Why would evangelicals flock to the candidacy of Donald Trump, a philandering, thrice-married, profane Manhattan businessman? One chief reason is that many of them have given up on the “culture wars”: they just want a president who will protect their religious liberty in a time of rising persecution (if you don’t believe it, just try refusing as a business to bake a cake or create a flower arrangement for a gay wedding). Evangelicals of the 70s – 90s were “values voters” — they wanted a Christian candidate who championed life, family, and civic virtue. They longed and worked for a national revival and reformation, and politics did not exhaust but was included in that program. That program is changing. Feeling they’ve lost the culture (the Obergefell decision was a tipping point), evangelicals simply want a “strongman” who will keep the secular statist wolves out of their flocks and families.

This is a severe mistake. Yes, religious liberty is a vital issue. The Founders believed it should trump (no pun intended) most other rights. But it’s not sufficient. Amid a society more hostile to the true Faith than our own, Jesus Christ instructed his soon-to-be-Spirit-endued followers to disciple the world’s nations with his global gospel (Mt. 28:18–20). He didn’t insist they merely insist on religious liberty; their commission was to help bring all of life and society under his benevolent, liberating authority.

The Adversarial Intelligentsia

This is the Reformational vision of the great Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper. It is also CCL’s vision: all of life for the glory of God — not merely the freedom to practice our religion. The latter view is compatible with political pietism and “two-kingdom” theology. It is not compatible with a full-orbed Reformational Christianity.

CCL champions that Christianity in one prime way: we’re the Christian adversarial intelligentsia. With the apostle Paul, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). We demolish our culture’s pervasive anti-Christian ideas and replace them with Christian ideas that contribute to the joy and hope and freedom in which man created in God’s image is designed to live. We preach an intellectually redemptive gospel.

The Works

I’ll outline it soon in my book Cosmological Gospel: Good News That Redeems God’s Universe. In two weeks I’ll be sending all CCL donors Holy Week for an Unholy World, which will include my original poetry from 25–30 years ago. (If you’re not a donor, why not start donating today?) Next month I’ll send Jeffery J. Ventrella’s Christ, Caesar, and Self. Bill Blankschaen’s book with Red State’s Erick Erickson You Will Be Made to Care: The War on Faith, Family, and Your Freedom to Believe was just released. We need to get some pre-digital journal articles scanned with an optical character reader so we can publish the Honorable William Graves’ Prudent Jurisprudence: Essays on Law and Politics. Let me know if you can help us.

If you want a Christian adversarial intelligentsia standing up for you, can you send a tax-deductible gift today? You can donate here. Thank you for any way you can help.