The early Protestant Reformers famously disbelieved in the freedom of the will. And yet they gave us a legacy of freedom. This paradox is at the heart of Brad Littlejohn’s Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License. But Littlejohn, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is not just unpacking 16th century theology or uncovering influences. Rather, he is untangling today’s confusions about freedom and exposing our actual lack of freedom, while also showing a way forward.
“Professing to be free, we have become slaves,” he writes. “Yet the less liberty we feel, the more liberty we demand, without knowing anymore what it is we are asking for.”
There are many kinds and definitions of freedom, with some of them contradicting each other. Littlejohn observes that, during the Civil War, both sides raised the “Battle Cry of Freedom,” with the Union fighting to free the slaves and the Confederacy fighting for the freedom to have slaves. Today conservatives tend to focus on economic freedom, while progressives fixate on sexual freedom.
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