What does a Christian political witness look like in our day?
Politics ought to be defined by fidelity to the common good of all the members of society. But our modern Western politics are defined by a determination to bend the natural world and human life to its own political and economic ends. This wholesale rejection of the natural order is behind the dominant revolutions in our history, and defines our experience in Western society today — our racialized hierarchy, modern industry, and the sexual revolution.
In What Are Christians For?, Jake Meador lays out a proposal for a Christian politics rooted in the givenness and goodness of the created world. He is uninterested in the cultural wars that have so often characterized American Christianity. Instead, he casts a vision for an ordered society that rejects the late modern revolution at every turn and is rooted in the natural law tradition and the great Protestant confessions. Here is a political approach that is antiracist, anticapitalist, and profoundly pro-life. A truly Christian political witness, Meador argues, must attend closely to the natural world and renounce the metallic fantasies that have poisoned common life in America life for too long.
"Meador's book is a call for a more rooted world in which Christians pursue justice, mercy, and holiness in a sphere that will not be tamed or controlled. Touching on race, gender, economics, ecology, and more, it is a vision that is both comprehensive and full, yet modest and grounded. In these pages, there is much to provoke and to challenge, as Meador offers a vision of the Christian's participation in the world, which is as small as the household and as sweeping as the cosmos."
Myles Werntz, associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University
"A book that pairs a trenchant critique of whiteness guided by Willie Jennings with a robust Reformed orthodoxy guided by Herman Bavinck is precisely the book that I've been looking for. Meador's work is a text of truth, goodness, and beauty revealing to us the world in which we live and the way we ought to move about in it."
Malcolm Foley, director of Black church studies at Truett Seminary
