutral if rights are ignored and infringed. For better or worse, we are a democratic republic with universal ambitions, a very strange species indeed.”

“No particular policy prescriptions immediately follow from this insight into the contradictory dynamics of our national institutions, ideals, and character. What should follow instead is a more realistic assessment of who we are. America’s aspiration to be a “Redeemer Nation” has risen and fallen. Americans have not always been seething with crusading zeal. But solicitude for all humanity has marked our relations with the world from the beginning , and this solicitude was inevitable from the moment the ink dried on the Declaration. Indifference has never been an American option. The truth is, we cannot not care.”

That we continue to have this impulse toward universal salvation and peace is remnant of our Christian heritage. For us to continue this impulse without perversion and selfish ambition will require a return to submission to Jesus the Savior, the Prince of Peace.

Defending Constantine

Christians today know that something has changed in our relation to the world in the last couple of centuries. We know that we no longer are in a position of leadership or even broad influence in the broader culture. But we are torn as to why this is true, or even if this is a good or bad thing. Is it even a part of our mission as the Church to lead culture in an explicitly Christian manner, or has Christ instructed us to be content with being a sub-culture within a culture?

Peter Leithart’s, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom, is an attempt to address these questions in a manner that takes seriously the Great Commission, the history of the last two thousand years, and the ongoing theological reflections of various Christian thinkers on the subject.

Since Constantine was the first (in a long line) Christian ruler that tried to rule as a Christian, historians, theologians, political philosophers and social scientists begin with him. Among most academics today (both Christian and otherwise), Constantine has become an almost iconic symbol of all that has been wrong about Christian involvement and leadership society, and is now associated with what is called “Constantiniansm.” Leithart’s aim is to not only provide a fresh look at Constantine in his historical context (biography), but to present a polemic to the prevailing negative attitude toward Constantine and the Christendom that follow in next thousand years (and into the modern period). One of his aims is to “contribute to the formation of a theology that does not simply inform but is a social science.” His final and most important purpose is very practical: “I have found that, far from representing a fall for the church, Constantine provides in many respects a model for Christian political practice” [and general cultural engagement by Christians].

One of the fascinating things that Leithart demonstrates is that the ancient world, from beginning to end, was bound up with sacrifice (both animal and human). With Constantine, the world was forced to come to grips with the Gospel (i.e. good news) of Christ and the implications of the finality of His self-sacrifice. Only the sacrifice of Christ and our participation in that sacrifice can free the world of the tyranny of paganism.

I’m not one to read the end before the beginning – but I can, in good conscience, recommend that people may want to read the last two chapters first so as to be assured of the value of reading such a careful and academic work. For, indeed, the journey through Defending Constantine is well worth the time and effort it is to get to the end.

Of note is the fact that one of those whom Leithart takes to task in the book, Stanley Hauerwas, has written a very positive review of Defending Constantine. Hauerwas wrote:

“Leithart has written an important book that does more than help us to better understand the complex human being who bore the name Constantine…Leithart has done his historical homework. As far as I can judge, he uses the best scholarship available to develop an engaging biography of Constantine as emperor and human being…I am primarily interested in Leithart’s primary interest- which is to provide a critique of Yoder in the hope that Christians will recognize that they have a more robust political theology than Yoder could provide.”

The review is available here: http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201010/2172849851.html

I cannot possibly recommend this book too highly. It is a must read for anyone serious about Church history, the theology of Christian mission and involvement in society.