Tragedy in Carolina + Quarterly Roundup
Lamenting loss in my Appalachian homeland and giving thanks for a richly productive three months.
Note: Although communities from Florida to Virginia were devastated by Hurricane Helene last week, the most apocalyptic damage (as well as substantial loss of life) occurred in communities just north of where I grew up and till recently lived. We are grieving deeply as a family and planning to go down and volunteer next week; stay tuned for an email about how you can help, and please look for ways to get involved—this is a tragedy beyond comprehension.
In the meantime, please read this reflection that I wrote for WORLD, or listen to it on this morning’s episode of The World and Everything in It. WORLD Magazine’s office was among countless structures disastrously impacted by the flooding.
Quarterly Round-up
Thanks to the generous support of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and its many donors, I’ve just wrapped up the most productive writing quarter of my life. Over the past three months, I’ve written over 50,000 words for publication and lecture, plus another 50,000+ on this Substack, where I’ve been so gratified to find a community of loyal readers and subscribers. Since that’s a lot to keep track of, I plan to use the first post of each new calendar quarter to offer a topically-organized round-up of recent publications and appearances.
Technology and Christian Ethics
In my new work at EPPC, one of the things I’ve been most excited to be a part of is their flagship Technology and Human Flourishing Project. I’ve been able to support my colleagues Clare Morell and Matthew Malec in producing resources for parents, schools, and public officials in managing children’s access to harmful and exploitative digital tools and platforms, as well as coordinating a major legal effort for the upcoming Supreme Court case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. (Look for more details on this in the coming weeks).
Here’s a roundup of tech-related lectures and publications over the quarter:
ARTICLES
“Dispatches from the Anxious Generation” (WORLD Opinions, 7/23): Everyone’s been talking about Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation. What are three lessons Christians learn can from it?
“Is Porn the New Normal?” (WORLD Opinions, 7/31): In response to the scandal created by porn star Amber Rose taking the stage at the RNC, I reflected on how pervasively pornography has been normalized, and how conservatives have aided and abetted this trend with a myopic focus on “free speech” absolutism.
“Getting Phones out of Schools: A Policy Memo” (EPPC, 8/5): This crucial contribution to the growing debate over smartphones in schools was mostly the work of my colleague Clare Morell, but I was privileged to help out!
“The Anti-Human Future of AI” (WORLD Opinions, 8/8): Advertisements for AI pretend that it can do our work for us while leaving us feeling freer and more fulfilled. It might, but only if we’re very thoughtful in how we use it.
“The Irishman’s Two Stoves: Reclaiming Freedom in a Technological Age” (Ridley Institute, 8/19): Adapted from my forthcoming book, Called to Freedom, this medium-length article offers a framework for church leaders to think about the role of technology in the lives of their congregants.
“Phone Bans and Parental Choice: Thinking Twice About Smartphone Freedom” (Institute for Family Studies, 8/19): With the wave of new policies banning phones in public schools, some conservatives are liable to cry foul, objecting in the name of consumer freedom or parental choice. This response would be short-sighted, misunderstanding the larger dynamics of freedom and collective action.
“iThink Therefore iAm” (American Compass, 9/4): A big think-piece on how digital technology has rendered a conservative vision of the world increasingly nonsensical, demanding a very different policy vision from social conservatives going foward.
“A New Sheriff in Town” (WORLD Opinions, 9/6): The Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling in Anderson v. TikTok has the potential to mark a sea-change in tech regulation, finally holding internet platforms to the same liability standards that all other industries have to face.
“Not So Smart After All” (WORLD Opinions, 9/12): In an age of information overload, AI is being sold as another technological solution to technologically-induced epistemic chaos. But is it?
PODCAST/RADIO/VIDEO
“The Slippery Slope of AI” (The World and Everything in It, 8/13): Advertisements for AI pretend that it can do our work for us while leaving us feeling freer and more fulfilled. It might, but only if we’re very thoughtful in how we use it.
“Freedom, Tradition, and the Digital Age” (Conservative Conversations with ISI, 9/10): An hour-long interview about my essay, “iThink Therefore iAm.”
“Accountability for Social Media” (The World and Everything in It, 9/11): The Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling in Anderson v. TikTok has the potential to mark a sea-change in tech regulation, finally holding internet platforms to the same liability standards that all other industries have to face.
“Technology and Freedom: The Faustian Bargain of Modern Life” (New College Franklin, 9/12): In this lecture I explore how technology can repair the damage of the Fall, help us bring creation to its intended fullness, or represent an idolatrous striving to be as gods. Watch it for a sneak preview of one of the chapters from my forthcoming book Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License.
Principles for Christian Citizenship
The other big project I’ve been working on over this period is a course for churches called “Faithfulness as Christian Citizens.” I’ve taught it at three locations now; one recorded audio, another video. I’ll be developing it hopefully over the coming months into something for wider distribution. I’ve also published a number of columns on related themes—including the importance of truthfulness in our political discourse.
ARTICLES
“How Now Shall We Vote?” (WORLD Opinions, 7/8): With the zaniest presidential election of our lifetimes approaching, Christians are bombarded with demands about how they should vote. But what does it mean to vote? Is it ever OK not to vote? Is voting third-party “throwing away your vote”?
“Settle Only for the Truth” (WORLD Opinions, 7/17): In response to the first Trump assassination attempt, I offered some reflections on how our craving to make sense of such an event and find answers often far outstrips our ability to know what we are talking about.
“How to Be Pro-Life in a Pro-Choice World” (WORLD Opinions, 8/16): How can pro-life conservatives should respond to the new political reality of lacking a national party committed to their cause for the first time in decades?
“We’re All Postmoderns Now” (WORLD Opinions, 8/22): Many Christians have come to accept the postmodern idea that “all truth claims are just assertions of power.” How can we break the vicious cycle of the epistemic race to the bottom that our political and media environment seems to force upon us?
“Rethinking Immigration” (WORLD Opinions, 9/24): My latest column proposes a basic analogy between the practice of adoption (at the family level) and welcoming immigrants at a national level. Both are praiseworthy acts of charity but not moral obligations, and must be prudentially evaluated on a case-by-case level. A family that rashly adopts without first taking good care of their biological children is likely to create bitterness and conflict—but this doesn’t mean they can simply renege on their obligations and send the adoptees back. So too with immigration.
PODCAST/RADIO/VIDEO
“How to Think About Politics” (Holy Trinity Raleigh, 8/16): In the first unit of the course, I start inductively, asking what we mean by “politics” and how we instinctively navigate it in other spheres of life. I then develop a general framework for how to think about the state as “the supreme temporal authority in defense of the common good.”
“How to Think About Government” (Holy Trinity Raleigh, 8/17): In the second unit of the course, I again use other spheres of life to first highlight the importance and indeed necessity of structures of government, before using Scripture and the Christian tradition to lay out nine theses about the nature and task of civil government.
“How to Think About Law” (Holy Trinity Raleigh, 8/17): In the third unit of the course, I offer an inductive entry-way into the classical Christian way of understanding law as, in Richard Hooker’s words, “a directive rule unto goodness of operation.” What are eternal law, natural law, and divine law, and how do they have anything to do with human law as we experience it in political life? What should we do about an unjust law?
“How to Think About Citizenship” (Holy Trinity Raleigh, 8/17): In modern America, we’re not merely called to live under government and under law, but to participate in its work as citizens. What does this look like? What privileges do we enjoy and how should we use them? This lecture isn’t live yet but should be soon here.
Retrieving Protestant Political Thought
A key part of my work at the Ethics and Public Policy Center lies in recovering an authentically, historically Protestant witness for political life. This includes retrieving the classical Protestant doctrines of natural law and of the two kingdoms—and in my case, it particularly means retrieving the neglected legacy of Richard Hooker.
Review of Richard Hooker: Theological Method and Anglican Identity (Ad Fontes, 7/10): Philip Hobday’s book constitutes a wonderful advancement of new pathways in Reformation scholarship that have emphasized the essential catholicity of the Reformation. When it comes to the relation of Scripture, tradition, and reason, Hobday argues, much less separates Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Richard Hooker than most have imagined. Well worth a read for those interested in these issues.
Richard Hooker and the Christian Virtues (Brill, 7/15): A brand-new edited collection of the very best of Richard Hooker scholarship published this summer—the first to focus on Hooker’s moral theology. My own contribution is entitled, “‘Shall These Fruitless Jars and Janglings Never Cease?’: Richard Hooker’s Critique of Curiosity.”
“Reformed Natural Law” (Ad Fontes, 8/21): This essay represents a teaser for the upcoming book Natural Law: Five Views, in which I was asked to represent the “Reformed natural law” perspective. Here, I briefly survey the decline and renaissance of Reformed natural law thinking, define key terms that are often conflated, and conclude by outlining the three key “uses” of natural law for the contemporary church.
Other Essays
“Get Back to Governing,” (WORLD Opinions, 7/1): In this piece I use George Packer’s recent Atlantic cover story to reflect on how conservative governors and legislators can approach basic sustainability questions not as a distraction, but as a way to build a political mandate to tackle more hot-button cultural issues.
“Back to Governing” (The World and Everything in It, 7/9): This was a WORLD radio adaptation of the same column.
“How to Elect Leaders Who Govern” (Family Policy Matters, 8/22): And then this was an interview on NC Family Radio exploring the topic at more length.
“Lost in Neverland” (WORLD Opinions, 8/30): How is it that Disney World revenues keep going up while birth rates keep going down? Easy: convince adults to lock themselves into a perpetual childhood, and to pay any price to live the perfect childhood vicariously through their 1.6 children.
“Hope—Is it Warranted at This Point?” (University Bookman, 9/20): James Davison Hunter’s new masterpiece, Democracy and Solidarity, should be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the sources of America’s cultural-political fragmentation, and the prospects for renewal (spoiler alert: they aren’t good).
“The Four Causes of Liberalism” (National Affairs, 9/24): Liberalism’s critics and defenders seem locked in an endless boxing match, in which neither is able to land many convincing blows. Perhaps this is because they cannot agree what they are talking about. And perhaps Aristotle can help.
Support my Work
If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read here and at these other venues over the past three months, please spread the word with others, and consider donating to support my work at EPPC by clicking here and mentioning my name in the Comments.