Author Archives: James Ernest

When you think about the purpose of the US federal government and the basis of its legitimacy, where do you start, and what do you include? Obviously one has to think of the Constitution. But how to think about it? There is a temptation to think about canonical texts ahistorically, as though it were desirableContinue reading “Politics, sabotage, and the meaning of government”

The Wall Street Journal headline reads: “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat”; the opening sentence of the article: “The U.S. decision to withdraw from the Paris accord thrusts China into an unfamiliar role as a leader on climate change, boosting its global sway even as it remains wary of new internationalContinue reading “International leadership and national self-awareness”

Especially for my friends in my home state, Virginia. My Virginia friends of my generation know what it was like to grow up there in the 1960s. I remember writing “reports” for assignments in elementary school and junior high school. I remember making covers for them. I used stencils that we bought at the stationeryContinue reading “Streets and statues, truth and reconciliation”

In February a Florida congressman introduced a bill to “terminate the Environmental Protection Agency”; that’s unlikely to happen soon, but slightly subtler minds are pressing for ways to inhibit the work of the EPA and related agencies. I understand and to some extent sympathize with the impulse to maximize self-reliance and the scope of individualContinue reading “Faithful stewardship?”

This note responds to a reply to an earlier—and too brief, and in its brevity perhaps a bit careless—comment of mine decrying our president’s response to a question about rising threats of anti-Semitic violence. So here I want to say something a little more carefully. I am grateful to anyone who reads my posts, andContinue reading “On the impossibility of failing to condemn anti-Semitism”

I have been seeing a lot of a couple of three-word slogans: “Not my president!” and “Get over it!” I think I understand both, but I reject both, and a third to which I think they reduce, and choose to affirm a fourth. 1. The first is Not my president! I cannot say “My president!”Continue reading “Rebuke-slogans that I will not use, and what I think we must say instead”

A Christian who does not want to hear about politics in church . . . is quite possibly a Christian who wishes to exclude the all-creating love of God, the self-emptying lordship of Christ, and the convicting, illuminating, purifying, and empowering activity of the Spirit from a decisively important aspect of his or her and our life and thought.

What now? Denial? Despair? Attack? Retreat? Exhaustion? How about some teaching and learning for the long haul? Christians cannot afford to be tired of politics, or worse yet, to be apolitical—as if that were even possible. We have to be more deeply and wisely and Christianly political. Although Christianity (unlike Judaism and Islam) does notContinue reading “Politics and hope: Thoughts from Charles Mathewes”