1/ Let's talk about an irony I can't help but notice. Jimmy Carter’s Christian faith is being praised and celebrated.

By all accounts, Carter's Christianity was a particularly pietistic expression of Mainline Protestantism. Reading his beliefs about Scripture confirms he takes a neo-orthodox approach to Scripture's inspiration. That's the tell.

This is a Protestantism whose doctrinal core has been hollowed out for decades by theological liberalism. It is a form of modernized Christianity out of sync with biblical Christianity as it jettisons the most controversial and supposedly outmoded elements of Christianity to placate the spirit of the age. For example, Carter is on record celebrating same-sex marriage and defending abortion. He hectored Southern Baptist conservatives for the denomination's return to biblical Christianity and loudly departed.

Yet, when conservative Christianity acts on its faith, the public and media's tone shifts—suddenly, Christianity becomes a problem. It is a threat to democracy and illiberal.

Why the double standard? 2/ Carter’s faith resonated with liberal ideals—service, humility, and social justice. His Christianity is what one of my old professors would call "BOMFOG"—Brotherhood of Man and Fatherhood of God. Of course, service, humility, seeking justice, and loving your neighbor can be beautiful and vital parts of Christianity. But Christianity also speaks about sin, human nature, family structure, the exclusivity of Christ for salvation, sexual morality, repentance, and absolute truth—topics that, well, aren't very popular with cultural progressives.

As we prepare for Christmas, let's reflect on Jonathan Edwards' beautiful meditation on Christ's nature: "The Excellency of Christ." In Him, we see the perfect union of qualities that seem impossible to combine. He is both Lion and Lamb, majesty and meekness. 🧵 Christ is the Lion of Judah (Rev. 5:5)—mighty, royal, and victorious. He defeats sin and Satan with His power. Yet He is also the Lamb of God (John 1:29)—gentle, sacrificial, and full of compassion. This "admirable conjunction" shows His unique glory.

An #IowaCaucus Day🧵on the relationship between politics and theology and why the two cannot be separated without one eventually impacting the other: I have never seen someone embrace progressive politics or cozy up to it and end up with a more vibrant and orthodox faith. Just the opposite has been the case in my experience: Someone who was formerly progressive is converted and ends up holding to positions that our modern nomenclature calls “conservative.” Either that is purely coincidental or there is a causal relationship.

Drawing a moral equivalence between Greg Abbot protecting kids from bodily mutilation and Gavin Newsom wanting to expand pharmaceutical access to kill unborn children is not the argument that a Christian or conservative should be making. nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opi… The state can and should differentiate between genuine moral harms and genuine moral goods and then, in appropriate ways, restrict harms and encourage goods. To say otherwise is to question why government exists—“to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.”

As Protestants debate political theology, it’s worth considering: I’m not convinced Christianity posits or is meant to posit an exquisite or exactingly detailed political theory on the scale of a grand strategy. Why? Because Christianity means negligent quietism ? No. Because Christianity is chiefly about reconciling sinners to a holy God and life in God’s redemptive Kingdom; not principally about organizing social orders—even if Christian reflection bears significantly upon that task and urgently relevant to the truth and the common good.

The Cuomoization of marriage is not a tenable safe harbor for Christians. "I personally believe in biblical marriage but allow for same-sex civil marriage" misunderstands what marriage is in Scripture. This is increasingly going to be an approach taken. It's wrong. Scripture justifies no bifurcation between sacred and civil marriage. Yes, marriage is a metaphor for the gospel in Ephesians 5, but that in no way abrogates its relationship to the creation order. It only heightens it. Marriage is rooted in creation. It is "natural" so to speak.

A few early morning assorted thoughts on church and state: The biggest of which is that opposing establishment does not entail displacing the public good of religion. I endorse a Baptist-friendly concept of civil religion that sees (and requires) the robust place of religion. I gave a presentation last week on why civil religion, rightly understood, is completely compatible with Baptist public theology. I'll write that up. Two articles to that effect, though:

England, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden all have Protestant state churches, presumably "promoting true religion." But to what end with what success? These nations are socialistic, de-churched, secular, and progressive. Sounds like Christian Nationalism is working superbly. This is one of the primary errors of Christian Nationalism: It requires a static and homogeneous culture. And even where those conditions are present, it doesn't ensure actual orthodoxy. History shows just the opposite, in fact.

Read the Torba book on Christian Nationalism that many are discussing. Aside from its outlandish aggressiveness (not to mention its loaded rhetoric re: Judaism), what strikes me is how a message of forgiveness and redemption is flattened out to earthly political gain. While Christianity is not an escapist or evacuationist theology that should spurn concerns for this world (far from it, in fact), the book de-emphasizes the heavenly prerogative of the beatific vision. The book's arc reduces Christianity to a cultural program.

I recently saw a tweet criticizing "Moral Majority" Christianity. I understand and sympathize with criticizing a Christian politics that looks little different than worldly politics at prayer. But, upon reflection, criticisms of Moral Majorityism reveal their own error, too. Some of that error is castigating a Christian politics for ever believing that its morality can or even should be dominant. With all due consideration to the limits of political success in this age, criticism of this nature misunderstands the motive beneath a Christian politics.

A first in my life: Anger after leaving a teaching opportunity. Because I had a bad experience? Nope. Because of the rush of students afterwards giving me evidence confirming that our culture is destroying a generation by the destabilizing and secular fixation on “identity.” In the name of “tolerance,” “inclusion,” “live your truth,” we are crushing an impressionable generation. Destroying them. Government is doing it. Public schools are doing it. Entertainment system is. Colleges are. Media is. The system is going to come crashing down with victims.

#pride is a reminder that it’s better to be a social conservative in 2022 than it was say, in 2002, because the overreach of progressivism is making social conservatism all the more humane and easer to defend. Watch for this trend to continue. SoCons aren’t going anywhere. Progressivism is telling us that sexuality is amoral, teachers should talk about sexuality with young kids, “consensual non-monogamy,” kill your unborn child, fathers are optional, pronoun silliness, let men crush women in athletics, take puberty blockers, and cut off anatomy.

Some Christian leaders tell Christians to downplay politics and culture war. Meanwhile, I hear so often from Christians how they are unwantingly subjected to political and culture war issues at every turn—work, media, entertainment. Do Christian leaders not see this disconnect? We should equip Christians, not shame them for caring about their world/culture. We need to do a much better job of equipping Christians to discern worldly outrage from godly concern. Simply dismissing everything as “political” fails to understand what politics is smuggling in.

A🧵on why Good Friday and the Atonement kept me from theological liberalism.

In my undergrad, I majored in theology. Being a renegade toward the Scripture was an undercurrent of the program. Had to break free from that stodgy SBC fundamentalism, you know? That was the vibe. In the course of my studies, I was embarrassed by inerrancy, attracted to the Emergent Church, trending egalitarian, and fundamentally, committed to ideological pacifism. Why does that last thing matter so much?

A 🧵on how confusing, blurring, or negating the roles of creation and kingdom in evangelical political ethics explains why there are conflicting visions as to what evangelical political witness ought to look like. If you emphasize kingdom, you will be prone to focus on the failure of the church to live up to its kingdom ideals. Christians are thus a collection of hypocrites. Kingdom-inflected politics can result in quietism and withdrawal as all that matters is “just preaching the gospel.”

Not all political issues are theologically benign. The rush to sever the two or believe that politics can or ought never to divide Christians misunderstands how politics is a downstream species of order—which finds its origin and telos in theological truth claims about reality. "Political issues" sometimes masquerade as only "political" when in reality, beneath the surface are foundational issues that touch upon and impact theological superstructures (e.g., ontology, anthropology, morality).

We are witnessing a growing secular resistance to the idea of gender fluidity. Questions of child welfare, fairness, women's rights, and coercion are stretching the movement's reach. In real-time, we are watching civilization convulse in defiance of natural law. For a while, I thought the trans movement was going to be around a long time. But because society makes cultural shifts and policy decisions on utilitarian terms, we're going to see this movement exhaust itself sooner. Medical malpractice law$uit$ will end the movement.

A brief thread on vaccination, Christian liberty, and Christian love:🧵 Two years ago, I wrote an article on what I call “ethical triage”— ranking moral obligations that differentiate and respect both absolute obligations and prudential wisdom. I proposed the categories of “may” (permissible), “should” (advisable), and “must” (obligatory).

A thread anticipating what will likely be a primary objection to my book, "Liberty For All." And that objection will be that I naively affirm the tenets of liberal democracy as a bedrock to religious liberty. Broadly speaking, as a Baptist, I *do* defend the lineaments of liberal democracy as the model most *historically* hospitable to religious liberty. But I'm also Augustinian and have no pretense that liberal democracy is sufficient within itself to nourish an ecosystem of liberty.

Holy Week Thread on Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA):

In college, I bought into pacifism ideologically (forgive me, 20-year-olds shouldn't read Hauerwas unsupervised). What did this mean? It meant I had to reject any sort of atonement model premised on retributive justice. I read every imaginable work I could that would attempt to re-interpret the atonement in ways that rejected PSA. I was practicing eisegesis: Forcing the text into a pre-determined outcome.

There are lots of displays of American Civil Religion during today's inaugural festivities. Is it good or is it bad? Well, we know today that is it most certainly being applauded for what it offers: A cohesive narrative for unity and recovery. But some other thoughts: Civil religion is an inevitable outgrowth of a religion's successful mission in society and culture. In that sense, it's organic and not orchestrated or instrumentalized. The question is whether it is a byproduct or a goal in and of itself.