Mormon Authority and Identity in America
Settlers of Jackson County, Missouri imposed their will on the contiguous landscape with arbitrary survey lines. With possessive place names like Sibley and descriptive ones like Independence,…
The Transformation from Theocracy to Democracy in Utah
Although all states in the Union are part of a shared political and cultural heritage, Utah’s constitution, written in 1895, reflects much of the uniqueness of Utah’s…
Cornel West
Prominent American scholar and public intellectual, West is best known for his works on race, religion, and politics in America. An American Book Award recipient, West serves…
Norman Mattoon Thomas
A former Presbyterian pastor, Norman Thomas was a leading public activist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. His convictions were influenced by the Social…
Martin E. Marty
Minister, professor, administrator, and editor but probably best known as a cultural historian of modern Christianity, Martin has examined the intersection of religion and politics in America…
The Administrative Threat
The Administrative Threat. Philip Hamburger. New York: Encounter, 2017. Readers of a certain vintage will recall a British TV series called Yes, Minister, in which a…
The Protestant Revolution in Theology, Law, and Community
The Protestant Reformation has been cited by scholars of European history as contributing to the rise of nationalism, individualism, capitalism, and secularism but not to the development…
Was Eric Voegelin Fair to Martin Luther? Reflections on Voegelin’s treatment of Luther in the History of Political Ideas
Eric Voegelin's treatment of Martin Luther in the History of Political Ideas (henceforth History; page references when not otherwise noted are to vol. IV of the History)…
Voegelin and the Scandal of Luther: Philosophy, Faith, and the Modern Age
However luminous the thought of Eric Voegelin may be as a whole, any sensitive reader of his writings on Luther and on the Reformation purportedly inaugurated by…
From the Multiversity Cave: Conclusion
In this series of posts, we have reviewed what some prominent thinkers have taught us about today multiversity: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas presented us a new…
From the Multiversity Cave: The Students and the State
One of the recent movements in American education has been to make schools student-centered, whether from Montessori pre-schools to institutions of higher education: the values of independence,…
From the Multiversity Cave: General Education
One of the present paradigms of the multiversity has been informed by mathematics and the natural sciences where methodology, standardization, and replicable data are the principles to…
Martin Luther and the Translation of the Bible into German
The very life of Martin Luther (1483-1546) manifested turbulence, over and over. From his troubled youth in Saxony (Erikson, 1958/1962), through his contretemps against the Roman Catholic…
From the Multiversity Cave: The Universal Sciences
In the previous essay I examined how Renaissance Humanism and the religious reformations can contribute to improving the multiversity as an institution that promotes the public good…
From the Multiversity: Three Reformations
In the past essays I have spoken about one of the obstacles that today’s multiversity confronts: the creation of the conditions of genuine learning. The vast creation…