Mark Tooley

Author Archive

  • Jul 14, 2025
    These days between America’s Independence Day of July 4 and France’s Bastille Day on July 14 should provoke reflection about liberty. Whiggery is the label I prefer for...
  • Jul 4, 2025
    Sidney’s spirit infuses Peale’s idealized portrait of Pitt. This spirit insists that no human is born with a saddle on their back. The portrait magnificently illustrates...
  • Jun 27, 2025
    The recent religious debate between Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson over Israel reveals wider currents in American Christian opinion. Carlson has become less friendly if not...
  • Jun 19, 2025
    Should the U.S. directly assist Israel’s destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons program? The short answer is, to my mind, as a Christian realist, yes, but not with...
  • Jun 18, 2025
    As you surely know, Elie Wiesel’s classic first-person chronicle of the destruction of European Jewry, the murder of six million Jewish people, is titled Night. What you...
  • Jun 11, 2025
    Most global humanitarian aid comes from Gospel-shaped nations, even if now secularized. Charity and generosity are for our cultures high virtues that define who we are, certainly for...
  • Jun 10, 2025
    In 1819 a Methodist minister in Maryland was prosecuted for sedition because he preached against slavery at a camp meeting. At trial he was acquitted, thanks to his lawyer,...
  • Jun 4, 2025
    Here’s my interview with David Bahnsen of the Bahnsen Group, a regular National Review contributor, and cable news frequent guest, about tariffs, free...
  • May 20, 2025
    As president of an ecumenical think tank devoted to helping people form a social and political witness rooted in historic Christian teaching, I think a lot about the...
  • Apr 11, 2025
    There are currently five major streams of Protestant political outlook and activism. The first, in terms of age, is the old Religious Left. It’s comprised chiefly of clergy...
  • Apr 10, 2025
    Over the weekend I wonderfully enjoyed speaking at both a Methodist church and a Baptist church outside Knoxville, Tennessee. The experience was a good reminder that Baptists and...
  • Apr 9, 2025
    This journal is modeled on Christianity & Crisis, which Reinhold Niebuhr founded in 1941 to urge American Protestants to aid the Allies against the Axis. Its theme was that...
  • Apr 1, 2025
    A recent critique of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission evinces the decline in Protestant institutions, which is bad news for America. Nearly all U.S....
  • Mar 28, 2025
    Here’s my interview with Professor Mike Austin of Eastern Kentucky University, co-editor of QAnon, Chaos and the Cross: Christians and Conspiracy Theories,...
  • Mar 24, 2025
    Of course, there’s been some controversy about the latest group of evangelical leaders meeting with President Trump, convened by White House faith advisor Paula...
  • Mar 19, 2025
    The American movement for civil rights across 100 years, from the Civil War through the 1960s, is one of the greatest stories of humanity. Certainly, it is defining for America. And...
  • Mar 10, 2025
    Does Just War teaching, which calls for a probability of success, require Ukraine to submit to terms favorable to Russia? This Providence article and this First...
  • Feb 13, 2025
    It was a surprise to find that my great-great grandmother in southwest Virginia mentored a famous early 20th century Methodist preacher radio broadcaster, R. P....
  • Jan 31, 2025
    Sometimes the U.S. is called an “empire” but only in the sense that its economic and military have global influence. There were in the 19th century American...
  • Jan 30, 2025
    The death of renowned United Methodist theologian Richard Hays of Duke Divinity School perhaps marks the almost end of the neo-Anabaptist, pacifist era. His obituaries...
  • Jan 17, 2025
    Carter and Reagan were both providential instruments, their destinies linked to each other and to the nation. Both were patriots who shared high ideals, decency and commitments to...