Sublime

“The tragedy of man,” the twentieth-century Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed, “is that he can conceive self-perfection but cannot achieve it.” And the tragedy of America is that we can imagine justice but cannot finally realize it.

For many Americans, especially non-Christians, the thought that Christian morality can be a useful guide to much of anything is risible, particularly since so many white evangelicals from 2016 forward chose to throw in their lot with a solipsistic American president who bullies, boasts, and sneers. Yet Lewis’s life suggests that religiously inspire

There is the common ground of the common good, and there are the semi-private domains of our diverse religious traditions. We are responsible to society for the former, to our own community for the latter.

“The finest task of achieving justice,” Niebuhr wrote, “will be done neither by the Utopians who dream dreams of perfect brotherhood nor yet by the cynics who believe that the self-interest of nations cannot be overcome. It must be done by the realists who understand that nations are selfish and will be so till the end of history, but that none of

This is really the form that the dilemma takes. It is not solely a question of keeping the body alive; it is rather how not to be killed. Not to be killed becomes the great end, and morality takes its meaning from that center. Until that center is shifted, nothing real can be accomplished. It is the uncanny and perhaps unwitting recognition of this