Carl Trueman and Political Judgment

In his recent smash bestseller, the church historian Carl Trueman teaches that aesthetic judgment has clouded the modern mind. He makes a convincing case that rather than forming moral judgments based on enduring principles, we moderns tend to chase the truth out with the pitchfork of individual self-expression. We follow Friedrich Nietzsche and “speak of morality in terms of taste or aesthetics,” Trueman writes. When it comes to politics, however, aesthetic concerns above all seem to guide Trueman’s judgment. 

Trueman’s latest First Things column “Trumpite Evangelicalism vs. Bidenist Catholicism?” is an unfortunate example of the problems that have plagued evangelical political analysis since at least 2016: uncharitable assessments, false moral equivalencies, third-way positioning that implicitly elevates one’s own moral status, and a general inability to offer Christians serious political guidance.