SOCIAL CONSERVATISM FOR THE COMMON GOOD: A PROTESTANT ENGAGEMENT WITH ROBERT P. GEORGE, by Andrew T. Walker

A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance

by Flynn Evans

 

About the Author

Andrew T. Walker (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an associate dean in the School of Theology. He serves as the executive director of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement and as a managing editor for the Opinions section of WORLD magazine. He is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author or editor of several books on Christian ethics and public theology. He resides with his wife and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky.

 

Introduction

In this collection of essays, Walker has brought together a variety of evangelical thinkers and writers to consider the impact of the intellectual career of Robert P. George. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals at Princeton University, has championed conservative causes in the public square in his vast body of work relating to issues such as religious liberty, abortion, and marriage. His particular deployment of the Catholic tradition behind natural law ethics throughout his career has invited praise as well as criticism from those across the ideological and theological spectrum in the United States, warranting an appraisal from a Protestant perspective as sought by this volume.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction: “Tenacious Civility: The Spirit of Robert P. George for Contemporary Times” (Andrew T. Walker)
1. “A Socrates for Our Athenian Age: A Short Life of Robert P. George” (John D. Wilsey)
2. “From Separatism to Cobelligerency: Evangelicals, Other Christian Traditions, and the Common Good” (David S. Dockery)
3. “Son of Thomas, Heir of Theoden: Faith and Reason in the Work of Robert P. George (Carl R. Trueman)
4. “Robert P. George and the (New) Natural Law Ethics: Philosophical and Biblical Considerations” (Andrew T. Walker)
5. “Making Men Moral: Government, Public Morality, and Moral Ecology” (Micah J. Watson)
6. “Robert P. George versus John Rawls: On Public Reason and Political Liberalism” (Hunter Baker)
7. “Human Dignity and Natural Rights: Robert P. George’s Work and Virtue” (Adeline A. Allen)
8. “Bringing Body and Soul Together (Again): Robert P. George, Oliver O’Donovan, and the Place of Resurrection in Body Ethics” (Matthew Lee Anderson)
9. “A Person Is a Person, No Matter How Small: Robert P. George and the Pro-Life Movement” (Scott Klusendorf)
10. “Taking Courage in the Truth about Marriage: Robert P. George and the Defense of the Family” (Jennifer Marshall Patterson)
11. “For Such a Time as This: Robert P. George on Religious Freedom” (J. Daryl Charles)
12. “Robert P. George on Justice and Democracy: Natural Law, Classical Liberalism, and Prospects for a Protestant Political Theory” (Mark Tooley)
13. “To Caesar (Only) What Is Caesar’s: The Jurisprudence of Robert P. George” (Adam J. MacLeod)
14. “Partners in Truth Seeking: Robert P. George and Cornel West” (Paul D. Miller)
Afterword: “Seeking the Truth, Speaking the Truth: A Dialogue between Robert P. George and Andrew T. Walker”

 

Introduction: “Tenacious Civility: The Spirit of Robert P. George for Contemporary Times” (Andrew T. Walker)

George is worthy of consideration by evangelicals due to his commitment to the common good of securing and defending human rights purely on the basis of being human. George’s example of civility presents an appropriate paradigm for Christians for how to remain bold in their convictions yet graciously persuasive. Such confidence should flow from an appreciation for what George has called “the permanent things,” being ethical realities defined by God within the created order. However, evangelicals need to be able to defend their social and political stances apart from exclusively using Scripture. To do so makes the creation order intelligible to all image-bearers. George embodies a needed confidence in “the permanent things” as defensible on the grounds of reason, not merely Scripture alone. The fact that George can maintain such a superb intellectual and academic standing with such a mode of engagement can encourage evangelicals to attempt the same.

 

1. “A Socrates for Our Athenian Age: A Short Life of Robert P. George” (John D. Wilsey)

Robert P. George was born on June 10th, 1955, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Growing up in a working-class family of coal miners, he is a third-generation American of Syrian and Italian descent. Raised in the Catholic faith, he became acquainted with evangelicalism early in his life due to having a boyhood friend whose family was Southern Baptist. George eventually found his way to Swarthmore College in 1973. Initially struggling in academics, he was given a second chance by his political science professor, James Kurth, who noticed his potential. An exposure to Plato’s dialogue Gorgias in a political theory course pushed George towards truth-seeking for its own sake, leading him to complete degrees at Harvard’s Law School and Divinity School as well as the University of Oxford. He accepted a teaching position at Princeton in their politics department in 1985. Once he received tenure in 1993, George began to strengthen his networking with evangelicals, especially in his relationship with Charles Colson. George roots his cooperation with evangelical Protestants in political and intellectual causes because of their shared “catholic” Christianity motivated by Christ’s love united against “the new gnosticism,” the anthropology of progressivism that makes the human person purely a product of the mind entirely apart from nature. In addition, evangelicalism’s prioritizing of the conscience finds robust appreciation in George’s thought since conscience grounds the necessity of religious freedom. George is Socratic in his motivations since truth, not rhetoric, compels his speech. Consequently, Catholics and evangelicals, as well as non-Christians, should be able to rally around the need for morality, public order, and the fundamental rights of humanity in seeking a more just society for all.

 

2. “From Separatism to Cobelligerency: Evangelicals, Other Christian Traditions, and the Common Good” (David S. Dockery)

Evangelicals are distinguished from both Protestant liberals and fundamentalists due to their championing of historic Christian orthodoxy regarding the gospel and their investment in pursuing the welfare of society as a whole. The modern evangelical identity in America properly arose out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy in the early twentieth century, siding with fundamentalists at first in terms of essential doctrine yet formulating a more positive approach to social concerns than was the case for those who began to call for “degrees of separation” starting in the 1920s. By the 1940s, a “neo-evangelical” vanguard formed under leaders such as Carl F. H. Henry, E. J. Carnell, Harold Ockenga, and eventually Billy Graham. These men would come to articulate a renewed vision for Christian political and social engagement based upon their principal emphasis on personal redemption in Christ as the ultimate remedy to the world’s problems. Nevertheless, those such as Henry and Francis Schaeffer opposed outright collaboration with American Catholics on the political front until the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 prompted them and their fellow evangelicals to see how the catholic truths of Christianity could bring both traditions together for the cause of justice. This newfound cobelligerency was affirmed in the Manhattan Declaration (2009), signed by 150 figures representing evangelical Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy that declared their shared convictions regarding human life, marriage, and religious liberty. While such a statement did not seek to blur the dogmatic lines between these groups, it stipulated how legitimate common ground can and should be maintained among them for the sake of the common good. Today, sincere political engagement between evangelicals and Catholics can proceed with the understanding that we face shared enemies in the spirit of the age. . . .

[To continue reading this summary, please see below....]