"City of God" and the Ends of American Politics

In his magnum opus, City of God, Augustine addressed a people who were wrestling with identity as the Western Roman Empire faced collapse. While we cannot make a one-to-one comparison between Rome and America, Augustine does have much to say about the ends of political life in America. From Augustine’s critique of Roman culture in City of God, we can come to see that neither of our political parties are the guardians of biblical morality; instead, both parties are actually colluding to form us into a people who value pleasure far above virtue or justice.