Posts by Matthew Anderson
How Evangelicals Invented Liberals’ Favorite Legal Doctrine
“The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution” makes a persuasive historical case that nineteenth-century conservative Christians legislating morality created many of the problems associated with twenty-first-century liberals.
Read MoreWhy the church needs the infertile couple
We’re missing a broader scope of familial love.
Read MoreThe religious right is not a subsidiary of the alt-right
While evangelicals indisputably have a less-than-exemplary record on questions of race, their own history within the South is not necessarily identical or equivalent to the history of the Religious Right.
Read MorePeople criticize pro-lifers for focusing so much on abortion. But there’s a reason we do.
For the pro-lifer, there is no clearer instance of the marginalized, the voiceless, and the vulnerable than in the womb.
Read MoreOn the executive order regarding refugees
In an environment where our trust in public institutions and each other is plummeting, we cannot have too much care in how we measure and describe the realities we are depicting.
Read MoreLove Is Your Master: Love, Betrayal, and Repentance in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona
Unravelling love, betrayal, friendship, and repentence as found in the rarely performed Shakespearean play Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Read MorePro-lifers who support Donald Trump are kidding themselves — and hurting the movement
But the truth is there has never been a pro-life case for voting for Donald Trump. And his comments on abortion at the final debate last week demonstrated that Trump doesn’t care much about pro-life issues — and that he doesn’t know much about them, either.
Read MoreThe better of the Keswick theologians
The desire for a constant feeling of enthusiasm about the Christian life can be exhausting—and when that enthusiasm is disconnected from the institutions meant to sustain it, it can become positively destructive.
Read MoreShould Evangelicals Vote for Clinton or Trump?
The Republic will only begin to be renewed when ordinary citizens, people of good will, begin demanding better than they are being given. A day will come when we are ready for it.
Read MoreRecovering our confidence: four theses on social conservatism (#4)
The work of conservation isn’t the same as defending (with its connotations of hostility and warfare): It is the work of weeding out positions and attitudes that would undermine social stability, of cultivating and tilling the soil so that cultural flourishing can take root.
Read MoreRecover intellectual creativity: four theses on social conservatism (#3)
One of the hidden yet potentially devastating costs of a culture war mentality is that it locks people into a framework and keeps them pursuing the particular questions that emerge from within it. If the point of our efforts is winning, then questioning our own presuppositions is out of bounds.
Read MoreEnd the hostilities against elites: four theses on social conservatism (#2)
For social conservatism to thrive, it needs to end its hostility toward elite institutions that are currently opposed to it.
Read MoreTo sow or to reap: four theses on social conservatism (#1)
You can’t fight a culture war if you haven’t got a culture.
Read MoreThere is no pro-life case for Donald Trump
There are no conditions at this point under which I could possibly vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Read MoreMatthew Lee Anderson’s vision for top-shelf ministry
Why the Mere Orthodoxy blogger wants churches to keep the bar high—and help people reach it.
Read MoreThe New Evangelical Scandal
Whether Democratic efforts to win over evangelicals are successful in the long term remains to be seen. But their devotion of resources and attention to evangelicals and other faith-based communities suggests they see an opportunity to make inroads that did not exist previously.
Read MoreEvangelicalism After Trump: The Moral Bankruptcy of the GOP
Responsible citizenship requires judgment, and sometimes judgment means abstention.
Read MoreIs certainty sinful?
Enns wants us to trust in God—to have a faith “not so much defined by what we believe but in whom we trust.”
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