The weekend's reading will be Evangelicals in the Public Square. It is a series of essays looking at the work and influence of four voices who, though not all what we would call "evangelical", have had influence on American evangelical political thought. Budziszewski & company look at Carl F.H. Henry, Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer and John Howard Yoder, examining their most important works, and asking how each has contributed to contemporary political theory and practice in evangelical circles.
The problem for evangelical political thinkers is not that the Bible contains no political teachings (for it does) but that the Bible does not provide enough by itself for an adequate political theory... The Bible assumes that [] large truths are known before we come to the Bible. Unless Abraham had already known something of justice, he could not have debated God about it. [33]
Right away you can get a sense of where Budziszewski will take his critique of evangelical political thought: the separation of scriptural revelation and natural law needs to be addressed if evangelicals are to develop a better political theory.
related post: Budziszewski on Carl FH Henry, Evangelical Politics and The Uneasy Conscience
This is an issue that really interests me - I hope you'll write more about the book over the weekend Joe.
Posted by: Erin | October 18, 2007 at 02:26 PM
I think it will be quite an interesting read. The format of the book in "conference style" - essays by Budziszewski on each author and then a short reply by another thinker. It is quite a fascinating topic - the whole notion of Christian political theory, especially political theory of evangelical Christianity. I've read some of Budziszewski's work before, and he himself has had quite an interesting spiritual journey.
Of course, some of my friends might claim that I don't think there has been any Christian political theory of note since Augustine's City of God - :^)
Posted by: joseph | October 18, 2007 at 08:20 PM