A while back I got a stern email from a friend of a friend because I said that Tony Perkins supported Trump because he’s a fool.

How dare I say such a thing?

Today, I can only wish that the people who are in a position to represent evangelicals in public life were fools.

They appear to be something much, much worse.

If the document published by the Washington Post is what it appears to be, Perkins knew a candidate for congress was a predator and kept it under wraps – while promising the father of a sexually abused 18-year-old swift action – as the candidate defeated two (presumably non-predator) rivals for his party’s nomination.

I guess selling your soul can technically be a swift action.

On Mere Orthodoxy today, I attack secular neutralism, as put forth in a recent spoof of a Platonic dialogue:

Socrates’ pseudo-city skirts the real problem he has set for himself in seeking to make a city of men who disagree about the gods. The four fundamental laws that are to govern the city – do the gods will these laws, or not?

If so, the city is enforcing the laws of the gods – some of them, at least. This is precisely what it is not supposed to do.

But if the gods do not will the laws of this city, the laws are both immoral and tyrannous. They are immoral because they are not the will of the gods. They are tyrannous because they will be enforced, with violence when necessary, upon citizens who do not view them as the will of the gods.

If the gods will the laws of the pseudo-city, Law 3 is violated. If they do not, Law 2 is violated.

Instead, I defend a different vision of the liberal order – one based on a monstrous assumption about the gods.

Increase our capacity to seek a good life together by letting me know what you think!

Hard on the heels of my new eBook on the 95 Theses for the church today, with chapters on vocation and justice, TGR carries the latest in my series on our daily work as holy war against evil:

There is always limited agreement in the present age about what is right. This is true in our workplaces as much as anywhere else. It is important to note that there is some agreement, and also to note that the agreement is limited. The agreement is there because of the image of God in all people; the limits are there because of the fall, and also because of the already/not yet tension of the present stage of redemptive history.

The presence of some agreement about what is right makes working together possible. We could not have workplaces at all if we did not have some common ground regarding what is right. Therefore part of our Christian formation and witness is to be the people who actually do what is agreed to be right. We are to be the people who come to the aid of those who are lied about or cheated or discriminated against or sexually harassed.

On the other hand…we may need to take a different approach where the wrong that we are resisting is not agreed to be wrong by everyone in our workplaces.

Let me know what you think! And don’t miss  church resources from Spirit of Hope.

Today, celebrating the 500th anniversary of Brother Martin’s 95 Theses, my new eBook The Church on Notice asks how we can learn from his wisdom today.

Topics include discipleship as a full time way of life, the authority of God’s word, working for justice and worship that really worships.

TGC ran a new excerpt here, on how a deeper gospel of repentance revolutionized diaper changing.

This eBook is part of a new collection of church resources called Spirit of Hope that I’m very proud to be associated with. Other resources include small group curricula The Story of Holy Love and The Kingdom of Justice and Flourishing.

Check it out and let me know your theses in response!

TGR carries my latest on our daily work as part of the holy war against Satan:

To a large extent, although not of course entirely, spiritual formation and resistance to injustice both consist of the transformation of the way people do their daily work through spiritual heart-change. While I would not collapse the distinction between the two entirely, they are certainly not separate endeavors, and even the importance of the distinction between them has been, I think, overemphasized.

The consequences of this are radical…The boundaries between the faith and work movement and the justice movements ought to be a lot more porous than they are at present.

It also follows that both spiritual formation and resistance to injustice are intrinsically “communal” and “public” as well as “individual” and “private” from Step 1 onward. Because, as we saw, the fact that a person’s relationship with God is the primary constitutive fact about that person makes indiviudal and communal formation interdependent.

Would love to hear your thoughts!