Ours is an age of autonomy (“self-law”). Of course, autonomy has been around since the Fall. What’s different today is that the secular West has created sophisticated rationales for it. It’s not just that man is autonomous; it’s that man should be autonomous, and any other way is unnatural and enslaving. Man hasn’t simply broken [...]
Author: P. Andrew Sandlin
I am president of the Center for Cultural Leadership, core faculty of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship and the H. Evan Runner International Academy for Cultural Leadership, and De Yong Distinguished Visiting Professor of Culture and Theology, Edinburg Theological Seminary. I am happily married to Sharon Lynn Sandlin (nee Habedank) and have five adult children and three grandchildren.
The Romantic Cult of Authenticity
Today we hear this sentiment all the time: “Be true to yourself.” “Bernie Sanders is not a regular politician; he’s authentic.” When rock stars go wild on stage, ripping off their clothes and breaking guitars, we admire them, because they’re expressing what they really are.
The Recovery of Fearless Christian Intellect
Sitting here on the eve of the inaugural Runner Academy, I was thinking of the course of Christianity and the cultivation of intellect over the last two and a half centuries. A common and injurious error at the time of the Enlightenment was for many Christians to assume that the Christian Faith could be defended [...]
A Note on the Source of Apostasy in the West
Andrew, I have been mulling possible reasons why the European nations (e.g., Holland, Germany, GB, France, etc.) have lost the Christian heritage, beliefs, and cultural basis since the Reformation. The US is also on this path, at an alarming rate and accelerating rate. I really don’t have an answer for this. It seems somewhat complicated, [...]
Stand Your Ground In the Evil Day
Blue-Jeans Religion Christian leaders who until the last five years stood for biblical truth and historic orthodoxy are caving in record numbers to what Francis Schaeffer called “forms of the world spirit”:[1] Cultural Marxism (“social justice”),[2] “wokeness,” ideological feminism, same-sex “marriage” and “-attraction,” “Christian socialism,” and upgraded Darwinism. These “thought leaders” among evangelicals, the Southern [...]
Classical Liberalism Keeps Politics Downstream
As is often the case, my discussion with Pastor Douglas Wilson on classical liberalism contra post-liberalism, subset of the dispute between Sohrab Ahmari and David French presently rankling conservatism, exhibits greater agreement on substance than might have initially appeared. Simultaneously, the issues on which dispute remains have become clearer. As far as I can tell, [...]
Classical Liberalism, Consistently Christian
Because I’m a long-time friend of David Bahnsen and long-time fan of National Review, I’ll address briefly Pastor Douglas Wilson’s (mild) criticism of both. My chief impetus, however, is to reassert the Christian assumptions behind classical liberalism, the underlying (though not exclusive) political philosophy of the American Founding under withering assault by modern “progressives” (Cultural [...]
