Nature for itself

Posted on | February 5, 2010 | No Comments

The story commonly told about the rise of modernity hinges on the rising interest in nature in se, apart from any embedding in a divinely-ordered cosmos. The gradual turn toward the natural must inevitably end with the death of an unnecessary God. Charles Taylor disputes this straight reading of history, which he calls the “subtraction” story. Rather, he argues, the early modern interest in nature-for-itself was inextricably linked with nature’s reference to God. The theological environment in the late middle ages was fertile ground for the new interest in an ordered universe; the supposition that “things have a stable nature doesn’t prevent them from still being signs pointing us to God” (A Secular Age, 93). A new value in the ordinary, perhaps coming from a Franciscan model of spirituality, was theological in outlook. Secularity did not originate as a challenge to the transcendent, properly speaking; it was, in part, a “mutation” from within the religious framework (95).

The turn to nature-for-itself predates the Reformation, but the Reform impulse both continues the trend and also sets in motion new and complex developments. Along with the new scientific inquiries, the move to Reform emphasized the need to bring about order in society and economic administration. In the 16th century, Taylor argues, it is impossible to isolate the religious reform from the civic. There was a “single programme of reform” (104). The Protestant “drive to piety,” to restore true religion, went hand-in-hand with the need for social civility (105). The ideal society was within reach. The Calvinist wing, in particular, countered the late medieval “spirituality of death,” in which true piety called for privation and a certain abstention from the world. This impulse created a complex set of consequences, manifested both in the widespread poor laws in Protestant countries, and later in an increasingly negative attitude toward those who remain in poverty – ostensibly, because the poor must be those who refuse to participate in the rules of civility and enjoy the profits of a well-ordered society (108ff).

In addition, Taylor connects the idea of the “unlimited sovereignty of God” with the notion of nature-as-mechanism, “from which all hint of intrinsic teleology has been expelled” (113). At this point, it may be more difficult for Taylor to find his theological connection – at least within Calvinism. For even the Calvinists most interested in the relationship between sovereignty and causality – e.g. Jonathan Edwards – do not go so far as to deny any intrinsic teleology. (Sang Hyun Lee even argues that Edwards restores this very relationship, over against 17th century mechanistic philosophy, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 104-106.)

In the context of reform, the growth of secularity was connected with an increase of personal faith. A world in which less and less reflects directly upon God resulted in Christians clinging more tightly to personal spirituality. The older order, with its different “speeds” of monastic and lay spirituality, had allowed for a more segregated relationship between ordinary life and worship. But late medieval reforms, and Protestantism even more so, led to a deeper integration of the sacred with the “profane.” Now “everyday existence, in work and family life” had a spiritual reality. Taylor illustrates this point with Northern Renaissance realism in art. The appearance of still life painting was not an abandonment of transcendence, but an affirmation of it. “Transcendence and immanence are together” at this moment, although the tension is present in seed form.

In rejecting the subtraction story, Taylor indicts the modern assumption that our current “social imaginary,” which depends on a foundational individualism, stands on its own. Rather, he argues, the modern approach to self-understanding is “deeply embedded in society” (157). The re-conception of our prime identity as “free individuals” created a “revolution” with profound moral consequences. The revolution “disembeds us from the social sacred,” giving us a new relation to God. In this sense, it may be seen both as a consequence and a corruption of Christian theologies of “the world” (158). The newly emerging secularity can be contrasted not just with the “divinely-established church, or Great Chains,” but also with the notion that our society is constituted by any sort of extrinsic or transcendent law (192). Rather, “the public sphere is an association.” This presents the modern society with a particular problem: How would such a group of people find commonality (194)? Taylor posits that by the 18th century, the public sphere can be imagined “without an action-transcendent constitution,” but rather with “an agency grounded purely in its own common actions.” Popular sovereignty could therefore serve as a foundation of the new order, one in which the individual would increasingly identify with expansive and more impersonal entities, such as the state or humanity in general (211).

Reformed moral theology: three dialects

Posted on | February 2, 2010 | 11 Comments

While studying at Notre Dame, I’ve had more time to think and read about my own Reformed tradition than I originally thought possible. That’s a hat tip in the direction of the amazing group of Protestant scholars working in the theology department, who have always been willing to open their office door for ad hoc meetings just so a lowly grad student can pester them with questions.

Throughout all this, it struck me just how strange it was, first, to be a Calvinist studying moral theology at Notre Dame. But then I wondered, where in the Reformed tradition is moral theology really being pursued with the kind of vigor as it is in the Catholic tradition? Calvinists study ethical questions, of course, but many of these case-by-case inquiries lacked a well-entrenched systematic framework (I wonder if a misapplied interpretation of sola Scriptura might be the cause). This isn’t to say that an ethical framework was not implied in those discussions (I don’t think that’s entirely possible), but that it was often unarticulated in favor of proof-text ethics.

That said, it seems to me that the Reformed tradition is beginning to awake from its ethical-dogmatic slumber. I believe there are at least two or three emerging dialects within the broader Calvinist formulations of just what moral theology is. Each has a unique relationship with the primary source of the tradition, that is: the first generation of Reformed.

I) The Van Tillians

This was the group in which I first encountered Reformed theology. There are various branches (or: accents within the dialect), but all would stress the radical, qualitative discontinuity between those with faith and those who deny the basic notion of God and providence in the world. The “antithesis,” while formulated in different ways, is a touchstone. Those from the continental tradition appear to speak of the antithesis in a different way than those descending from the Puritan tradition (who may not self-identify as Van Tillians). However, in both cases, the line of theological descent seems to originate several generations after the first Reformed generation. Groups connected with this dialect might include: neo-Calvinists, theonomists, and perhaps some branches of deontological ethics. (Side note: modern Kuyperians are producing some fascinating work, e.g. Wolterstorff on justice and Witte on rights theory.)

II) The Reformed Scholastics

This group often claims the mantle of true confessional Calvinism (see David Van Drunen and Stephen Grabill), stressing the distinction between law and gospel, and — analogously — culture and the church. The historical lineage seems a bit more complex, however, as the Reformed scholastic approach to moral theology seems informed by various later sources, among others: 17th century natural law, the Calvinist response to the Scottish Enlightenment, and the distinctly modern (and Puritan) definition of the self. Emphasis is placed on the distinct place of nature. To some extent, this group would embrace Taylor’s notion of the immanent frame in respect to most of the creational and vocational spheres. The supernatural tends to be “placed” outside nature, both in terms of sacramentology (e.g. a rejection of baptismal efficacy) and also moral theology (e.g. the rejection of the beatitudes as a livable ethic).

III) The Reformed Humanists

This is the emerging voice that I find most interesting, and least developed so far. From what I can tell, if we can identify any commonality here at all, it comes in a combination of the radical agency of divine grace (the Barthian elements) with a deep humanism in respect to culture (perhaps combining Augustinianism with an early Reform impulse). In working it out, I think this Reformed humanist dialect tends to be more comfortable using non-confessional sources than the Van Tillians, and also is more comfortable speaking of the public consequences of faith than the scholastics. Augustine and the later Barth are common interlocutors, as well as a focus on eschatology, the sacraments, and possibly some form of eudaimonism. I hesitate to apply this label to anyone at this point, but in the background I’m thinking of the recent work of Charles Mathewes (an Anglican), Gerald McKenny, and possibly Eric Gregory. I think Oliver O’Donovan could fit somewhere here, as well. But it might be an uncomfortable fit.

I realize this is all an exercise in categorical violence. I’d appreciate any dissent as an opportunity to clarify or correct my hasty labels. Advance apologies for all the generalizations.

Eric Gregory on the public role of theology

Posted on | February 2, 2010 | No Comments

Transforming Theology has posted a great clip of Eric Gregory’s brief talk on public theology at the recent AAR. If you believe that elevator muzak kills the soul, skip forward twenty four seconds past the intro.

Marilynne Robinson and the theologians

Posted on | February 1, 2010 | No Comments

Last week, I stumbled across the news that Marilynne Robinson would be leading a workshop at CTI to help scholars write theology better for a wider audience. (The news is starting to spread across the blogs.)

For those of us who lack the credentials yet to apply, read and pine away — says Robinson:

“Theology has been the mediator of the primary literature of faith since antiquity. The writers of the psalms, the prophets, the Apostle Paul all interpret core belief–that God is One, the Creator of heaven and earth, and that he has made humankind in his image. Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin each gave intellectual, social and artistic form to modes of Christian life which without them are hardly to be imagined. Lately the practice of this ancient tradition has receded into the academy and learned the idiom of specialization, leaving religion increasingly vulnerable to the charge, and the fact, of vacuousness. We will consider the impulse to think and write theologically, always in light of the intrinsic and profound significance of theology to the life of faith and the world of thought.”

Natural reason in Jonathan Edwards

Posted on | February 1, 2010 | No Comments

Jonathan Edwards’ later writings can be placed in the context of the high watermark of the British Enlightenment. While geographically isolated, Edwards perceived the direct influence of rationalism even in New England Puritanism. Marsden suggests that Edwards, seeing this potential diversion from true religion, sought to demonstrate the theological inadequacy of Enlightenment reason (“only dimly reflected light”). The rising centrality of natural reason was connected in Edwards’ mind to liberalism and the undermining of divine grace and revelation. His own cousin advocated this new theology, in which “unprejudiced reason” was able to discern right and wrong, truth and falsehood.

Edwards saw this as a direct theological assault on true Christian faith. The new rationalism was a correlate to Arminianism or Socinianism, and undercut the agency of divine grace. The modern turn toward the immanent and the natural had displaced providence. Still, Edwards was not willing to concede reason to the moderns. What is perhaps most striking about his later writings is how Edwards attempts to reclaim reason for orthodoxy – and his rejection of fideism. While positioning himself as a Calvinist apologist against “the modern writers,” Edwards’ aimed to show that common reason was more consistent with “the gospel of Jesus Christ” than the grace-less rationality of the Enlightenment.

Marsden highlights the irony of the situation, since Edwards and the late heirs of the Reformation did much to create an atmosphere in which individual choice and reason could stand apart from the supernatural. One thinks of Charles Taylor’s definition of the “buffered self,” and just how far the later Puritans went in their embrace of this modern idea in which a person could distance her true essence from external forces and mediating institutions. There is this fascinating tension throughout Edwards’ own writing. In pastoral terms, Edwards saw creeping rationalism in the easy acceptance of nominal Christians as communicants. He viewed natural, or mimetic virtue, with suspicion, as it became a “watchword” of 18th century rationalism. In turn, Edwards emphasized “true virtue,” over and against the mere appearance of morality.

The tension in Edwards’ thought may arise here, at the juncture where his Calvinist theology intersects his profound humanism – that is, his appreciation of the beauty of providence working in nature and history. Like Calvin, Edwards affirmed that God was the sole source of truth. However, Calvin, writing before the Enlightenment, seems less guarded at times in his appreciation of what Edwards might have called “imperfect virtue” (e.g. Institutes, 2.2.15). While Edwards sought to protect true virtue from hypocrisy, one wonders whether he leans toward the same sort of ethical positivism assumed by the rationalists.

And yet, at other times, Edwards seems to embrace a mature Augustinianism. He assumes a coherent, theocentric cosmos, not a disjointed universe (again, using Taylor’s terminology). The perfect beauty of God draws creation toward Himself, inexorably. God loves His creations qua creations: “the more happiness the greater union: when the happiness is perfect, the union is perfect.” Perhaps here, Edwards provides an answer to his own pastoral dilemma: humanity desires beauty and benevolence, and yet if that beauty is out of sync with God’s love, it will end in discordance. This appears as the heart of his critique of purely natural modernity. And one wonders if that Augustinian perspective could be made to harmonize, pastorally, with a healthy appreciation of mimetic virtue, and the imperfections of Christ’s unruly Body, the church.

Items of note (1/29/10)

Posted on | January 29, 2010 | No Comments

Puritan introspection

Posted on | January 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

As an heir of the Calvinist reformational tradition, some harder edges of Jonathan Edwards’ theology might appear to contradict certain evangelical beliefs. At the same time, the context in which Edwards worked, and his own contributions to the theology of conversion and religious affection, reveal some remarkable points of intersection with contemporary evangelicalism.

George Marsden positions Edwards’ New England Puritanism within the context of Christendom at large. Rather than standing outside the established ecclesial tradition, Puritanism sought to reform what were already nominally Christian institutions. This appears to be a crucial point. For since Edwards and other later-generation Puritans were working in a context in which the objective, external reality of Christianity was acknowledged, the perceived lack of piety appeared to indicate some inner religious void. Marsden gives a rather shocking portrait of 18th century New England life – one which contradicts the prim and conservative picture many moderns had in mind. Edwards’ family, for instance, was plagued by examples of contentious marriages, infidelity, and even cases of gruesome murder. Even the most respectable were in need of purification.

The reform impulse, then, was one that started inside the church and inside the individual Christian. As the external profession of faith was so ubiquitous, there must be some deeper, inward indication of true religion. Regarding regeneration, Edwards writes that while the process of awakening might be gradual on occasion, there still must be “a certain moment” at which the inward soul is enlightened. Further, any goodness or “doctrine of natural religion” is completely dependent on divine revelation.

This stress on the absolute necessity for a moment of conversion, with the stark contrast between darkness and light, becomes complicated in terms of actual religious expression. As Marsden relates, for Jonathan’s father “conversion was not just a euphoria of enthusiasm.” Certain affections may be mere self-deception. The twin emphases on the necessity of conversion and the difficulty in discerning true conversion often led to a rather doubt-ridden Christian introspection. For Jonathan, at least, childhood was marked by pendulum swings between spiritual devotion and worldly concerns. At the age of nine, Marsden writes, Edwards was so consumed by religious devotion that “he prayed secretly five times a day, spoke much of religion to other boys, and organized prayer meetings with them.” But after a time, he lost those affections and, in his own words, “returned like a dog to his vomit, and went on in ways of sin.” Concern over whether the conversion was a true one would plague Puritan society in general, as a symptom of the underlying tension between inner and outer spirituality.

There seems to an intriguing paradox in the late Puritan focus on the marks of true conversion. The original stress on the inner awakening appears to run directly counter to any perceived Catholic or Arminian doctrine of works and prevenient grace. However, as Marsden notes, there is a certain irony in the late Puritan emphasis on law and discerning the marks of true conversion. As conversion is made so absolute and central to the progression of the Christian life, material evidence that runs contrary to that conversion (namely, sin) seems to bring the Puritan back to a preoccupation with good works. The symptom is still there, apparently, even after the theological disease had been surgically removed.

Calvinists and disenchantment

Posted on | January 21, 2010 | 1 Comment

I haven’t had a chance yet to read Webb Keane’s Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter, but there’s a fascinating review by Finbarr Curtis up at the Immanent Frame. Curtis focuses on Keane’s interpretation of Calvinist approaches to human agency, pointing out several (Weberian) assumptions that may have led the analysis astray at points. While Keane emphasizes Calvinism’s critique of mediating structures (the hierarchical church, viz. Roman Catholicism), Curtis argues that he does not give enough import to Calvinism’s alternative stress on divine agency. In other words, Calvinism’s critique of pre-modern society is not identical to secular modernity’s parallel critique.

For example, one could note that despite their critiques of institutional mediation, Calvinists in practice constructed coercive civic and ecclesiastical institutions designed to further their vision of a Godly society—just ask the residents of Calvin’s Geneva or the Puritans’ Massachusetts. But Keane decides to accept Calvinist critiques of institutions and chooses to doubt Calvinist critiques of human agency. To this end, he draws on the classical sociological theories of Weber and Troeltsch, but these theorists were working with their own background assumptions, which presumed that Protestants (as opposed to, say, Catholics) would have to have been the ones who shaped the process of historical development that bridged the gap between Christendom and secular modernity. Thus, what mattered was where Protestant agency ended up, and this made the sovereignty of God, the saving work of the Holy Spirit, and the critique of free will into vestigial ideas that were destined to disappear. But it is important to consider that the jury is still out about whether these classical sociological theories were necessarily right about the telos of secular modernity.

Curtis suggests that modernist Protestantism, which is more explicitly a secular project, adopts a certain semiotic neutrality, i.e. that all human symbols are common and therefore ultimately pluralistic. This is not something that any classical Calvinist would confess:

What characterized Protestant modernists was their willingness to see Christianity as one religion among other religions. Thus, a semiotic ideology used to condemn other people’s false religions became transformed into a supposedly neutral hermeneutics of symbols, metaphors, and meanings. The insistence that everyone’s religions were alike and comparable could then be the basis for a tolerance that could serve as one of the markers of secular citizenship in a pluralistic society. I am just not convinced that most Protestants around the globe shared this semiotic ideology, especially those who persisted in calling themselves Calvinists.

Curtis stresses the role of the Spirit in Calvinism’s critique of modernity (true vs. false spirits). In my own studies of Reformed sacramentality, I think this is precisely the feature that many critics of the Reformation tend to overlook. Calvinism cannot be reduced to a synonym for disenchantment, per se. The real issue for Calvinists was a re-location of spiritual power, not its naturalization.

Read the entire article here: Giving up the Holy Ghost.

How real is the secular?

Posted on | January 20, 2010 | No Comments

Peter Berger once wrote about the spreading “rumor of angels” in the modern world. Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age begins by probing the question of why angels ever faded into rumor in the first place. How is it possible that the Western world, in which it was once nearly impossible not to believe in God, is now disenchanted to the extent that faith must be excused and excepted in our secular context? At the outset, these disparate worlds provide very different conditions for belief (4). Even unchanged creedal definitions are approached differently by the Christian faithful, against a different framework for belief, than they were in pre-modern times (13). A world which presupposes spirits and magic will express itself in lived experience that is distinct from a world which precludes anything but the “natural.” Our secular age achieved the invention of the “immanent order in Nature, whose working could be systemically understood and explained on its own terms” (15).

The wide-ranging impact of this immanent order challenged the conditions of pre-modern belief. Taylor summarizes three features of this world: 1) the existence of a cosmos which “testified to divine purpose and action”; 2) a notion of society (or less anachronistically, a kingdom) which “could only be conceived as grounded in something higher than human action in secular time”; and, 3) the belief that the world was enchanted, in the sense that forces existed outside the immediate natural conception of things (25). In this context, power resided in things, rather than just human minds. By contrast, there are no “charged objects” in the post-Galilean world (32-35). The modern idea of the secular moves the loci of power to the human mind, the self. This leads to a new, “buffered” conception of the self, one which leaves behind the “vulnerability” inherent to the porous pre-modern self that was threatened by the enchanted world of spirits and magical forces. The modern buffered self attempts to distance itself from the “meaning” of things (37). The line between the physical and the moral is drawn more starkly than a pre-modern could have imagined possible (40). As with MacIntyre’s interpretation of the Homeric imagination, Taylor’s pre-modern individual would likely have trouble putting his internal “self” at a distance from his actions, since in his world extra-mental things and agencies can shape one’s spiritual and emotional condition. So, for example, to place oneself outside the Church is to forgo the protection of the “good magic” that resides around that community (72). But in the secular age, one can readily hear individuals foreswearing such an extrinsic “religious” identity while still claiming an authentic, inner spirituality.

The disconnect between these two worlds seems to echo MacIntyre’s claim that “rational justification … is available only to those who already participate more or less fully in that life” (WJWR 110). One imagines that atheism would be just as unappealing to a pre-modern Germanic pagan as Bible belt fundamentalism is to the new atheists of the 21st century.

With the move toward the secular, Taylor posits that we live in a self-contained “universe” rather than an integrated “cosmos” (59).How can modern Christians reconcile transcendence, which was once assumed to reside throughout the cosmos, with an immanent order which claims to exist entirely on its own terms?

To some extent, the dilemma for the Christian tradition seems to be eschatological. Just how “real” is the secular age? On one hand, the Incarnation and crucifixion seem to dignify time. And yet, according to Augustine, ordinary secular time suffers from “dispersal, distension, losing the unity” (57). We get easily lost in our isolated moment, and often by misapprehension tend to “invest our little parcel with eternal significance,” and fall deeper into confusion. Ordinary time can become confused with the “higher time” of eternity (58).

Taylor suggests that a counter-proposal arose early on within the Christian tradition which emphasized a “spirituality of death,” and the importance of something “beyond” human flourishing (67). Late medievalism developed this preoccupation with death, which perhaps unexpectedly prepared the way for the turn away from the old world of apparitions and communal judgment, with a new emphasis on the individual anticipation of death and impending judgment (67-69).

These twin narratives, or pieties, are perhaps akin to MacIntyre’s conception of competing goals within a particular tradition. The Christian desire to “repair the world” seems at odds with the goal of martyrdom, viz. for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. Along these lines, MacIntyre interprets Hildebrand’s view of the secular in this way: “Secular government is thus both the result of sin and divinely ordained” (emphasis original, WJWR 162). In MacIntyre’s view, the political (i.e. secular) power of the papacy is an inevitable result of the inadequacy of purely secular rule. Whether or not the conclusion satisfies the premise, the tension is certainly palpable.

There seems to be something fairly crucial in the placement of the secular. Just how real is the secular? Is it a space (Hildebrand?)? A lower plane (Jerome?)? Or if it is a time (Augustine?), what does the penetration of time by the Incarnation mean for the secular?

After the crusade

Posted on | January 19, 2010 | No Comments

Check out a new essay about the crossroads at which Wheaton College finds itself after the retirement of long-time president Duane Litfin (HT: Evan Kuehn). The piece itself had a rather perilous journey before finding its final online form (it was originally supposed to be printed in Books and Culture). It’s worth the read if you have any interest or loyalty toward what may still be evangelicalism’s flagship college. See also this post at the Immanent Frame.

Update (1/20): See Evan’s further thoughts on the issue.

Obama’s Just War

Posted on | January 19, 2010 | No Comments

Political Theology has just published Daniel Bell’s response to Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech last December, which was noted at the time for its advancement of some sort of just war theory and Niebuhrian idea of justice. Access to the article is free, so enjoy.

Evangelicals and heart religion

Posted on | January 18, 2010 | 5 Comments

Far from being a random, place-less revival movement, early evangelicalism occupied a unique historical moment. Mark Noll’s 2003 volume The Rise of Evangelicalism re-treads some familiar historical ground, but does so with an impressive range of detail. Evangelicals were distinct heirs of the Reformation, and yet, as Noll points out, their identity was often defined by opposition to certain tendencies in 18th century Anglo-American Protestantism. The declension of Christian orthodoxy at the time was connected to a perceived lack of piety in spiritual life. The evangelical turn toward heart-religion was a concerted attempt to purify the church, not through doctrinal reclamation primarily, but through more authentic religious sentiment.

The gradual shift away from standard formulations of Protestant and Calvinistic doctrine had become striking by the mid-point of the 18th century. The established churches – Presbyterianism in Scotland and Ulster, Anglicanism in England, and an assortment of colonial churches in America – were alike in a trend toward “liberalizing theology” and a certain nominal religious piety. In the same manner, the rise of the state over ecclesial authority provided fertile ground for experiential, evangelical renewal movements.

Evangelicals, driven forward by dynamic preachers, responded to the situation with a renewed emphasis on the internalized nature of true religion. While the movement resisted uniformity, there was a certain confluence of three primary sources: high-church Anglicanism, Puritanism, and Moravian pietism. These groups shared a common starting point in their emphasis on the doctrine of sola fide. For the evangelical movement as a whole, the inner awakening of faith was not something that could be constrained to normal ecclesial boundaries. The Holy Spirit will work wherever He pleases. And His work distinguishes those who have truly experienced an awakening, unlike the nominal Christians who filled the pews of the established churches. Heart-conversion was absolutely necessary. In consequence, the need for a full experience of salvation led many evangelicals to stress the need for full assurance of salvation. This in turn often led to complications of true piety where the “converted” no longer felt the same fervor as at the moment of renewal.

When considering Noll’s account of early evangelicalism, the emergence of heart-religion stands out as uniquely fascinating and also troubling at many points. The evangelical stress on the invisible church and inner faith paradoxically led to greater and more enthusiastic displays of outward religion than perhaps was found in the non-evangelical traditions. The fervor of religious piety in the revivals, for instance, was at least as public as the more liturgical religion of Laud’s Anglicanism. And this is perhaps why the inevitable dissipation of religious fervor was so troubling (and sometimes clinically depressing) to the evangelical believer. Religion was tied to certain, almost quantifiable, sentiments and expressions; the escape from institutionalized religion could not fan the original flame forever.

So perhaps, strangely enough, the scholasticism of the second generation Reformers may have found its natural children in the fervent, not-so-invisible conversions of the Northampton awakening. Lacking a proper place for public, mimetic religion, evangelicalism seemed to have reconstructed its own context for a (paradoxical) public litany of piety. What seems implicit in much of this is evangelicalism’s adoption of the modern notion of self and internality — perhaps to a much greater degree than in the first generation of reformers.

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Theopolitical is the weblog of Davey Henreckson, a graduate student of theology at the University of Notre Dame. Topics of conversation are political and historical theology, with semi-frequent forays into literature, economics, localism, and the divine American sport -- baseball.

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