Friday, October 31, 2008

Clarion Review reviews TNRNL

A review of my book, Turn Neither to the Right nor to the Left: A Thinking Christian's Guide to Politics and Public Policy...

enjoy!

1 Comments:

At November 3, 2008 at 1:56 PM , Blogger Eric Schansberg said...

Here was my reply...

Thanks for your kind words. A few comments by way of reply:

-Libertarian political philosophy does not necessarily imply moral laxity. It merely speaks to whether govt should be invoked to deal with various forms of (acknowledged) moral laxity. A great example is John 8-- where Jesus doesn't chuck any rocks but does exhort the adulteress to leave her life of sin.

-I'm not sure about the extent to which Church and State should mix. In any case, the larger issue is surely the impact of the State on the Church rather than vice versa. Beyond that, religious belief and the State must mix. One cannot form political beliefs in a religion-less vacuum.

-As for policy prescriptions, I try to distinguish between active and passive forms of support and opposition. For example, I think it is prohibitively difficult to make a case for Christian political activism against gambling. But it does not follow that Christians should devote energy and resources to fight for legalized gambling.

-Finally, an overarching theme-- and again, I may fail to be clear enough on this. But I'd say the book (or at least my beliefs) are more anti-govt than pro-market. In other words, it is a negative approach to the question of the extent to which Christians should embrace govt as a godly and practical means to godly ends-- rather than a positive defense of markets per se.

 

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