Christ, Conscience, and the Work of Preserving the Covenant
Preview of the reason I wrote this book.
Every diagnosis in this book leads to one unavoidable question: What do we do now?
The American covenant stands under sustained assault. Movements on the left seek to elevate the state into the highest moral authority, granting political power the right to redefine human identity, family, equality, and justice according to whatever vision of progress presently controls its institutions. Movements on the right, particularly within the post-liberal world, have concluded that the answer is to build a stronger state of their own, one empowered to impose a thicker conception of the common good, restore an officially Christian public order, and overcome what they regard as the fatal weakness of the American founding. Foreign powers exploit the resulting fractures, amplifying our grievances, weakening our alliances, and teaching Americans to distrust one another more completely than they distrust the adversaries benefiting from the division. Meanwhile, the Judeo-Christian moral settlement that once made religious liberty intelligible is being dismantled by people who no longer understand what it was, why it mattered, or how deeply Christian its limitations upon government actually were.
In a moment of genuine crisis, the temptation is to imagine that only two paths remain.
The first is surrender. Christians may withdraw from public life, accept the steady secularization of schools, courts, media, business, and government, and console themselves with personal faithfulness while the institutions shaping the next generation become increasingly hostile to transcendent truth. They may retreat into churches, private schools, intentional communities, and parallel economies, preserving their own households as long as possible while abandoning the public square to those who believe no moral claim should stand beyond the reach of political power.
