What makes political authority legitimate? How is it perceived as legitimate? These two questions are at the center of what we’ve been considering at Breaking Ground for the past few weeks, because they’re at the center of what it means to have a transition of power,...
One Nation, Sinful Under God
Shadi Hamid
So many of us have felt dread, that inchoate sense that something isn’t quite right: not with our politics nor our country nor even, perhaps, our own souls. We don’t often have the language for that thing, whatever it is, but the inability to give that something a...
Building Trust Across the Political Divide
April Lawson
We are arguably living in the most polarized time since the Civil War. And what’s more, the particular variety of polarization that presently plagues our society is an especially nasty one. Two kinds of polarization are spiking: negative polarization—“It’s not that I...
We, the People . . .
Mack McCarter
This was written four years ago, in January 2017, as part of Mack McCarter’s “weekly word” to the global community of those committed to renewing our relationships from the foundations on out. We thought it appropriate to re-post today, on this Inaugural week in the States.
Robert Peel’s Policing Principles
Sir Robert Peel
These principles, attributed to the founder of London’s first modern police, were sent out in the “General Instructions” issued to every new member of the Metropolitan Police Force from its formation in 1829 onward.
Forerunners: Sojourner Truth
Susannah Black, Jason Landsel
In 1844, in a field outside the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, a gang of young men showed up at a revival meeting, making trouble. The meeting’s organizers grew angry; the men – more than a hundred – redoubled their uproar. One of the meeting attendees, a...
Order and Justice
Susannah Black
These days it feels like we’re seeing political theology, good and bad, play out in front of our eyes: if we thought history was over and ideas didn’t have consequences, if we thought that all of this was abstract, we’re sure disabused of that notion now. Last Friday...
The Complexities of Forbearance
Gregory Lee
In the middle of the twentieth century, American Christianity experienced a subtle but seismic shift. As sociologist Robert Wuthnow observed, where Christians had once distinguished themselves according to denominational identity, following the Second World War,...
What Is Political Authority?
Susannah Black
You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. John Buchan, The Power-House What is government for? What is...
Openings in Our Fractured Republic
James K.A. Smith, Yuval Levin
James K.A. Smith: At the heart of your diagnosis is that we've got this contemporary penchant for nostalgia, which is a desire to return to some part of the twentieth century. Whether it's '63 or '83 or something like that, people have some golden age in mind. But...