Word on Fire Institute course

My six-part video course on Six Arguments for the Existence of God is available for free from the Word on Fire Institute.  A short preview and sign-up information are available here.  An interview about the course can be read here.

More on the GOP and social conservatism

For those not following me on X (Twitter), some posts from the last couple of days attempting further to clarify what is at issue, and at stake, in the debate over the direction of the GOP:

Now is the time for social conservatives to fight

Readers who follow me on X (Twitter) will know of the intense debate occurring there over the last week between social conservatives critical of Trump’s gutting of the GOP platform and those defending it.  A pair of bracing, must-read articles at First Things and National Review recount how pro-lifers were brazenly shut out of the platform process.  For social conservatives to acquiesce out of partisan loyalty would be to commit assisted political suicide.  Today I posted the following, which elaborates on considerations I raised in an earlier article:

A brief memo to social conservatives worried that criticism of the GOP will cost it votes, and who claim that the critics are politically naïve:

First, yes, criticism could cost the party votes. That’s precisely the point. The party could lose votes IF, in the months remaining before the election, it does not try seriously to meet the concerns of social conservatives. In particular, the GOP must be made to see that it cannot take their votes for granted. And the party must do something to make up for the appalling injustice that was done to social conservatives during the platform process, as recounted in the First Things article linked to. 

Second, it is not the critics, but those who urge their fellow social conservatives to keep their mouths shut, who are politically naïve. The only thing politicians can be relied on to respond to is the prospect of losing votes or losing money. If the GOP fears that it might lose the votes or financial contributions of a critical mass of social conservatives, it will have to take their concerns seriously. If, instead, social conservatives acquiesce to what has happened rather than fighting back, the party will have no incentive to try to address their concerns in the future – and every incentive not to do so, given the unpopularity of social conservatism in the culture at large.

The stakes are high, and that is precisely why social conservatives must raise the alarm NOW, while they might still influence the direction of the party, not in some fantasy post-election future. The actual political reality is that if the GOP wins, having thrown social conservatives under the bus without any pushback from them, the party will draw the lesson that it no longer needs to worry about them or their concerns.

Fight, yes, but for what?

It is impossible not to admire the resilience and fighting spirit with which Donald Trump responded – literally within moments – to the failed attempt to take his life.  And that he is among the luckiest of politicians is evidenced not just by his survival, but by the fact that the moment was captured in photographs as dramatic as any seen in recent history.  His supporters are understandably inspired, indeed electrified.  And his enemies are sure to be demoralized by the sympathy this event will generate – not to mention the blinding contrast between Trump’s virility and the accelerating decline of his doddering opponent.  Naturally, that those enemies include some very bad people only reinforces Trump’s supporters’ devotion to him, which is now at a fever pitch.  But it is precisely at moments of high emotion that the cold water of reason, however unpleasant, is most needed.

The future of the Magisterium

The latest issue of First Things features a symposium on the future of the Catholic Church, to which I contributed an article on the future of the Magisterium.  You can read the entire symposium online here.

Rawls on religion

Though John Rawls wrote much that is of relevance to religion – and in particular, to the question of what influence it can properly have on politics (basically none, in Rawls’s view) – he wrote little on religion itself.  After his death, his undergraduate senior thesis, titled A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, was published.  Naturally, it is of limited relevance to his mature thought.  However, published in the same volume was a short 1997 personal essay titled “On My Religion,” which is not uninteresting as an account of the development of his religious beliefs.  I think it does shed some light on his political philosophy.  From Rawls’s best-known works, the conservative religious believer is bound to judge Rawls’s knowledge and understanding of religion to be shallow.  And indeed, I think his views on these matters were shallow.  But as the essay reveals, that is not because he didn’t give much thought to them.