Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

Is Calvin Among the Liberals? – First Things (blog)

Matthew Tuiningas Calvins Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church aims to be more than an historical study of Calvins two kingdoms political theology. Tuininga wants to demonstrate that Calvins theology is a neglected resource for contemporary Christian political engagement.

According to Calvin, Christ rules everything in order to transform all things into a future heavenly kingdom. In the present age, humanity is governed by two sharply differentiated orders or governments: the spiritual government of the Church, which anticipates the age to come, and the order of political life, which exists to preserve temporal life. The former has the power to restore humans to spiritual righteousness, true virtue, and eternal life, whereas the latter can only establish outward, civil, and temporal versions of the same. Church and state are both ruled by the ascended Christ, and the two kingdoms overlap and interpenetrate, but the distinction enables Calvin to limit church authority to word and sacraments, and to maintain a sober realism about the limitations of temporal power.

Calvins refusal to draw simplistic political inferences from Scripture, his use of natural law, his insistence on the Churchs independence from political power, and his recognition of the limits of both temporal and spiritual kingdoms are valuable resources for Christians living in secular societies. Calvin provides resources for a substantive Christian critique of the ideal of Christendom.

Calvin the political theologian is definitely worth reading, and Tuiningas detailed exposition of Calvins two kingdoms theology is valuable. His effort to apply Calvin to contemporary politics is less successful.

Near the beginning of the book, Tuininga takes brief notice of recent theological critiques of liberalism, but its not clear he has grasped the objections. He defines liberal democracy as a system of representative, democratic government erected to protect rights in accord with the rule of law under a system of checks and balances that includes the separation of church and state.Virtually none of liberalisms theological critics objects to these forms and procedures as such. Their complaint isnt against representative government or voting or freedom of speech and association. No one advocates a fusion of Church and state.

Rather, theyclaim that such a formal, procedural description masks the basic thrust of liberalism. Liberalisms stated aim is to construct a society without substantive commitments, leaving everyone free to choose whatever his or her or hir own may be. Liberalisms common good is to protect society from adopting any single vision of the common good. Thats a deviation from classical and traditional Christian politics (including Calvins), which sought to orchestrate common life toward a common endthe cultivation of virtue or the glory of God. In factand this is the other side of the critiqueliberal societies do have substantive commitments. The liberal state pretends to be a referee, but beneath the striped shirt it wears the jersey of the home team. Under the cover of neutrality, liberal order embodies, encourages, and sometimes enforces an anthropology, ecclesiology, and vision of the good society that is often starkly at odds with Christian faith. Tuininga never confronts that line of analysis.

The big challenge for someone who wants to enlist Calvin in a defense of liberalism is, well, Calvin himself, who is often, as Tuininga admits, illiberal in theory and in practice. Much to his credit, Tuininga attempts to face this challenge head-on. He acknowledges that, for Calvin, civil rulers are responsible for the care of religion and that rulers ought to consecrate their work to the promotion of Christs kingdom (Calvins words). With certain qualifications, Calvin even defends capital punishment for false teachers. That, to put it mildly, aint liberal.

More broadly, Calvin teaches that civil government exists for something more than the protection of individual choice. On one hand, civil order isnt to enforce true virtue; yet, on the other hand, the civil ruler ought to promote true religion. One would have thought that true religion had some relation to true virtue. Tuininga is right that Calvin never claims that civil government is a means of grace by which God justifies or sanctifies human beings, but who ever thought otherwise? Besides, Tuininga admits that Calvin believes that civil coercion may be an indirect aid to sanctification (my emphasis) and that civil government should attend to spiritual realities, the conscience, the soul, piety, and the inner mind. Because Tuininga hasnt grappled with the theological critique of liberalism, he doesnt fully recognize the anti-liberal force of Calvins positions.

To sustain his argument, Tuininga has to save Calvin from himself, skimming off the illiberal husk to get to the liberal-friendly kernel. Whenever the two Calvins are in conflict, Tuininga argues that the liberal-leaning is more foundational. Its not convincing, because the tension is largely of Tuiningas making. Still, it is testimony to his care as a scholar that he presents enough evidence to sustain a thesis diametrically opposed to his own. The Calvin Tuininga portrays might easily be enlisted as a critic of liberalism and a spokesman for a modified, Protestant Christendom.

Peter J. Leithart is President ofTheopolis Institute.

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Is Calvin Among the Liberals? - First Things (blog)

Liberalism: Believers Need Not Apply – Wall Street Journal (subscription)


Daily Mail
Liberalism: Believers Need Not Apply
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Does liberalism have any room left for Christians and other believers? The question has been posed countless times, and each time liberals answer more decisively than the previous: No. On Thursday Britain's Liberal Democrats delivered that message to ...
PETER OBORNE: Liberal fascism and a man hounded by moral pygmies - for being a ChristianDaily Mail
Tim Farron's religion wasn't a problem his leadership wasCity A.M.
Nick Spencer: Tim Farron and the two kinds of liberalismTotalPolitics.com

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Liberalism: Believers Need Not Apply - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Paglia: Liberals Are Obsessed With Science Except When It Comes To Transgenderism – The Daily Caller

A famous feminist pointed out that liberals arent concerned with scientific facts when it comes to the debate about transgenderism in a Thursday interview.

Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae, discussed a contradiction in liberals obsession with science in a The Weekly Standardinterview. The left will call themselves defenders of science when they support climate change, but jump to support transgenderism, an idea that is biologically unsound, Paglia said.

It is certainly ironic how liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to global warming (a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence) flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender. Biology has been programmatically excluded from womens studies and gender studies programs for almost 50 years now, Paglia explained. Thus very few current gender studies professors and theorists, here and abroad, are intellectually or scientifically prepared to teach their subjects.

Despite claims from the left, it is scientifically impossible for a person to change their sex, Paglia went on.

The cold biological truth is that sex changes are impossible. Every single cell of the human body remains coded with ones birth gender for life. Intersex ambiguities can occur, but they are developmental anomalies that represent a tiny proportion of all human births, she said.

Paglia has also been critical of the modern feminist movement, saying it has become too concerned with the Democratic party. Her hope is that the movement will broaden to embrace women from all walks of life. (RELATED:Camille Paglia: Feminism Bogged Down By Being Identified With Democratic Party)

I want feminism to include women who are conservative, women who are church-going, women who are into home-schooling and so on. As well as women like me, who favor total abortion rights, she said while speaking on the Sean Hannity radio show.

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Paglia: Liberals Are Obsessed With Science Except When It Comes To Transgenderism - The Daily Caller

Liberal bill to reverse Conservative move to strip citizenships passes Senate – CBC.ca

A Liberal bill that would make it easier for people to become Canadian citizens has passed the Senate, after over a year of back-and-forth in Parliament.

Bill C-6 was designed to repeal many of the previous Conservative government's changes to how people become citizens and how they can lose that status.

Among other things, the legislation repeals a provision that strips dual citizens of their Canadian status if convicted of terrorism, treason or espionage.

But far more people lose their citizenship because it was obtained fraudulently and current law gives them no right to appeal, something not addressed in the Liberals' original bill.

The Senate proposed adding such an appeal and the Liberals agreed to that and several other amendments late last week.

The bill went back to the Senate and after a brief debate, passed by a vote of 51-29.

Former immigration minister John McCallum introduced the bill in 2016, following through on a Liberal campaign promise that had in part spawned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's famous "A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian" line during the heated debates of the 2015 election.

The issue was the Conservatives' citizenship law, which allowed for stripping citizenship from dual nationals convicted of certain serious crimes.

It has been applied to one person: Zakaria Amara, convicted for his role in a 2006 terror plot in Toronto and his citizenship is now likely to be reinstated.

The Liberals' original bill makes two other changes: restoring the age range for language and knowledge requirements for citizenship to 18 to 54 from 14 to 64. One of the Senate amendments had sought to raise the upper age to 59 but the Liberals did not accept that.

The other change in the bill repeals a Conservative provision that required people to say they intended to reside in Canada as part of their citizenship application.

Among the notable Senate amendments was one allowing people a right to appeal if their citizenship were to be revoked because of fraud.

The Liberals accepted it, though their hand was forced a bit after a recent Federal Court ruling saying citizens deserved an independent hearing before their status was revoked.

The Opposition Conservatives have condemned that move, saying it risks encouraging people to lie on their application, because of the lengthy appeals process.

They say their process which left decisions on revocation in the hands of the bureaucrats was more efficient, and court appeals were still possible if the law was wrongly applied.

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Liberal bill to reverse Conservative move to strip citizenships passes Senate - CBC.ca

Rex Murphy: Liberals need to stop using Trump as a shield for their own incompetence in losing an election – National Post


National Post
Rex Murphy: Liberals need to stop using Trump as a shield for their own incompetence in losing an election
National Post
Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. That is not a complicated sentence. Nevertheless the fact conveyed in that sentence came as a monstrous shock to many of the best political minds, pundits and reporters in the whole United States. The greatest brains ...

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Rex Murphy: Liberals need to stop using Trump as a shield for their own incompetence in losing an election - National Post