The liberalism of conservative evangelicals

(Note: Further lengthy comments have been added to this entry as of June 29.)

In an exceptionally interesting and well-written essay, VFR reader Jacob M. expands on a theme on which I have often touched. There are so many good insights in this piece that I will need to read it more than once in order to take in everything that’s in it.

Jacob M. writes:

Once in a while the topic of supposedly conservative American evangelicals behaving in a liberal manner comes up in your blog entries, and at those times I often begin an email to you on the subject, but have always given up without sending it because there is so much to say on the subject that I never seem to be able to make a point to my own satisfaction. However, two of your recent entries—Why opposing liberal anti-discrimination is not enough and the one on Michael Gerson—as well as recent conversations and experiences in my personal life have made me think I can finally say something worth saying.

I know that you don’t move in evangelical circles, so I thought you might find an inside voice, so to speak, useful. You might be surprised at just how liberal many contemporary “conservative” Christians are. The popular perception of evangelicals is that they are, as you described them, “grassroots pro-military, pro-family, pro-capitalism conservatives.” However, not only are many of them accepting of open borders, and of the reigning liberal views on race and ethnicity, they are showing signs of starting to go liberal on the other issues too. I know that there are people in my church who would not only bristle at being called conservative, but would proudly describe themselves as liberal. And if I showed them VFR and told that I agree with most of what’s posted there, I guarantee it wouldn’t be long before someone called me a racist.

I notice that in a recent blog entry Vanishing American has described Michael Gerson as a “liberal Christian.” Now, when I was growing up, the phrase “liberal Christian” referred to the old mainline Protestant denominations like the United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Presbyterian Church in the USA, that have abandoned the essential doctrines of orthodox Christianity, like a literal resurrection, the virgin birth, Christ’s subsitutionary atonement, and the infallible inspiration of the Bible, and have turned church into nothing more than a left-wing “social justice” movement couched in vaguely religious terminology. In other words, a “liberal Christian” was someone whom an evangelical, fundamentalist, or conservative Catholic would regard as not actually a Christian at all. The word “liberal” referred to theology, not to politics.

By this definition, it doesn’t make sense to refer to Gerson as a liberal Christian. Gerson is, by all accounts, an evangelical, a born-again. Presumably he believes in the virgin birth and the resurrection, and considers the Bible infallible in matters of faith and morals. He attended a Christian grade school and Wheaton College, that bastion of evangelicalism, where he was a theology and Biblical studies major. He’s pro-life. That would place him in the camp traditionally described as “conservative Christians.” But as we have seen, politically, philosophically, he’s a liberal. And this new breed of liberal “conservative” Christians is growing, especially in the younger generation of evangelicals.

I attend a church of the Presbyterian Church in America. The PCA is the organization that broke away from the larger Presbyterian denomination, then known as PCUS, over the latter’s increasing liberalism in the 1970s. Certainly the PCA officially still holds to the truths of orthodox Christianity, such as the deity of Jesus, his literal death and resurrection, the infallibility of the Bible as a source of doctrine, clerical office being limited to men, etc. And you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in my church who would deny any of those things, or the teachings that are more cultural in nature, such as the sinfulness of homosexuality. However, I have begun to notice troubling strains of liberalism arising within my church. The words “diversity” and “multicultural” are spoken with strictly positive connotations. The neighborhood is currently undergoing rapid demographic transformation due an influx of nonwhites moving in from the city and the accompanying white flight, and so we are told that we have a moral imperative to reach out and evangelize the various nonwhite groups who are moving in, and become a multicultural church, lest we fade into oblivion. (As one visiting pastor put it, “the nations are moving up out of the city.” I have a feeling I’d be considered a racist if I asked what exactly “the nations” were doing in the city to begin with.) And many people are expressing concern that conservative Christians have in the past been too harsh on homosexuality, and saying that we need to be more welcoming of homosexuals, and willing to form relationships with them, so that we can show them the love of Christ and they will be drawn to Him and hopefully eventually become Christians and leave their sinful lifestyle.

Evangelicals are particularly susceptible to multiculturalism because their long-standing emphasis on foreign missions has always brought them into contact with non-Western cultures. (In many evangelical churches, there seems to be an unstated assumption that overseas missions is the best thing one can do with one’s life, and so even though most don’t wind up doing it full-time, it’s very common for most people raised in these churches to have some sort of exposure to the field through short-term trips taken while in youth group or in college or some such.) It is said that in generations past, missionaries naively conflated Christianity with Westernism, and therefore inadvertently attempted to Westernize foreign peoples as they evangelized them, to allegedly ill effect. Consequently, in missions cultural sensitivity is now the name of the game; the overarching concern is to conspicuously avoid attempting to Westernize people. As with so many other things, in one sense this is innocuously correct; as you often point out, different peoples and cultures are not the same; there are several non-Western forms of Christianity and, say, a tribal African people may be perfectly capable of adopting Christianity but not Western political or cultural values. However, given the unending leftward push of our society, this cultural sensitivity has resulted in the more missions-minded among us adopting a somewhat anti-Western attitude. When missionaries return home on furlough and speak in church about their work, a common theme is for them to contrast positive qualities of the non-Western people with whom they work (e.g., tight-knit family life, a greater emphasis on community and sharing, friendliness, a greater appreciation for the simple things in life) with corresponding negative qualities of Western culture (our alleged greed, materialism, every-man-for-himself attitude, etc.)

This habit is long-standing enough that the words “Western” and “American” are by now often spoken with an explicitly negative connotation. When many of these people hear the phrase “Western culture” they think only of the modern, corrupt, decadent Western culture. When they hear the phrase “American society” they think of David Brooks’ “bobos” chasing after the ever-larger McMansion and SUV and living lives focused on material acquisition, lives totally bereft of God. They seem to have no conception of traditional Western Civilization, of traditional American society. To them, we’re bad because we’re materialistic, while tribal Africa or the slums of Latin America are good because they’re non-materialistic.

It seems to me that the primary problem is evangelicalism’s emphasis on the individual. Evangelicals are called such because they place primary importance on fulfilling the Great Commission, on converting unbelievers to Christianity. However, modern evangelicals see Christianity only as something an individual does or does not believe. They seem to have no concept of a Christian nation or a Christian society or a Christian civilization, only of Christian persons. Curiously, even many of the more liberal ones I’m describing still nod approvingly when someone like James Dobson talks about how America used to be a Christian nation but has been commandeered by a secular liberal elite; how they reconcile this with their increasing liberalism and their lack of belief in any such thing as a Christian nation is beyond me, but evidently they do.

Now, in one sense, this is all well and good. Jesus really did give the Great Commission, and if we really are believing Christians we believe that no one comes to the Father but by him, so of course we must share the Gospel and encourage non-believers to become Christians. The problem is that this emphasis on coming to Christ being a free, voluntary decision made on an individual basis causes them to take an approach to evangelism that emphasizes people coming to Christ on their own terms. So anything getting in the way of a person’s “attraction” to Christianity is a stumbling block that must be removed by the evangelist. The overriding concern is that people will be “turned off” by Christianity. If some liberal doesn’t like the fact that we don’t do enough to help the poor, or that we disapprove of homosexuality, then we must do more to help the poor and de-emphasize our disapproval of homosexuality. “Don’t get us wrong,” they would say, “we still acknowledge that the Bible considers homosexual acts sinful. But we’re never even going to get our foot in the door with these people unless we start by caring about them and building relationships with them; then once they’ve gotten a sense of what Christianity is really about and believe that they really do need Christ in their lives, we’ll make it clear to them that if they want to follow him they need to accept Biblical standards. Better to do that than to turn them off at the outset talking about sin and judgment; they’ll leave and never come back, and if they go to hell it’ll be our fault.” They don’t seem to understand that liberals will never be satisfied with anything less than complete and total liberalism, so that the effort to appease liberals must necessarily culminate in the abandonment of those Biblical standards.

I think it parallels what I perceive happened with conservatives’ views on affirmative action. As I understand it, conservatives were originally against affirmative action because it was unjust to the people who did not receive preferential treatment (which at the time meant whites, though now that America is so diverse, it works against Asians too.) Liberals then played up conservatives’ opposition to affirmative action as racism, saying that we hated black people and wanted to keep them down. Conservatives realized that this perception hurt the cause, so they set out to change the perception, in order to win sympathy. They came up with other reasons to oppose affirmative action, reasons that made them sound more “caring,” more palatable to liberal tastes, such as that it’s bad for blacks in the long run because it artificially places them in elevated positions without their having learned what it takes to really fulfill those positions well, thus making them dependent, or even that it’s racist because it implies that blacks need extra help. The problem is that no one realized that after years of shouting those arguments from the rooftops all day long, they themselves would come to believe that those are the real arguments against affirmative action. And now, with an entire generation of younger conservatives having been raised on the notion that affirmative action is wrong because it’s bad for blacks and racist (against blacks), one seldom hears any other argument against affirmative action. The result of conservatives’ choosing their arguments based on expediency is that conservatives have become liberals.

I believe the same thing is currently happening with evangelicals on the issues on which they are most worried about being perceived as “bad” by liberals: homosexuality, capitalism, the military, patriotism, and, of course, immigration. Granted, they are not there yet. But they seem to think the most important thing in the world is appearing sufficiently liberal to liberals. Consequently, I think the future may hold something along the lines of your recent description of Britain’s sexual orientation regulations. They are starting by being concerned that we’re turning homosexuals away from the Gospel by seeming condemnatory, so we must be nicer to them. Pretty soon they will start clamoring for us to reach out to homosexuals, invite them to church, let them come as couples and sit with their arms around each other and bring their adopted children, just make it clear they can’t become members unless they renounce homosexual behavior. At the same time, bit by bit, they’ll start to sign on to the increasing enforcement of non-discrimination against homosexuals by the government. They’ll come out in favor of regulations preventing landlords from discriminating against homosexual couples, because to discriminate would reduce opportunities for evangelism. They’ll support labor laws forbidding discrimination by employers, saying that such discrimination will make people feel un-loved, which will turn them away from Christ. All the while, they’ll continue clutching that last straw, the belief that the Bible forbids homosexual acts.

But one day, the feds will show up at the church door brandishing official-looking documents, saying “your refusal to marry same-sex couples is in violation of the Universal Freedom and Total Non-Discrimination Act. You have 60 days to begin performing same-sex marriages, or your authority to grant legal marriages, as well as your tax-exempt status, will be revoked.” And when that happens, these liberal evangelicals will be shocked, shocked, because they never thought through the implications of signing on to the liberal program. They never realized that this last step was the inevitable, logical conclusion of all the previous steps which they not only acquiesced in but enthusiastically supported.

I don’t mean to dwell on homosexuality exclusively; it’s just a useful synecdoche for cultural issues in general because it’s such a bone of contention between the church and society. There is much more I could say about these topics, but I believe I have said enough to make the main point: that it is worse than many people think. You said of Christian conservatives, “they support family, they support lower taxes, they support national defense.” Unfortunately, that’s not true—many of them have already swung firmly to the left on the big issues. There could be a big split in the evangelical world in the coming decades, analogous to the potential fracturing of America some traditionalists have begun to ponder.

- end of initial entry -

Ben W. writes:

Concerning Jacob M.’s post, as an evangelical I understand and empathize with his concerns.

Christianity has a strain of universalism running through it (“Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel” Jesus commanded). “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself” claimed Christ. “In God there is no male or female, Jew or Gentile, Greek or Barbarian” wrote the apostle Paul.

As such, Christians will always be caught within the interplay of universalistic claims and particular assertions (“I am the way, the truth and the life—none cometh to the Father except by me”). Every branch of Christianity has had to deal with this tension—how to resolve the aspect of universalism within Christianity against its absolutely specific claims.

Augustine’s “City of God” (a tale of two cities) is a fascinating depiction of this tension as he juxtaposes the universalism of worldly Rome and the universalism of heavenly Jerusalem. I don’t know how successfully Augustine resolves the two universalisms for the modern human mind. For Augustine any universalism that rejects Christ’s universalism entails a future hell (and he isn’t going to agonize over that destiny unlike modern evangelicals). As Jacob M. states, the evangelical is concerned how the unsaved can be attracted to the gospel and how the evangelical can prevent barriers (cultural, social, and psychological) from being erected that estrange people from hearing the gospel.

My instinct tells me that on this issue of evangelicals and liberalism, the deeper problem is how universalism fits into the Christian world view. If it doesn’t emotionally or psychologically matter to a Christian that sinners will go to hell, then universality is not a problem to be concerned with. Let ‘em fry…for all I care. But if it bothers me that people will go to hell for all eternity and that I may have not done enough to prevent this, then I just may become influenced progressively by liberalism (or those aspects of liberalism that allow me to communciate with “the other”).

Just as VFR has been inspecting the problem of universalism with respect to the political philosophy of the neocons, Jacob M. opens up a vista on the problem of universalism within evangelical Christianity.

Alan Roebuck writes:

Jacob M. is really on to something. As an evangelical myself, I have to comment.

The bottom line of this essay, at least for the cause of traditionalism, is that whereas evangelicals were once reliably conservative on non-theological issues (limiting government, restricting immigration, opposition to general cultural corruption, etc.), they are no longer so. Some people who identify themselves as evangelicals are actually leftists on non-theological issues (e.g., Jim Wallis), and many evangelicals are either indifferent or hostile to conservative efforts to halt the destruction of our nation.

This doesn’t seem right: How could an evangelical, that is, a theologically conservative, Bible-believing Christian support or even condone liberalism?

I see two main causes of this trend. Theologically speaking, there are three main enemies of the Christian: the world, the flesh (meaning our sin nature) and the devil. “The world” means the ideological system of the world, which is now thoroughly liberal. Therefore even evangelicals (and especially evangelical leaders) are tempted to accommodate themselves to liberalism; it’s the path of least resistance. Within evangelicalism, one of the most popular movements is the so-called “seeker-sensitive” movement, of which Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church is the most famous and influential. Warren has created a whole new system for “doing church,” based on presenting visitors to church with a Christianity that appeals to their felt needs, rather than presenting them with the Gospel message that they are lost sinners in need of salvation through the blood of Christ.

The main point of the seeker-sensitive movement is to avoid disturbing people with controversial ideas, and so there is no possibility of exhorting the Christian to oppose the superficially appealing but ultimately deadly liberalism that surrounds us.

The second reason for evangelicals going soft on liberalism is the legacy of pietism. Many evangelicals see political action as “worldly,” and therefore an unfit occupation for the mature and spiritual Christian. “Our job is to present the Gospel, not to fix the world, which is always hopelessly corrupt.” With this attitude, it is only a short step to agreeing with liberalism, because this will resolve the cognitive dissonance caused by failing to take action against an obvious wrong: If homosexual marriage isn’t wrong for society, (after all, that’s just the world doing its worldly thing; all we can do is save individuals) then the Christian is absolved of any responsibility to fight it.

And much of evangelicalism is not even theologically conservative: They retain the language of orthodox Protestantism, but they fail to teach the importance of understanding and believing its content. The result is that evangelicalism has a reputation for conservatism, but has accommodated itself to the liberalism that surrounds us.

There is some good news. Although most of the official protestant denominational leadership structures are rather corrupt, there are many evangelical “parachurch” organizations (in effect, private and independent firms) dedicated to teaching orthodoxy, and many of them also teach the responsibility of the Christian to be “salt and light” to the entire culture. The usual way they present this idea is by saying that Christianity is not just a religious system; it is a comprehensive worldview which has something to say about all of life, including how nations should be governed. A specific example is “The Truth Project,” which is affiliated with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Of course, few of these parachurch organizations (if any) would be 100 percent on board with the VFR agenda. But at least there is a healthy movement within evangelicalism dedicated to fighting liberalism.

Mark L. writes:

Ben W. writes: “Christians will always be caught within the interplay of universalistic claims and particular assertions (“I am the way, the truth and the life—none cometh to the Father except by me”). Every branch of Christianity has had to deal with this tension—how to resolve the aspect of universalism within Christianity against its absolutely specific claims.”

What tension? The initial passage from which Ben quotes (John 14:6) has Christ presenting Himself to all men as the only way to God. It’s exclusive, but not exclusionary (as is clear from the other verses Ben quotes). The Christian message is that the ONE true way of redemption and salvation goes out to ALL. Thus, Christianity is centred on a particular person (Christ), whose invitation goes out universally to all (“the world”—as per John 3:16, which includes religious and secular, “bad and good” (Matt. 22:10), et al).

Let the theologians and religious studies profs try to kill it with their own earthbound theorizing, the Bible itself is clear. The tension, in fact, is not between two supposedly competing thoughts in Christianity, but between simple obedience and what I would call over-compensation. If Christians want to win people to Christ, then let them preach the true gospel, which involves (1) repentance toward God and (2) faith in our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21). Modern evangelism places all its weight on the 2nd of these two, and so is stuck with people who have been “converted” or “saved” through what is often (and scornfully) called “easy-believism.” But if they preached repentance towards God—that is, a turning away from whatever God calls sinful, transgressive, lawless—you might then have a situation where the sinner (whether gay, straight, heathen or “cultural Christian”) is actually shaken to his core, recognizing his standing before a righteous and holy God, to the point of actually crying out “What must I do to be saved?” To which the answer then comes: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:30-31).

Why do modern evangelicals avoid speaking bluntly to people about sin, and instead try to accommodate them in the hope of attracting them to Christianity? Because they are, in the words of Paul, “ashamed of the gospel”—that is, the message of Christ in all its fullness, which includes repentance. They prefer the praise and friendship of men more than the commendation of God (whose consistent principle is that obedicence is better than sacrifice). Thus, they neglect their duty (part of the Great Commission) of teaching men to observe all things commanded by Christ. Failure to stay on message in turn leads them to broaden their message beyond anything Christ or His apostles ever intended, and thus they are on the path of over-compensation.

It doesn’t work. Never mind the fact that, deep down, people who are honest have no use for easy or soft religion, and would much prefer to be dealt with in a straightforward (albeit loving) fashion by a serious person who “lives it out.” The real reason evangelical over-compensation doesn’t work is that it is not in harmony with God’s chosen method for reaching out to the lost:

“For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect” (1 Cor. 1:17). This is the main reason why logical and intelligent apologetics, which fail to convict anyone of sin, may be of moderate usefulness to believers, but are for the most part useless in leading unbelievers to Christ. So, too, are most other forms of outreach, from “Alpha Course” indoctrination classes, to Christian music concerts, to missionary dating.

I also feel compelled to say that, while your initial correspondent (Jacob M.) makes a number of solid observations about modern evangelicals with their “missions” mindset and lamentable tendency towards political correctness, the following statement of his demands a response:

“It seems to me that the primary problem is evangelicalism’s emphasis on the individual. Evangelicals are called such because they place primary importance on fulfilling the Great Commission, on converting unbelievers to Christianity. However, modern evangelicals see Christianity only as something an individual does or does not believe. They seem to have no concept of a Christian nation or a Christian society or a Christian civilization, only of Christian persons.”

That’s because, biblically speaking, there is no such thing as a “Christian nation” or a “Christian society.” The New Testament depicts Christians as those who are personally converted disciples of Christ (Acts 11:26)—that is, believers in and followers of the risen Lord Jesus, and thus “strangers and pilgrims” in a world that is not their final destination. Yes, we in the Western world still retain (thankfully) somewhat of a Judeo-Christian heritage, and I’d be a fool to deplore that. But salvation is by definition—as we have it throughout the New Testament—personal. Would our nations or society be better served if there were more true Christians in it? Unquestionably. But the focus of the serious evangelical is not—cannot be—the conversion of society, but of individuals within that society.

LA replies:

I haven’t read Mark L’s whole comment yet, but just responding to his final paragraph, I would say that the Christian man is not only a Christian; he is also a member and citizen of an earthly society. Which brings us back to the problem of the balance between the claims of Christianity and the claims of one’s society and culture. A Christianity which denies the latter claims is not of this world and Christians who follow it cannot be good or loyal citizens. Western culture does not mean only Christianity, and it does not mean only earthly culture. It is both, and the tension between them is what makes Western man.

Carl Simpson writes:

I’ve been following this thread and thought it might be interesting to throw the following article by Kevin Carter on what may have been one of the first efforts at assimilation of non-Europeans to a particular Christian European (English Protestant) culture. Is liberalism, or something like liberalism, endemic to Protestant Christianity or maybe even all Christianity?

The events related by Cater in the wake of Jamestown were long before the advent of what we typically describe as the precursors of modern liberal thought: Rousseau, Hegel, etc. Note the familiar pattern—and the similarity of reasoning between 17th century English Protestants and today’s American Evangelicals.

Clark Coleman writes:

Excellent discussion. I will try to be brief in providing food for thought. First, the primary problems with evangelical are twofold and intertwined: (1) An emphasis on making converts but not necessarily on making disciples, contrary to the Great Commission call to make disciples; and (2) assuming responsibility for not merely the preaching of the gospel, but the acceptance of the gospel.

Read back over the comments by evangelicals and you will see both sentiments expressed over and over. Our #1 job is to make converts, and it is our fault if we do not make them. If other people go to hell, it is our fault, not theirs. We should have done a better job of “reaching” them with the gospel. All of the pandering to modern man’s consumerism, his narcissism, his “felt needs,” etc. can be traced to these two related problems. Contrast all of this with Jesus’ actions in John 6. Faced with a multitude of followers (the modern evangelical preacher’s dream!), he condemns them as merely seeking after miracles, seeking more miraculous feedings of the masses, seeking only to have their bellies filled. He gives them some hard sayings; instead of seeking to understand them, most of the masses turn away. In modern evangelical parlance, Jesus really messed up and missed his opportunity. The modern evangelical church would have jumped at the chance to fill their bellies! Evangelicals h ave never realized that their attitudes are contrary to the attitudes of Jesus in this regard. In fact, a modern evangelical who expresses exactly the attitudes of Jesus in this regard will be called “unloving,” not caring about those lost souls.

The problem is endemic to what religious sociologists would call “conversionist sects.” Those who seek to convert are tempted to pander to the world around them in order to succeed. The Amish, by contrast, do not pander to the modern world around them—but they also do not really fulfill the Great Commission. They seek to grow through childbirth, not conversion. How to be evangelical without being a sell-out to the non-Christian culture is a balancing act that appears to have been performed few times in Christian history. Many evangelicals are not even aware of the tension here!

I believe that many of your commentators, including the original essayist, are missing the larger point when they talk about liberalism. The temptation in our society is to give in to liberalism, secularism, post-modernism, moral relativism, etc. At other places in other times, conversionist churches faced different surrounding cultures with different temptations. Many missionaries over the centuries were shocked to find that previous workers had allowed a syncretism of Christianity with older pagan practices, for example. Modern “liberalism” had nothing to do with it. Paying any price to “succeed” at making converts (who are not true disciples of Christ) is the common denominator.

LA replies:

Uh, what was that I heard about evangelicals not being intellectual?

Robert G. writes:

The discussion of evangelicals highlights the old divide in Christianity between orthodox and reformed believers, a divide which has much to do with the latter’s rejection of tradition. Mark L. states that “biblically speaking, there can be no Christian society.” But as Pat Buchanan once noted, culture grows out of the cult, and the cult in the West has been Christianity. [LA adds: I think T.S. Eliot said that.] Mark L. objects to the idea of a Christian society as not “biblical,” calling to mind the “Sufficiency of Scripture” argument and the desire to return to the more “authentic” Christianity of the primitive church often heard from reformers. And could the emphasis on “end-times” theology today be part of this same mind-set? Apocalyptic theology was certainly dominant among early Christians, such that Gibbon was able to argue that their otherworldly disengagement led to the downfall of Rome.

In fact, as it became evident that the world was not ending soon, the Church became more entwined with civil society. To this day, orthodox liturgy includes prayers for the particular civil authorities and the particular military, and Queen Elizabeth herself was chrismated in a sacrament of kingship. These things are tradition, part of the accretion of practices and beliefs guarded by the Church, the “unwritten customs” and “mysteries of belief,” ranging from the sign of the cross, to fasting, to the veneration of images. A discussion of the full theological meaning of Tradition is well beyond me, but I will note that an orthodox perspective affirms the primacy of Tradition over Scripture, since the Apostle’s oral preaching preceded the writing of the Gospels.

There is a Russian Orthodox expression that says, “It is possible to be damned alone, but one can only be saved in the company of others.” How different this is to the atomizing emphasis on individual salvation expressed by so many Evangelicals!

I’ve sent this comment because, as an Eastern-Rite Catholic, this discussion underscored for me my Church’s friendliness to the idea of particularism and nationhood.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 26, 2007 09:35 AM | Send