Peter Leithart on "Violence"

Peter Leithart ended his lecture on "Violence" at the 2013 Theology Conference (Wheaton College) with these words:

"The Church is called to be the community that is at war with violence. But in many ways we have, ourselves, as christians become complicit with violence.  How many churches oppose U.S. military action ever? How many churches, instead, support the U.S. military and the troops as if it were a sacred duty?   ...We have to ask the uncomfortable and alarming question. Have we become the violent ones and so set ourselves in opposition to the God who hates violence?" 

America's Nihilism

I recently started reading Os Guinness' new book, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future, and so far it is outstanding. Below are some clips from the first chapter which caught my eye:

"...freedom always faces a fundamental moral challenge. Freedom requires order and therefore restraint, yet the only restraint that does not contradict freedom is self-restraint, which is the very thing that freedom undermines when it flourishes. Thus the heart of the problem of freedom is the problem of the heart, because free societies are characterized by restlessness at their core."1 

"America's nihilism of untrammeled freedom has so far been a soft and banal nihilism that flowers and fades harmlessly within the confines of the consumer paradise of the shopping mall, the online catalog, and the video game. ... no one is fully consistent to his or her own philosophy, and there is always a long stretch of the downhill slope from the adolescent stage of soft nihilism to the delinquent and then to the decadent. But such ideas in such a society will always have consequences, and when the causes of disordered freedom also spread to such vital spheres of American society as the government, the economy, law, education, medicine, science and technology, the consequences will at some point become lethal and unstoppable. The gap between the lightning and the thunder may be delayed, but such disordered freedom will one day prove disastrous when taken to the very end. It is literally irrational and irresponsible, for untrammeled freedom has no need to justify itself either by rational criteria or by any moral standard outside itself. It just is, an untrammeled will to power that is self-evident, self-justifying and self-destructive, and a mortal menace to the society that harbors it. The conclusion for American freedom is inescapable. It is not enough to espouse freedom as the essence of America and to keep mouthing its matchless benefits. Freedom must be guarded vigilantly against internal as well as external dangers. However soft and however banal it is, unbounded freedom simply cannot restrain itself by itself..."2

1.  Os Guinness, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future [Downers Grove, Il: IVP Books; 2012], p. 20
2.  Ibid., p. 23

Fathers, may I have your attention?

Fathers, may I have your attention?  

Now that I have your attention, you need to know that there is a book you need to get. The book is called Father Hunger, and it's author is Douglas Wilson. Get this book in paperback, e-book, or Mp3 audiobook, but make sure you get it somehow. Then after you get it, read it multiple times. Take it with you wherever you go for the first few weeks and read a portion of it at every break until it's text is tattooed in your mind. "What's the urgency?," you might be asking. Well, if you're a father, and you have not already read this book, you wouldn't be asking that question. And so, just to tease you a bit, read and re-read an excerpt from that book which I have provided below. Afterward, get this book. The excerpt below is under the heading, "Loving the Standard":

    If you cannot get the kids to love the standard, then lower the standard. I am not talking about God's commandments (His standards), which we have no authority to lower, but rather addressing the questions that surround what might be called house rules. Lower the standard to the point where everyone in the family can pitch in together. This is not actually lowering the standards, but rather raising the parental standard, which is the real reason we don't like it. Fathers must embrace the task of communicating, in a contagious way, love for the standard. 

    Some parents might protest that this is impossible. But what does this example teach the young people in the home?  It teaches them that nobody around here has to do "impossible" things, and since the requirement to make your bed, or to comb your hair, or to stop texting so much, are all clearly impossible, then they don't have to be done. If you want your children to be obedient, then show them how. Giving up when it seems "impossible" is not showing them how it is done. Apart from a context of love and loyalty, fatherly discipline is just clobbering a kid. And since clobbering a kid is not what God said to do, the child is learning the fundamental lesson that, in this house, we don't have to do what God says to do. Instead, we learn to be sneaky enough to not get clobbered. 

    Each member of the family is supposed to understand that the whole family is a unit. All the members are on the same team. If a family has drifted into an adversarial set of roles, then the parents have to do something to stop the game or maybe change the rules. They have to do something that works. Let us suppose the whole family is flunking high school calculus. Wouldn't it be far better to all go back to sixth grade and pass that grade together? We have to remember that the standard set in the above passages from Proverbs1 is not an impossible standard. That was not written for angels in heaven. It was written for us. These things are set before us now. There will be more on loving the standard in a subsequent chapter. 

    The hardest thing to maintain in this unbalanced world is balance. We react, we pull away, we lurch, and we tumble. We do this in many ways. And, having heard the exhortation that we should teach our children to love the standard, but if they don't then we should lower the standard, what temptation will confront us? The temptation will be to think that laziness and apathy are grace, and that defensiveness when confronted is zeal for the law of God. But loving God with all your mind, soul, heart, and strength is a love with balance. 

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother" (this is the first commandment with a promise), "that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land." Fathers, do no provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Eph. 6:1-4)

    Here are some of the basics of Christian living within the family. We begin with the duty of obedience. When children are young and living at home, honor entails obedience, necessarily. When children are grown and out on their own, the duty of honor remains, but it is rendered differently (Mark 7:10-13). This is obedience rendered by children in the Lord. The word for obedience could be rendered literally as "listen under" -- or, as we might put it, "listen up." This attentiveness to what parents say is described here by Paul as a form of honor, and he goes on to describe how much of a blessing it will be to the children who are taught by their parents how to behave in this way. This commandment, to honor parents, is the first commandment with a promise. The promise from God Himself is that things will go well for you throughout your long life on the earth (Eph. 6:3). And then fathers are presented with an alternative -- one thing is prohibited and another is enjoined. Fathers are told not to exasperate their children to the point of wrath or anger, and instead are told to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Note that they are not told to provoke their children to anger with the nurture and admonition of the Lord -- one excludes the other. 

    One of the things fathers can stop doing (that provokes children) is to stop experimenting on them. In construction work, one of the good things about a concrete pour is that, no matter what, a couple hours later, you're all done. This is also one of the really bad things about it. You don't want to start out with a long foundation wall and wind up with a patio. Kids are a concrete pour. The time they will spend in your home goes by a lot faster than you initially thought it would. Fathers are tasked with the responsibility of bringing them up in the Lord, which means that fathers are tasked with the responsibility of working in harmony with the nature of the child. It is, of course, debated what that nature is actually like, and so how are parents to deal with this?

    Too many Christian parents are like that old joke about the Harvard man. "You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much." Because we have successfully established the principle that parents have true authority in the home, many foolish parents have concluded that this means that anything they may happen to think about child rearing, or education, or nutrition, or training, or courtship standards, is therefore automatically blessed by God. But fathers are told not to provoke their children, because in this fallen world, this is a very easy thing to do. This is a very easy thing for Christian fathers to do. If it had not been an easy temptation for Ephesian fathers, Paul could have saved his advice for the occasional dad who really needed it. Paul does not make the mistake of thinking that authority makes folly impossible -- he cautions against authoritative folly.

    The hallmark of whether or not a father is experimenting on his kids, as opposed to bringing them up in obedience, is how open he is to the idea of someone else actually measuring what he is doing. How open is he to true accountability?  "Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding" (2 Cor. 10:12). Note that phrase "without understanding." How can you tell if parents have undertaken their solemn responsibilities as parents with a demeanor of humble confidence? "Let a righteous man strike me -- it is a kindness; let him rebuke me -- it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it" (Ps. 141:5). The question can be easily answered. How open is he to outside accountability? If he wants his children to have high levels of accountability, while he himself has virtually none, then this is the way to a bad family disaster.

    The Christian faith is a road, sure enough. But it is also a way. This means that how we walk is as important as where we walk.  If someone has questions about what a man is doing, it does not answer the concern to point at the road. It does not answer to bring out various books and websites that argue for this particular kind of asphalt. That's as may be, but there is something else going on. How does a father conjugate the verb firm? Does he say, I am firm, you are stubborn, he is pig-headed? If he does this easily, then he has wandered from the way, whatever road he is on.2

1. A few pages earlier, he referenced Proverbs 1:8-9, 3:1-4, 21-22, and 6:20-22.
2.  Douglas Wilson, Father Hunger: Why God Calls Men To Love And Lead Their Families [Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson 2012] pp. 168-172

McDurmon on "Markets"

Joel McDurmon, author of The Bible and War in America and Biblical Logic: In Theory and Practice, has recently released another comprehensive, easy-to-digest strategy for implementing a Biblical worldview. The title and purpose of this unique book is self-explanatory, and is called Restoring America One County at a Time. Here McDurmon presents a thorough and thoughtful treatise which, as the back cover reveals, focuses "on practical steps, local solutions, personal sacrifice, and a multi-generational vision." So far I have devoured 244 pages of this 400-plus page book, and when I finally finished his chapter on "Markets" I couldn't help but quote a lengthy excerpt from it because I found it to be somewhat of a missing link among arguments presented by critics and advocates of modern-day "Capitalism."

McDurmon is one of those authors that you either love or hate. He's either loved or hated because he writes in such a logical, biblical manner that the reader knows his overall argument is either absolutely right or dead wrong. There isn't much wiggle room for neutrality. He will challenge your presuppositions about education, welfare, local government, state government, taxation, money and banking, "free" markets, court systems, foreign and domestic war, the military, and executive power. And yet, he doesn't do so like a bull in a china shop, leaving you with an overwhelming mess of worldview-pieces to pick up on your own. In this book he actually provides a step-by-step program for reform that can and will work if implemented with thoughtfulness and consideration of what's really going on in the world around us.

This brings me to the lengthy quote I mentioned before, which I would like to post below. The post below is stripped from 232 pages of previous context, and so I don't expect the entirety of it to sink in to every reader. But it is explicit enough to demonstrate a fascinating misunderstanding among "liberals" and "conservatives" today who have some opinion about the "free" market. When discussing the history of big "conservative" business at the turn of the 19th-20th century, McDurmon notes:

    The Big financiers -- J. P. Morgan & Co., etc. -- would not give up their quests for total domination simply because they could not win fairly in a free marketplace. They had no qualms at all about turning to government intervention and regulation. Thus, in the period immediately following the failed merger movement -- the beginning of the twentieth century -- we saw a rise in Progressive government domination. Indeed, "The dominant fact of American Political life at the beginning of this century [20th] was that big business led the struggle for the federal regulation of the economy."1 So we return to our earlier statement about covetousness and greed armed with the guns of government. Big business interests simply have used the government coercion as a means of gaining a market advantage forcing out smaller competitors.
    And the big business was not shy about admitting their agenda clearly. For example, J. P. Morgan owned the agricultural machine company International Harvester. After Teddy Roosevelt established the Bureau of Corporations -- designed allegedly to investigate and expose any monopolistic powers on the part of big corporations -- IH came under suspicion and an investigation was ordered. The matter was a joke, for IH already had a back-room deal with the administration that an informal warning would give time to correct any "illegal" activity in the meantime. Indeed, IH's lawyer told the administration that the company welcomed exposure showing actual losses on the Company's behalf, "for then they would have just ground for raising American prices."2  The Company was quite serious, and it raised prices with sanction from the Federal Bureau's reports "to prevent attacks from less friendly parties, and as a general shield."3
     Noticeable also in this respect were the massive railroad companies. Not only had they used "federal and local governments for subsidies and land grants" from early on, but "railroads themselves had been the leading advocates of extended federal legislation after 1887."4 Indeed, the railroads wanted to use Federal authority to guarantee their pooling agreements and thus free them from the disruptive pressures and temptations of the market.5
    What has been said so far is a large part of the reason it is such a joke when modern leftists rail against free market principles as the historical cause of inequality, class warfare, and all our economic woes. There has been very little "free market" to begin with; this country hasn't had free markets very often at all, historically speaking. And the "capitalism" of the big bank-government collusion that we have today is hardly free-market capitalism. It's rigged state capitalism, which is to say it's socialistic to a large degree.

And then, a few paragraphs later, McDurmon begins a ten-page long explanation of how to put "free" back into free markets. I really admire his pastoral candidness in the opening words of this section. He writes:

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to freedom is rocky, uphill, and lined with thieves lying in wait. The path to restore freedom in markets and even to arrive at a totally free marketplace is the straight and narrow way indeed. Traveling it to its end will require personal integrity, fortitude, sacrifice, patience, and endurance. It will require these qualities in society -- not just a few scattered individuals.
In simple terms, the road to free markets requires a personal and society-wide return to the principles that headed up this chapter: non-violence to a person's life or private property and enforcement of contracts. We must personally embrace these principles, and structure our lives, work, and businesses accordingly. More importantly, we have to maintain this discipline: we must absolutely refuse to depart from God's laws even when it is more profitable, more convenient, and more socially acceptable to do so. We won't have a moral leg to stand on until we practice fiscal integrity ourselves. We can't demand of society what we are unwilling to abide by ourselves. The model here is the Messiah, of whom David said in Psalm 15: 

                              O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?
                              Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
                              He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
                              and speaks truth in his heart;
                              who does not slander with his tongue
                              and does no evil to his neighbor,
                              nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
                              in whose eyes a vile person is despised,
                              but who honors those who fear the Lord;
                              who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
                              who does not put out his money at interest
                              and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
                              He who does these things shall never be moved.6

1  Cited from Kolko, Triumph of Conservatism, 57-58
2.  Ibid., 119-120
3.  Ibid., 120
4.  Ibid. 59
5.  Cited from Stephen Skowronek, Building a new American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 129.
6. Joel McDurmon, Restoring America One County at a Time: How Our Freedom Was Lost And How We Get It Back (Powder Springs, GA: The American Vision Inc.,  2012), pp. 232-235

The way to & The way of

The way to the kingdom is the way of the cross, and vice versa -- as long as you remember that "the kingdom," once again, is not "heaven," but the state of affairs in which God's kingdom has come, and his will is being done, on earth as in heaven.

-- N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters [Harper One: New York, NY; 2010] p. 116

Perfecting One's Own Ruin

In the year 1692, Thomas Shepard, the Puritan, published a masterpiece of spiritual insights titled The Sincere Convert.  Midway through that book, Shepard proposes a scenario where the question is asked, "How [do] men plot and perfect their own ruin?".

He lists four answers to that question, the second of which is: "By reason of man's carnal security, putting the evil day from them, whereby they feel not their fearful thralldom, and so never groan to come out of the slavish bondage of sin and Satan."1

Many pages later, Shepard continues this train of thought concerning the second answer, maintaining the same Puritanical candidness:

God may absent Himself from men weeks, months, years, [and] men shed not one tear for it, because they never tasted the sweetness of his presence. It is strange to see men take more content in their cups and cards, pots and pipes, dogs and hawks, than in the fellowship of God and Christ, in word, in prayer, in meditation; which ordinances are burdens and prison unto them. What is the reason of it? Is there no more sweetness in the presence of God's smiling in Christ than in a filthy whore? Yes; but they know not the worth, sweetness, satisfying goodness of God.2 

[The] false spirit, having given a man comfort and peace, suffers a man to rest in that state; but the true Spirit, having made the soul taste the love of the Lord, stirreth up the soul to do and work mightily for the Lord. Now the soul crieth out, What shall I do for Christ, that hath done wonders for me? If every hair on my head were a tongue to speak of his goodness, it were too little. (Neh. vii. 10,) "The joy of the Lord is our strength." (Ps. li. 12,) "Uphold me with thy free spirit;" or, as the Chaldean paraphrase hath it, thy "kingly spirit;" the spirit of adoption in God's child is no underling, suffering men to lie down, and cry, My desires are no good, but flesh is frail.  No, it is a kingly spirit, that reigns where it liveth.3

There is something about Shepard's insights which makes me wonder why many Christians don't express a desire to have this 'kingly spirit'.  

Why are many Christians quick to acknowledge the sweetness and satisfying goodness of God (as Shepard does), but not in a manner which exemplifies a kingly spirit in themselves?

If Shepard is correct in his insights, might not the absence of a kingly spirit indicate that a slavish spirit of bondage to sin remains in one's life?




1.  Thomas Shepard, The Sincere Convert and The Sound Believer [Soli Deo Gloria: Morgan, PA; 1999; reprint of the 1692 edition] p. 68
2.  Ibid., p. 91
3.  Ibid., p. 87

Humanitarianism and Resentment

In his book Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture, Herbert Schlossberg argues that "if humanism is the theological arm of the Religion of Humanity, the ethical arm is humanitarianism"1 (emphasis mine). According to Schlossberg, humanitarianism's praise of the lower class in America has been so enthusiastic that it has effectively produced the "divinization of the poor"2 and a distinctive form of idolatry: resentment. 

Schlossberg writes:

When Judas criticized the use of expensive ointment to anoint Jesus, it was ostensibly due to his concern for the poor (John 15:5f.).  In general this phenomenon praises the worthiness of what is unsuccessful or debased while expressing contempt for the exceptional and successful. Along with the exaltation of the poor comes the abasement of the middle class... Thus the poor are foils through whom resentment can strike at the successful while hiding its evil intentions under a mask of goodwill. A common humanitarian complaint is that the poor are not sufficiently interested in their own welfare, making it necessary for the humanitarian gospel to be preached among them... 

The dual effort to raise the lower classes and debase the higher has long been called "leveling," and in recent years has grown into the movement with the awkward name of equalitarianism (often used in the French form, egalitarianism). Equality in its original meaning in the United States required that immutable privileges of birth and position be uprooted from the new nation. There was no longer to be king or nobility; hereditary offices were abolished, and people were to reach whatever station in life their qualities and their efforts earned for them... 

As society erases social distinctions and moves toward a leveling... the demand for equality is not satisfied, but intensified. People do not envy a Rockefeller his millions as much as they envy their neighbor a ten percent differential in income. All inequalities, monetary or otherwise, are more galling to the envious when they are nearby, when the advantage is held by those whom one knows and when it is seen daily. The leveling movement has nothing to do with justice, because its impulse is not to raise those who are down but to topple those who are up; resentment is the motive.3

Is it true that, generally speaking, Americans have divinized the poor in this sense?

And if true, how many Christians have unknowingly imbibed these secular ideals, thereby fueling further resentment?




1.  Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture [Crossway Books: Wheaton, IL; 1990] p. 50
2.  Ibid., p. 54
3.  Ibid., pp. 54-55

Halo of hatred

Last night I wanted to read something that I haven't picked up in a long time, and so I sorted through the section of "classics" in my library and found a book by G. K. Chesterton called The Everlasting Man, which, if I recall correctly, C. S. Lewis said was one of the most profoundly influential pieces of Christian literature he had ever read. As I finished reading one chapter before bed, the words posted below stood out to me as being so powerful, that I couldn't resist posting them. Hopefully this will spark some more interest in the works of Chesterton. In The Everlasting Man, he writes:

...Atheism is abnormality. It is not merely the denial of a dogma. It is the reversal of a subconscious assumption in the soul; the sense that there is a meaning and a direction in the world it sees. Lucretius, the first evolutionist who endeavored to substitute Evolution for God, had already dangled before men's eyes his dance of glittering atoms, by which he conceived cosmos as created by chaos. But it was not his strong poetry or his sad philosophy, as I fancy, that made it possible for men to entertain such a vision. It was something in the sense of impotence and despair with which men shook their fists vainly at the stars, as they saw all the best work of humanity sinking slowly and helplessly into a swamp. They could easily believe that even creation itself was not a creation but a perpetual fall, when they saw that the weightiest and worthiest of all human creations was falling by its own weight. They could fancy that all the stars were falling stars; and that the very pillars of their own solemn porticos were bowed under a sort of gradual Deluge. To men in that mood there was a reason for atheism that is in some sense reasonable. Mythology might fade and philosophy might stiffen; but if behind these things there was a reality, surely that reality might have sustained things as they sank. There was no God; if there had been a God, surely this was the very moment when He would have moved and saved the world... 

It was the end of the world, and the worst of it was that it need never end... 

Nobody yet knows very clearly why that level world has thus lost its balance about the people in its midst; but they stand unnaturally still while the arena and the world seem to revolve round them. And there shone on them in that dark hour a light that has never been darkened; a white fire clinging to that group like an unearthly phosphorescence, blazing its track through the twilights of history and confounding every effort to confound it with the mists of mythology and theory; that shaft of life or lightning by which the world itself has struck and isolated and crowned it; by which its own enemies have made it more illustrious and its own critics have made it more inexplicable; the halo of hatred around the Church of God.1

1. G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man [Ignatius Press: San Francisco, CA; 2008; original edition published in 1925] pp. 162-165

Highest Communion

While preparing notes for a discussion about the incarnation, I ran across some outstanding observations by Karl Barth in his book, The Humanity of God. He writes:

God's high freedom in Jesus Christ is His freedom for love. The divine capacity which operates and exhibits itself in that superiority and subordination is manifestly also God's capacity to bend downwards, to attach Himself to another and this other to Himself, to be together with him. This takes place in that irreversible sequence, but in it is completely real. In that sequence there arises and continues in Jesus Christ the highest communion of God with man. God's deity is thus no prison in which he can exist only in and for Himself but also with and for us, to assert but also to sacrifice Himself, to be wholly exalted but also completely humble, not only almighty but also almighty mercy, not only Lord but also servant, not only judge but also Himself the judged, not only man's eternal king but also his brother in time. And all that without in the slightest forfeiting His deity! All that, rather, in the highest proof and proclamation of His deity! He who does and manifestly can do all that, He and no other is the living God. So constituted in His deity, the deity of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Jesus Christ it is in this way operative and recognizable. If He is the Word of Truth, then the truth of God is exactly this and nothing else.1 

1.  Karl Barth, The Humanity of God [Westminster John Knox Press: Richmond, VA; 1960] pp. 48-49

Between Babel and Beast: A Brief Review

In his latest book, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective, Peter Leithart provides a strong theological and historical case against the idolatry of what he calls Americanism, an "inherently expansionist faith" and ideology which "often sounds like Christianity, but does not."1 From beginning to end, Leithart defends his case that through the faith of Americanism, "the American nation takes the place of the church as the sacred community". One of the consequences of that faith, Leithart argues, is that they "read the Bible looking for types and shadows of America, and view the constitutional order as the novus ordo saeclorum, an eschatological form of social and political order."2

Leithart's views also prove to not be simplistic, but yet not overly complex either, which is a healthy balance for people new to this subject or new to Leithart's writing style. He makes numerous statements which will raise eyebrows among both fans and critics, but Leithart demonstrates that behind every raised eyebrow is a calculated attempt towards clarity, not ambiguity or exaggeration. Throughout the book, Leithart says things like "Insofar as we [the United States of America] want to make the world into our image, we are a Babel. We are not a beast, but we freely consort with beasts if it will serve our political ends. I wonder how long we can stay in the cage without taking on bestial habits ourselves."3 Leithart doesn't mince words, and so any reader should know what they're in for when statements like that are made. For those who are interested in the typological emphasis which is characteristic of Leithart's polemics, they certainly won't be disappointed either. One whopper of an example that raised my eyebrows the first time, is his contention that "Americanism is the monstrous Nephilim that people the earth when the sons of God intermarry the daughters of men. Americanist Christians are Joktanites who uncritically join Nimrod in building Babel."4 Them's fightin words.

Leithart is also very engaging in his presentation of both American history and world history. He discusses Egyptian, Israelite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Roman history. He provides detailed records of men and events in early American history as well, from Benjamin Franklin's "defensive imperialism" to the "expansionist republicanism" of James K. Polk's war against Mexico in 1846. And when discussing current events, the reader is left with a much more honest and transparent representation than the major media likes to present on the ten o'clock nightly news. How many Christians today take notice of publications such as the 1922 inaugural issue of Foreign Affairs (the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations), or the cooperation of Americanism with the IMF and World Bank? I don't know of many, and so, in my mind, Leithart presents a uniquely insightful angle from which to view current events.  

Leithart also discusses the relationship of Americanism with current events in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Yemen, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. By no means would it be credible to charge Leithart as not knowing his history well. And it's because he knows his history very well that he can sort through all the clutter of liberal theology and media, but still contend for the optimistic eschatological form of social and political order taught in Holy Scripture. For instance, he is not shy about presenting an argument in favor of historic biblical patterns of social order and justice, particularly patterns pertaining to Christian leaders. Leithart calls Christian leaders to grow in maturity and influence to the degree that they hold public officials accountable to the "officers of God's imperium".5  He asks such bold questions as "When was the last time an American politician was excommunicated? When was the last time an excommunication had any effect on American politics?" St. Ambrose would be proud of Leithart's faithfulness.

But in order to avoid misunderstanding Leithart's case, it's important to recognize that before presenting those kinds of ecclesiastically-charged questions, he first establishes a strong theological argument about the primacy of God's imperium over the American imperium. According to Leithart, God's imperium consists of communing Christians around the world. And because it is God's imperium, and no one else's, Christians have an effect upon American politics whether they like it or not. But their effect will only be a blessing upon American politics if they are faithful witnesses of God's truth. Sadly enough, I believe his assessment is accurate in that "Christians do not try to check American power because American Christians are usually devotees of Americanism."6 "American Churches", Leithart contends, "cannot critique and confront American power because promotion of Americanism is what American churches stand for. Individual Christians do not have the virtues necessary to function as citizens of God's imperium because American churches have discipled them to function as citizens of the American imperium instead."7

Between Babel and Beast is, in my opinion, one of Leithart's most polemical contributions (and he has written quite a few, to be sure). But in the end, Leithart accomplishes with great precision what he set out to explain in the introduction:

Between Babel and Beast is written for Christians, and my main practical message is a simple one: Remember who you are, and to whom you belong. Remember that you belong to Jesus first and last; remember that the church, not America, is the body of Christ and the political hope of the future; remember that no matter how much it may have served the city of God, America is in itself part of the city of man; remember that the Eucharist is our sacrificial feast. It is good for Christians to be salted throughout our polity--in the White House and bureaucracies, in the military, in international institutions. But Christians in those positions are called to be salt. American churches have too long discipled Christians in Americanism, and that makes Christian involvement in the American polity far smoother than it ought to be. Churches must repent of our Americanism and begin to cultivate martyrs--believers who are martyrs in the original sense of "witness" and in the later sense of men and women ready to follow the Lamb all the way to an imperial cross.8

1.  Peter J. Leithart, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective [Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012] p. xii 

2.  Ibid.

3.  Ibid. p. xiii

4.  Ibid. pp. 82-83

5.  Ibid. p. 110

6.  Ibid.

7.  Ibid. p. 111

8.  Ibid. p. xiii