For the Common Good
Good and Bad Ways to Think
About Religion and Politics
by Robert Benne
Eerdmans, 2010
(128 pages, $14.00, paperback)
reviewed by J. Daryl Charles
Robert Benne, Director of the Roanoke College Center for Religion and Society and Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion (Emeritus) at Roanoke College, writes from within the confessional Lutheran tradition. In his latest book he is concerned with the mode by which people of religious conviction interact with the political process. He begins with a brief sketch of several factors that have helped galvanize cultural reaction to religion since the 1960s. Among these were the election of Jimmy Carter, a professed Evangelical Christian, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that found a constitutional “right” to abortion, the subsequent emergence of groups such as the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, and the very public faith—and influence—of John Paul II.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
J. Daryl Charles is the Acton Institute Affiliated Scholar in Theology & Ethics. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including Retrieving the Natural Law (2008), Natural Law and Religious Freedom (2018), and, most recently, Just War and Christian Traditions (forthcoming). He is also co-editor of Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God's Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 3 (2020). He is a contributing editor to Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
21.10—December 2008
Early Christian Teaching on the Incarnation & Redemption by Patrick Henry Reardon
30.6—Nov/Dec 2017
on C. S. Lewis, Brideshead Revisited & the Middle Things by Ben Reinhard
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
