Today I’m honored to be included in a Breakpoint symposium on challenges facing the church in 2018. Among the contributions, I don’t see any apologies for Trump or for giving up on the culture, but I do see a healthy tension between the imperatives to restore our credibility and seek reconciliation and the imperatives to stand up for truth and justice, mindful of the creeping totalitarianism that is the culture of death. It’s not a debate per se, but it’s also not simply harmonious. The peacemaker cannot say to the prophet “I have no need of you.”

My own contribution focuses on recovering a sense that religious freedom is a long, hard road that requires painful sacrifice:

Will we be humble enough to seek solutions to this dilemma whose ultimate aim is peaceful coexistence with those of other beliefs, even if that involves hard sacrifices and not getting our own way all the time? Or will we listen to the charlatans who whisper that our problems are all someone else’s fault, and we can make everything right again – without painful sacrifices on our part – if only we can defeat our enemies in political battle?

Also includes a shout-out to my man Whittaker Chambers – if you’re in the Grand Rapids area, I’ll be speaking about him at a lunch event on February 22 at the Acton Institute.

It’s great to see the conversations we need to be having are being had!