Political Philosophy

Stanley Hauerwas has been called the best theologian the United States ever produced. Hauerwas is well known for his critique of liberal ideology and his defense of the church as its own community that should be something different than “the world.” His thought lends itself to communitarianism and challenges the growth of Christian Nationalism and Constantinianism in our day. This video introduces Hauerwas’s life and some of his big ideas and is the beginning of a series derived from two of his books: A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, and Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living In-Between. Wipf & Stock: https://wipfandstock.com For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

In this season we are encouraged to think about giving things, but giving evokes all kinds of feelings, not all of them good for either the giver or receiver. This video focuses on how to be a good receiver, preferably not of Christmas largesse but of giving on a daily basis. To encourage generosity in others, being a positive receiver is necessary. Receiving without guilt and without giving a guilt trip is a way that you can move beyond the liberal capitalist transactional framework in your own life. This is not as easy as it sounds, as you will run very interesting feelings and resistances that will illuminate how messed up our world currently is when it comes to sharing and caring for each other. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

I am working on a new book, The Gap in God’s Country: Towards Repairing Our Rural/Urban Divide. One theory stream I tap into is Burkean conservatism. Because I’m doing a series on Burke right now, I thought I’d read the section from the draft introduction that has to do with classical conservatism. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

Do you think being grateful while eating your turkey is the best thing you could be doing on Thanksgiving? Here are some thoughts to agitate you (and maybe get you to drink one less beer) on this US holiday. Along the way we ponder the “Metaverse” of Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams, why charity might not be the very best thing you could do, and why word vomiting on others is an activity to avoid–maybe particularly today. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

I discuss Edmund Burke’s views on the “Rights of Man” as advocated by the French Revolution, in contrast with what Burke thought of as the rights of human beings living in various nations and communities. Burke critiques the idea of universal natural rights in favor of inherited rights which can be modified and applied differently over time in response to changing conditions and needs. Burke does supply a list of things that people deserve as members of society and puts them forward as the real rights of men. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

After defending the English Revolution of 1688 as a thing of a different and more respectable sort than the French Revolution of 1789, Burke goes on to argue against universal rights in favor of the particular rights of particular people. He believes that people receive their rights through inheritance from past practice, and that the French made a huge mistake to throw away that inheritance and try to invent a universalistic and rational constitution with no precedent. Reading Burke carefully, we begin to see that Burke supports a certain type of hypocrisy as essential for political stability, a noble lie of sorts. In the case of England, the Noble Lie perpetuated by the English parliament was that the Glorious Revolution did not establish parliamentary supremacy and change forever the role of the monarchy, even though it did. The Noble Lie respects the sensibilities of people and does not push people’s imaginations beyond what they can bear, and in doing so, it prevents the snowball effect (if we can do this radical thing, we can do whatever we want) which results in social chaos. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars. Summer 2022 will be on Christian Anarchism. https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

The first part of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution of France takes on England’s Revolution Society and Rev. Richard Price, whom Burke considered a dangerous and radical agitator. We begin to see that Burke does not like mixing religion and politics, and he dislikes politics practiced with religious zeal. He argues that there is a big difference between the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789. Is he right? For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

Why read Edmund Burke? In this introduction I explain that his classical conservatism is more of a way of thinking than it is an ideology, and as such it is flexible. It is also practical, and we need more of that in a time in which too many waste their efforts in theorizing for its own sake (or worse) just attacking the “other side.” For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

This podcast doesn’t give all 12 steps, but it does give us at least two steps, and a “serenity prayer” for our particular addiction. In this penultimate episode dealing with Walter Brueggemann’s Out of Babylon I discuss the themes that emerge in the last chapter dealing with accommodation and resistance to empire. Brueggemann is unflinching in his warning to US Christians that they have verged from accommodation, which is sometimes necessary, to capitulation, which is inexcusable and amounts to idolatry and rejection of “local identity” or strong community values. Out of Babylon: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Babylon-Walter-Brueggemann/dp/1426710054 For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

Reflections on Walter Brueggemann’s Out of Babylon, chapters 6 and 7, leads to a discussion of Christian nationalism–the reasons it is wrong but also the possible reasons why it exists. Looking at the Old Testament as a source of iconic, archetypal and enduring truths is discussed as an alternative to the narrative of the US as the new Israel. If people remain captive to Empire, why? Is it partly because they truly have been displaced and are tempted by cooptation? Is it due to their fear of the wilderness and the freedom it represents? Out of Babylon: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Babylon-Walter-Brueggemann/dp/1426710054 For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for future summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA