Protestant Christendom, A: The World the Reformation Made (Davenant Retrievals)

Can there be a “Protestant Christendom”?

Our world is obsessed with stories about Protestantism and modernity.

Are Protestant societies dynamic, progressive, and free? Or are they godless, Erastian, and libertine? Thinkers and theologians once argued we should rejoice in Protestantism’s creation of societies grounded on reason, freedom, and the individual; now, many are quick to pin the blame for modernity’s ills squarely on the Reformation. But these are two sides of the same coin, united by a shared assumption: that Protestantism necessitates revolution, and with it the dissolution of religious and metaphysical bonds which once united generations, nations, a continent, the Church, and even heaven and earth.

But what if these accounts are wrong? What if Protestantism is more than this, or something different altogether? The burden of this book is to illuminate Protestantism’s historic vision of society, culture, and governance, with the aim of applying its rich legacy in our own day. Collecting and expanding essays originally published in the journal Ad Fontes, this book deals with the issues of church and state, politics and culture, and economics and justice, and proposes that Protestantism’s own vision for these things is worth seeing afresh, on its own terms.

If you are wiling to ask “A Protestant Christendom?”, you may be surprised by the answer.

196 Pages

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Onsi Kamel

PART ONE: CHURCH AND STATE

I - The Freedom of a Christian Nation
Bradford Littlejohn

II - Inhabiting the Place of Promise: Martin Luther’s Teaching on the Three Institutions
Michael Laffin

III - “Nursing Fathers”: The Magistrate and the Moral Law
E. J. Hutchinson

IV - The Promise and Peril of Disestablishment: Baptist and Reformed Political Theology in the New Republic
Miles Smith IV

V - James Wilson: America’s Natural Law Architect
Ethan Foster

PART TWO: POLITICS AND CULTURE

VI - The Neglected Craft: Prudence in Reformed Political Thought
Adam Carrington

VII - The Art of Protestant Learning
Roberta Bayer

VIII - Retrieving John Donne: Poetic Companion for Conflicted Protestants
Rhys Laverty

PART THREE: ECONOMICS AND JUSTICE

IX - Against the Infinite Stimulus of Greed: Martin Bucer’s Reformation of Welfare
Bradford Littlejohn

X - What is Work For?
Joseph Minich

XI - Martin Luther and Tax: A Protestant Perspective on Redistributive Taxation
Allen Calhoun

XII - Who’s Afraid of Social Justice?
Brian Dijkema

XIII - Why We Need the Common Good
Jake Meador