Sublime

But the point is that you can do all of that without any reference whatever to “the gospels,” to the four books that, along with Acts, precede Paul in the New Testament as we have it. Thus in many classic Christian circles, including the plethora of movements that go broadly under the label “evangelical” (and we should remember that in German the

“The conduct of the republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of small intellect, growing smaller. They pass over… statesmen and able men, and they take up a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar.”

Immigration, a dominant issue for TR’s America, was an enduring source of political discontent. In 1798, John Adams, amid war fever about France, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts to protect, in his view, the national interest against internal dissent and outside agitation. Passed by a Federalist-controlled Congress, the legislation, among other

Augustine and Pascal would have an answer:

I had stumbled, without realizing it, on a weak spot in the general structure of Christian faith as it has come to be expressed in today’s world—and, I suspect, for a lot longer than we might imagine. Here is all this material in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Why? What are we supposed to make of it all?

So that is the why of Donald Trump. He was the chosen instrument of an insurgent public, and no established centers of power stood in his way. The somewhat different question of how this transpired now needs to be posed. In 1980, 1990, even 2000, Trump’s bizarre trajectory would have been not just impossible but politically suicidal. What has

LaHaye strove to arouse Christians’ sense of embattlement. He warned of the “liberal, humanist” media corrupting the nation, evident in “the pornographic indoctrination now masquerading as TV entertainment”—in “anti-moral” programs like Three’s Company, Dallas, and Saturday Night Live—but also in television and print news. Most pointedly, he blamed