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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2021
This article combines historical and philosophical analysis to examine and critique the ideas motivating Christian conservative legal activism. Such activists routinely claim to be motivated by a Christian worldview, which they define as a comprehensive explanation of reality that determines all their thinking and action, including their legal activism and argumentation. Examination of the historical and philosophical roots of the concept of worldview identified by Christian thinkers reveals two understandings of the concept: an analytic tool for rationally comparing the evidence for different social philosophies, and a pre-theoretical lens that determines what counts as evidence in the first place. Christian conservatives have largely favored the first sense of worldview as a tool to understand issues like sexuality and gender identity in an essentialist way and to demonstrate with foundationalist logic the rational superiority of their legal conclusions about these issues. However, a comparison of the Christian conservative worldview and the queer theory worldview illustrates how this understanding of worldview as a tool fails because there is no neutral perspective outside of any worldview, from which one could examine and compare one to another. The idea of worldview as a pre-theoretical, historically, and socially contingent lens can be more productive. Embracing this notion of worldview in a personalist way is necessary to build a culture of dialogue that uses narrative to pursue the truth while also respecting and honoring the different perspectives from which these narratives are told.
1 Beckwith, Francis J., Craig, William Lane, and Moreland, J. P., eds., To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009)Google Scholar; Goheen, Michael W. and Bartholomew, Craig G., Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview (Ada: Baker Academic, 2008)Google Scholar; Kraft, Charles, Worldview for Christian Witness (Hattiesburg: William Carey Library, 2013)Google Scholar; MacArthur, John, ed., Think Biblically! Recovering a Christian Worldview (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2009)Google Scholar; Moreland, J. P. and Craig, William Lane, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downer's Grove: IVP Academic, 2003)Google Scholar; Naugle, David K., Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans, 2002)Google Scholar; James Olthius, “On Worldviews,” in Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science, eds. Paul A. Marshall, Sander Griffioen, and Richard J. Mouw (Lanham: University Press of America, 1989), 26–40; Poplin, Mary, Is Reality Secular? Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews (Downer's Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Schaeffer, Francis A., How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell, 1976)Google Scholar; Sire, James W., Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept, 2nd ed. (Downer's Grove: IVP Academic, 2015)Google Scholar; Sire, James W., The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, 4th ed. (Downer's Grove: IVP Academic, 2004)Google Scholar; Del Tackett, “What's a Christian Worldview?” Focus on the Family, January 1, 2006, https://www.focusonthefamily.com/faith/whats-a-christian-worldview/; Willard, Dallas, ed., A Place for Truth: Leading Thinkers Explore Life's Hardest Questions (Downer's Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Wolters, Albert M., Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1985)Google Scholar.
2 “An Appeal for Theological Affirmation: The Hartford Statement,” Worldview 18, no. 4 (1975), 39–41.
3 Robert George, Timothy George, and Chuck Colson, “The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience,” November 20, 2009, Manhattan Declaration, https://www.manhattandeclaration.org.
4 George, George, and Colson, “Manhattan Declaration”; Daniel Rodger, “4 Reasons Why Every Christian Should be Pro-life” (blog post) Premier Christianity, April 29, 2016, https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/4-reasons-why-every-Christian-should-be-pro-life.
5 George, George, and Colson, “Manhattan Declaration”; David Dockery, “The Importance of a Christian Worldview” (blog post), The Gospel Project, October 21, 2013, https://www.gospelproject.com/the-importance-of-a-christian-worldview/.
6 George, George, and Colson, “Manhattan Declaration”; Jeff Myers, “Does God Care about Politics? Should We Care?” Summit Ministries, March 17, 2017, https://www.summit.org/resources/articles/god-care-politics-care/.
7 Bennett, Daniel, Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Movement (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Jay Sekulow, “New Federal Court Case: Are You a Committed Christian?” American Heritage, American Center for Law and Justice, accessed January 21, 2021, https://aclj.org/american-heritage/new-federal-court-case-are-you-a-committed-christian-. See also Bennett, Defending Faith, 22–23.
9 Brown, Steven P., Trumping Religion: The New Christian Right, the Free Speech Clause, and the Courts (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Daniel Bennett, “The Rise of Christian Conservative Legal Organizations,” Religion & Politics, June 10, 2015, http://religionandpolitics.org/2015/06/10/the-rise-of-christian-conservative- legal-organizations/; Hoover, Dennis R. and den Dulk, Kevin R., “Conservative Christians Go to Court: Religious and Legal Mobilization in the United States and Canada,” International Political Science Review 25, no. 1 (2004), 9–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kevin R. den Dulk, “Purpose-Driven Lawyers: Evangelical Cause Lawyering and the Culture War,” in The Cultural Lives of Cause Lawyers, ed. Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 56–78; Bennett, Defending Faith.
10 Dwight Longenecker, “Commentary: Maybe It's Time for American Christians to Head for the Hills,” Crux: Taking the Catholic Pulse, April 11, 2016, https://cruxnow.com/church/2016/04/maybe-its-time-american-christians-head-for-the-hills/; Rod Dreher, “The Benedict Option: A Medieval Model Inspires Christian Communities Today,” The American Conservative, December 12, 2013, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/benedict-option/; Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017).
11 R. R. Reno, Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society (Washington, DC: Regnery Faith, 2016); Anthony Esolen, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2017).
12 Robert Vischer, “The Kim Davis Situation: How to Make Distinctions When Conscience and Duty Collide,” Religious Freedom Institute, July 14, 2016, https://www.religiousfreedominstitute.org/cornerstone/2016/7/14/the-kim-davis-situation-how-to-make-distinctions-when-conscience-and-duty-collide?rq=Vischer; Albert Mohler, Jr., “Caesar, Coercion, and the Christian Conscience: A Dangerous Confusion,” Albert Mohler (website), February 24, 2014, http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/02/24/caesar-coercion-and-the-christian-conscience-a-dangerous-confusion; Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, “Religious Freedom Restoration Act Information Central,” Religious Liberty for All, accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.becketlaw.org/research-central/rfra-info-central/.
13 Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, “HHS Mandate Information Central,” Religious Liberty for All, accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.becketlaw.org/research-central/HHS-info-central/.
14 Brown, Trumping Religion; Eugene Scott, “Anti-Abortion Group Releases Fourth Planned Parenthood Video,” CNN Politics, July 30, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/30/politics/planned-parenthood-fourth-video/index.html.
15 Aamer Madhani, “Battle Brewing over Transgender Bathroom Laws in State Capitals,” USA Today, February 27, 2016, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/27/battle-brewing-over-transgender-bathroom-laws-state-capitals/81006894 .
16 Except as I touch on them briefly in the penultimate section, the worldview commitments of opponents of Christian conservatives are beyond the scope of my analysis in this article. However, a thorough analysis of those commitments is sorely needed.
17 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 23–69.
18 Sire, The Universe Next Door, 17.
19 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 20–21; See also Sire, The Universe Next Door, 20–21.
20 Albert M. Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview and its Relation to Philosophy,” in Marshall, Griffioen, and Mouw, Stained Glass, 14–25, at 15; Naugle, Worldview, 58–59; Sire, Naming the Elephant, 23.
21 Sire, Naming the Elephant; Sire, The Universe Next Door.
22 Naugle, Worldview.
23 Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview.”
24 For a sampling of this scholarship, see, for example, Kopf, Simon Maria, “A Problem for Dialogue: Can World-Views Be Rational?” New Blackfriars 100, no. 1087 (2019): 284–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vidal, Clément, “Metaphilosophical Criteria for Worldview Comparison,” Metaphilosophy 43, no. 3 (2012): 306–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Obasi, Ezemenari M., Flores, Lisa Y., and James-Myers, Linda, “Construction and Initial Validation of the Worldview Analysis Scale (WAS),” Journal of Black Studies 39, no. 6 (2009): 937–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duckitt, John and Fisher, Kirstin, “The Impact of Social Threat on Worldview and Ideological Attitudes,” Political Psychology 24, no. 1 (2003): 199–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geertz, Armin W., “Ethnohermeneutics and Worldview Analysis in the Study of Hopi Indian Religion,” Numen 50, no. 3 (2003): 309–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wicklund, Robert A., “Terror Management Accounts of Other Theories: Questions for the Cultural Worldview Concept,” Psychological Inquiry 8, no. 1 (1997): 54–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Naugle, Worldview, 59, citing Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment: Including the First Introduction, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 111–12.
26 Naugle, Worldview, 60, citing Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation, trans. Garrett Green (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 119.
27 Naugle, Worldview, 61; Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview,” 15.
28 Naugle, Worldview, 61–62; Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview,” 15.
29 Naugle, Worldview, 70–71, citing Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1952), 193, 221; Sire, Naming the Elephant, 24n3.
30 Naugle, Worldview, 60, citing Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 2nd ed. and trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 4, citing Friedrich Schelling, Schelling's Werk, ed. M. Schroter, vol. 1 (Munich: 1927), 237.
31 Naugle, Worldview, 82–83, citing Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, trans. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Fabbianelli Faustino, and Martin Bondeli (Basel: Schwabe, 2015), 8:99.
32 Naugle, Worldview, 83, quoting Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, 8:208–9; see also Sire, Naming the Elephant, 25–26.
33 Naugle, Worldview, 6–13; Sire Naming the Elephant, 32–33.
34 Naugle, Worldview, 7, quoting James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as Centring in the Incarnation (Edinburgh: Andrew Eliot, 1893), 3.
35 Naugle, Worldview, 8; Sire, Naming the Elephant, 32.
36 James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as Centring in the Incarnation, 9th ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908), 32–34.
37 Orr, 32–34.
38 See, for example, Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (New York: Continuum Books, 2014).
39 See, for example, Justin the Martyr, “First Apology” and “Second Apology,” in The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 1, ed. and trans. William A. Jurgens (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1970), 50–57.
40 See, for example, Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh, Demtrius B. Zema, Grace Monahan, and Daniel Honan, ed, Vernon J. Bourke (New York: Image, 1958).
41 See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vols. 1–5, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame: Christian Classics, 1981). For background on these and other classic works of Christian apologetics, see Avery Cardinal Dulles, A History of Apologetics, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005); William Edgar and K. Scott Oliphant, eds., Christian Apologetics Past and Present: A Primary Source Reader, vol. 1, To 1500 (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2009).
42 Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, 9.
43 Orr, 7.
44 Orr, 7–8.
45 Orr, 7–8.
46 Naugle, Worldview, 14, citing Gordon H. Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things: An Introduction to Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1951), 25, 34.
47 Naugle, Worldview, 14, citing Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things, 25, 34.
48 Naugle, 14, citing Clark, 25, 34.
49 Naugle, 15.
50 Naugle, 14–15.
51 Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview,” 18.
52 Wolters, 18–19.
53 Wolters, 19.
54 Naugle, Worldview, 77, quoting Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 1:13, 2:179–80.
55 Naugle, Worldview, 77, citing Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 51.
56 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 37.
57 Naugle, Worldview, 98–103, citing Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Will to Power,” trans. Anthony M. Ludovici, in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Oscar Levy, vol. 15, The Will to Power (Books III and IV) (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 13.
58 “Perspectivism” is the “philosophical position that one's access to the world through perception, experience, and reason is possible only through one's own perspective and interpretation. It rejects both the idea of a perspective-free [and] an interpretation-free objective reality.” “Perspectivism,” New World Encyclopedia, accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/perspectivism. There is also a related theological school of thought that goes by the slightly different label of “perspectivalism.” This school of thought asserts, “because we are not God, because we are finite, not infinite, we cannot know everything at a glance, and therefore our knowledge is limited to one perspective or another.” John M. Frame, “A Primer on Perspectivalism,” The Works of John Frame and Vern Poythress (website), June 4, 2012, https://frame-poythress.org/a-primer-on-perspectivalism/.
59 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 28; Naugle, Worldview, 102.
60 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 28, quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kauffmann (New York: Viking, 1954), 46–47.
61 Naugle, Worldview, 110–11, quoting Edmund Husserl, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Husserl: Shorter Works, ed. Peter McCormick and Frederick A. Elliston (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 168, 186–87.
62 Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: Routledge, 2013), 101–02, 161–62, 237–349.
63 Naugle, Worldview, 117–18, quoting Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 389–90. For a very thoughtful analysis of the relationship between phenomenology (especially Husserlian phenomenology) and the concept of worldview, see Arthur F. Holmes, “Phenomenology and the Relativity of World-Views,” The Personalist 48, no. 3 (1967), 328–44.
64 Naugle, Worldview, 133–39.
65 Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in Off the Beaten Track, ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 67.
66 Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” 67.
67 Heidegger, 67.
68 Heidegger, 67.
69 Heidegger, 68.
70 Naugle, Worldview, 135, quoting Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's “Being and Time” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 17.
71 Naugle, 136–37, quoting Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 5–6.
72 Naugle, 137.
73 Naugle, 137, quoting Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 6.
74 Naugle, 138, quoting Heidegger, 11.
75 Naugle, 152, quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1968), § 122.
76 Naugle, 152.
77 Naugle, 153–54.
78 Naugle, 155, quoting Henry LeRoy Finch, Wittgenstein: The Later Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1977), 90.
79 Naugle, 154.
80 Naugle, 154, quoting Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 19.
81 Naugle, 157–59, quoting Finch, Wittgenstein, 221–22, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), §§ 94, 143.
82 Naugle, 160, citing Wittgenstein, On Certainty, § 162.
83 Naugle, 60–61, citing Wittgenstein, On Certainty, § 262.
84 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2007), 146.
85 Taylor, A Secular Age, 146.
86 Taylor, 172.
87 Taylor, 171.
88 Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (New York: Doubleday, 1969), 34.
89 Berger, A Rumor of Angels, 34.
90 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1966); Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan, “The Interpretive Turn: Emergence of an Approach,” in Interpretive Social Science: A Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 1–21; Walter Truett Anderson, ed., The Truth about the Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1995); Charles Taylor, “The Dialogical Self,” in The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture, ed. David R. Hiley, James F. Bohman, and Richard Schusterman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 304–14.
91 Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview,” 14–25, 20–21; Naugle, Worldview, 16–25; Sire, Naming the Elephant, 33–34.
92 Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview,” 14–25, 20; Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism: Six Lectures from the Stone Foundation Lectures Delivered at Princeton University (Peabody: Hendrickson Publications, 2008), 4–27.
93 Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview,” 14–25, 20.
94 Naugle, Worldview, 23.
95 Naugle, 21; see also Abraham Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology, trans. J. Hendrik de Vries (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), 154.
96 Naugle, 24.
97 Naugle, 24. See also David Naugle, “Worldview: History, Theology, Implications,” in After Worldview: Christian Higher Education in Postmodern Worlds, ed. Matthew Bonzo and Michael Stevens (Sioux Center: Dordt College Press, 2009), 10–12.
98 Naugle, Worldview, 25; see also Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, trans. David H. Freeman and William S. Young, 4 vols. (Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 1984).
99 Naugle, 27–28, citing Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 1:61.
100 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 35; see also Naugle, Worldview, 27.
101 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 35; Naugle, Worldview, 28.
102 Naugle, “Worldview: History, Theology, Implications,” 12.
103 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 20–21; See also Sire, The Universe Next Door, 20–21.
104 Sire, The Universe Next Door, 23–44; Arthur Holmes, “Toward a Christian View of Things,” in The Making of a Christian Mind: A Christian World View and the Academic Enterprise, ed. Arthur Holmes (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 1–28, at 17–28.
105 Ken I. Kersch, Conservatives and the Constitution: Imagining Constitutional Restoration in the Heyday of American Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 259–77; Naugle, Worldview, 29–31. For a list of Schaeffer's most influential works translating the Christian worldview into principles for social, cultural, and political action, see, for example, Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?; Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1981); C. Everett Koop and Francis A. Schaeffer, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Westchester: Crossway Books, 1983); Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1968); Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent: Does It Make Sense to Believe in God? (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1972).
Some might argue that Francis Schaeffer's presuppositionalist theological logic places him more in line with Dutch Neo-Calvinism and thus more in line with the idea of worldview as lens instead of a tool. But Schaeffer actually claimed to walk a middle path between presuppositionalism and evidentialism. See, for example, Francis A. Schaeffer, “A Review of a Review,” The Bible Today 42, no. 1 (1948): 7–9 (accessed January 21, 2021 from the “Historical Documents in American Presbyterian History, PCA Historical Center, http://www.pcahistory.org/documents/schaefferreview.html). Schaeffer consistently argued that Christianity proposed a “credible answer to the deep dilemmas of modern secular life” precisely because Christianity was a “comprehensive system of . . . truth.” Naugle, Worldview, 30; see also Kersch, Conservatives and the Constitution, 272, quoting Francis A. Schaeffer, dir., How Should We Then Live? (Muskegon: Gospel Films, 1977), DVD (“Christians possess ‘a truth that gives us a unity of all knowledge, and of all of life. . . . People act upon on the basis of what they think. . . . The problem is having the right world view, acting upon it, the world view that gives men and women the truth of what is.”). Thus, while perhaps combining a little of both tool and lens, Schaeffer is more on the “tool” end of the spectrum than on the “lens” end.
106 Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, 19–143.
107 Schaeffer, 144–245.
108 Schaeffer, 246–54.
109 Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1999), v.
110 Colson and Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, 545–59.
111 Colson Center for Christian Worldview (website), accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.colsoncenter.org/#actual_chuck
112 Summit Ministries, “About,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.summit.org/about/.
113 Summit Ministries, “Statement of Faith and Convictions,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.summit.org/about/statement-of-faith/.
114 George, George, and Colson, “The Manhattan Declaration”; see also Summit Ministries, “Statement of Faith and Convictions”; see also the collection of articles by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, “Articles,” in the categories “Pro-Life,” “Marriage/Family,” and “Religious Liberty,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://breakpoint.org/articles/.
115 Virginia C. Armstrong and Michael Farris, The Christian World View of Law (Sunnyvale: Coalition on Revival, 1999), 7, http://theapologeticsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Christian_Worldview_Law.pdf
116 See, for example, Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 29; Colson and Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, 401–02. At least since the 1990s, this premise has been shared by Protestant and Catholic conservative activists, enabling much joint political and legal action. See, for example “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” First Things, https://www.firstthings.com/article/1994/05/evangelicals-catholics-together-the-christian-mission-in-the-third-millennium (“Together we contend for the truth that politics, law, and culture must be secured by moral truth.”). Nevertheless, there is historical and contemporary disagreement between Protestant and Catholic conservatives concerning issues such as the role of unaided human reason in accessing divine law and the authoritative status of unrevealed natural law versus revealed biblical truth. See, for example, Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live, 30–56; Schaeffer, Escape from Reason, 15–16; Kersch, Conservatives and the Constitution, 265n60; Jesse Covington, Bryan McGraw, and Micah Watson, eds., Natural Law and Evangelical Political Thought (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013); Rufus Black, “Is the New Natural Law Theory Christian?,” in The Revival of Natural Law: Philosophical, Theological, and Ethical Responses to the Finnis-Grisez School, ed. Nigel Biggar and Rufus Black (Burlington: Ashgate, 2000), 148; J. Daryl Charles, Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), 111.
117 Armstrong and Farris, The Christian World View of Law, 8; see also, Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 21–22.
118 Sire, The Universe Next Door.
119 Poplin, Is Reality Secular?
120 See, for example, Schaeffer, Escape from Reason, 17–25, 75–88; Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, 182–204.
121 Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, 205–45.
122 Colson and Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, 20–26.
123 Colson and Pearcey, 17.
124 Francis J. Beckwith, Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
125 Beckwith, Taking Rites Seriously, 81–136.
126 Beckwith, 139–209.
127 Armstrong and Farris, The Christian World View of Law, 8; see also, Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 21–22.
128 Armstrong and Farris, The Christian World View of Law, 8; see also, Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 21–22; Colson and Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, 20.
129 Biblical Worldview Institute, “About Us,” accessed March 19, 2020, http://biblicalworldviewinstitute.org/about-us.
130 Worldview Matters, “Our Mission, Strategy, and Values,” accessed March 19, 2020 , https://biblicalworldview.com/about.
131 The Gospel Coalition, “Worldview Basics,” accessed March 19,2020, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/course/worldview-basics/#course-introduction.
132 The Worldview Course, accessed March 19, 2020, https://worldviewcourse.com/outline.
133 The Worldview Course, “The PEERS Test,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://worldviewcourse.com/peers.
134 Worldview Course, “The PEERS Test.”
135 Colson Center for Christian Worldview, Colson Fellows, accessed March 19, 2020, https://colsonfellows.org/.
136 Summit Ministries, “Curriculum,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.summit.org/curriculum/.
137 Alliance Defending Freedom, “Areté Academy,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://adfinternational.org/training/arete-academy/.
138 Alliance Defending Freedom, “Areté Academy.”
139 John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, “Religious Freedom Cases Stacking Up,” Breakpoint (blog), October 2, 2017, https://www.breakpoint.org/breakpoint-religious-freedom-cases-stacking-up/.
140 Stonestreet and Rivera, “Religious Freedom Cases Stacking Up.”
141 Colson Center for Christian Worldview, “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion,” https://www.abhe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Preserve-Freedom-Reject-Coercion.pdf. See also Veronica Neffinger, “Evangelical Leaders Refuse to Compromise on LGBTQ Rights,” Christian Headlines: Hot Topics, January 12, 2017, https://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/evangelical-leaders-refuse-to-compromise-on-lgbt-rights.html.
142 Colson Center for Christian Worldview, “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion.”
143 Colson Center for Christian Worldview, “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion.”
144 Colson Center for Christian Worldview, “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion.”
145 Brown, Trumping Religion; Bennett, “The Rise of Christian Conservative Legal Organizations”; Hoover and den Dulk, “Conservative Christians Go to Court,” 9–34; den Dulk, “Purpose-Driven Lawyers,” 56–78; Bennett, Defending Faith.
146 Sekulow, “New Federal Court Case.” See also Bennett, Defending Faith, 22–23.
147 570 U.S. 693 (2013).
148 570 U.S. 744 (2013).
149 Brief for Liberty, Life, and Law Foundation as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondent, Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U.S. 693 (2013) (No. 12–144), 23–24 (emphasis supplied); Brief for Liberty, Life, and Law Foundation as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondent, United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013) (No. 12–307), 23–24. See also, Brief for National Association of Evangelicals et al. as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondent, United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013) (No. 12–307), 12–13 (‘By their nature, such policy questions cannot be definitively answered by science, professional opinion, or legal reasoning alone. . . . Why? In part, because such opinions are inherently tentative, especially in the social sciences where conclusions are often laden with values-based assumptions and there is no values-neutral position from which to weigh and judge what is best.’).
150 See, for example, Brief for International Conference of Evangelical Endorsers as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondents, Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) (No. 14–556), 19 (“The retaliation against evangelical chaplains noted above illustrates the reality of two theologies diametrically opposed to each other.”); Brief for Jason Feliciano and Seventeen Pastors as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) (No. 14–556), 2 (“The Christian definition of marriage is a much higher standard than the secular definition used by the state.”); Brief for Rev. John T. Rankin as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondents, Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) (No. 14–556), 17, n. 12 (“it is especially self-evident that no such religion, philosophy or culture outside the Bible even imagines the concept of unalienable rights”); Brief for Coalition of Black Pastors and Christian Leaders as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondents, Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) (No. 14–556), 23–24 (“Materialistic science cannot measure the non-material. It cannot define or select morality, values, or the necessary components of a ‘successful’ family, much less measure these factors.”).
151 Brief for Texas Values as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondent, Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) (No. 14–556), 5–6 (emphasis supplied).
152 573 U.S. 682 (2014).
153 Brief for National Religious Broadcasters as Amicus Curiae Supporting Non-Government Parties, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 573 U.S. 682 (2014) (No. 13–354), 15 (emphasis supplied).
154 Brief for Non-Government Parties, Burwell, 573 U.S. 682 (No. 13–354), 13–15.
155 Brief for Non-Government Parties, Burwell, 573 U.S. 682 (No. 13–354), 15.
156 Arlene's Flowers, Inc. v. Washington, 389 P.3d 543 (Wash. 2017), vacated, 138 S. Ct. 2671 (2018).
157 Brief for North Carolina Values Coalition and Family Research Council as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioners, Arlene's Flowers, Inc. v. Washington, 138 S.Ct. 2671 (2018) (No. 17–108), 1.
158 Brief for Petitioners, Arlene's Flowers, 138 S.Ct 2671 (No. 17–108), 2.
159 Brief for Petitioners, Arlene's Flowers, 138 S.Ct 2671 (No. 17–108), 20.
160 Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 140 S.Ct. 1731 (2020).
161 Brief for Council For Christian Colleges & Universities et al. as Amici Curiae Supporting Employers, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 140 S.Ct. 1731 (2020) (No. 17–1618), 4a, 9a, 12a, 9–20.
162 See, for example, Trevin Wax, “Should We Do Away with Talk of Worldview?” (blog post), The Gospel Coalition (website), October 9, 2018, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/away-talk-worldview/; Goheen and Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads, 19–23; James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009); Oliver O'Donovan, Ethics as Theology, vol. 2, Finding and Seeking (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014), 36, 110, 112, 137, 196; William V. Rowe, “Society after the Subject, Philosophy after the Worldview,” in Marshall, Griffioen, and Mouw, Stained Glass, 156–80; Sander Griffioen, “The Worldview Approach to Social Theory: Hazards and Benefits,” in Marshall, Griffioen, and Mouw, Stained Glass, 102–05; George N. Pierson, “Evangelicals and Worldview Confusion,” in Bonzo and Stevens, After Worldview, 29–41; Aron Reppmann, “Worldview: An Untimely Meditation,” in Bonzo and Stevens, After Worldview, 43–53; Calvin Seerveld, “The Damages of a Christian Worldview,” in Bonzo and Stevens, After Worldview, 55–80.
163 Gregory A. Clark, “The Nature of Conversion: How the Rhetoric of Worldview Philosophy Can Betray Evangelicals,” in The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals and Postliberals in Conversation, ed. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 201–18.
164 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “On Christian Learning,” in Marshall, Griffioen, and Mouw, Stained Glass, 56–80, at 65–68; Griffioen, “The Worldview Approach to Social Theory,” 81–118.
165 Pierson, “Evangelicals and Worldview Confusion”; Reppmann, “Worldview: An Untimely Meditation”; Seerveld, “The Damages of a Christian Worldview.”
166 Naugle, Worldview, 147.
167 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 37–42.
168 Sire, 41–42, citing Kraft, Worldview for Christian Witness, 12, 13, 23–27, 75–128, 167.
169 Olthius, On Worldviews, 29.
170 Olthius, 32 (my emphasis).
171 See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1927), 102–07.
172 Colson Center for Christian Worldview, “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion.”
173 Jason E. Whitehead, “City of God or City of Man? Elements of a Christian Conservative Legal Worldview,” Paper presented at the Annual Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society, London, England, March 2017, 18–21 (author's typescript); Jason E. Whitehead, “An Uncertain Trumpet? Examining Recent Christian Conservative Legal Arguments,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Diego, CA, April 2019, 13–18 (author's typescript).
174 Beckwith, Craig, and Moreland, To Everyone an Answer, 14–15.
175 Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 31.
176 Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, 51–52.
177 Andrew J. Hostetler and Gilbert H. Herdt, “Sexual Lifeways and Developmental Subjectivities: Rethinking Sexual Taxonomies,” Social Research 65, no. 2 (1998): 249–90, at 252.
178 Hostetler and Herdt, “Sexual Lifeways and Developmental Subjectivities,” 252.
179 Hostetler and Herdt, 252.
180 Hostetler and Herdt, 252–53.
181 Susan Burgess, “Queer (Theory) Eye for the Straight (Legal) Guy: Lawrence v. Texas’ Makeover of Bowers v. Hardwick,” Political Research Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2006): 401–14, at 403.
182 Burgess, “Queer (Theory) Eye for the Straight (Legal) Guy,” 403.
183 Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, 85; Burgess, “Queer (Theory) Eye for the Straight (Legal) Guy,” 403.
184 Burgess, “Queer (Theory) Eye for the Straight (Legal) Guy,” 403.
185 Burgess, 403.
186 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge Press, 1990), 43; Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, 81–86.
187 For more technical definitions of “essentialism,” see Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 268, discussing W. V. O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Philosophical Review 60, no. 1 (1951): 20–43 (defining an essentialist view as one that assumes or argues that we can “distinguish between what people are talking about and what people are saying about it by discovering the essence of the object being discussed”); Stanley Fish, “Anti-professionalism,” in Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), 215–46, at 221 (defining an “ideology of essences” as “a commitment to the centrality and ultimate availability of transcendent truths and values”). For a definition of “essentialism” in the context of sex or gender, see Juniper Russo, “Definition of Gender Essentialism,” The Queer Dictionary, accessed March 19, 2020, http://queerdictionary.blogspot.com/2014/09/definition-of-gender-essentialism.html (defining essentialism as the belief that sex and gender “roles and stereotypes are the natural result of biological or neurological differences between males and females”).
188 “Foundationalist” logic assumes or argues that “our justified beliefs are structured like a building: they are divided into a foundation and a superstructure, the latter resting upon the former. Beliefs belonging to the foundation are basic. Beliefs belonging to the superstructure are nonbasic and receive justification from the justified beliefs in the foundation.” Matthias Steup, “Epistemology,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2018), § 3.1, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/epistemology/. This logic flows from the “attempt to ground inquiry and communication in something more firm and stable than mere belief or unexamined practice,” such as an essentialist claim about human nature or sexuality. Stanley Fish, “Anti-foundationalism, Theory Hope, and the Teaching of Composition,” in Doing What Comes Naturally, 342–55, at 342. But even if one suspends judgment about such essential reality, they might still claim that “every belief occupies a place in a natural, transcultural, transhistorical, order of reasons—an order which eventually leads the inquirer back to one or another ‘ultimate source of evidence’ such as ‘scripture, tradition’ or ‘common sense.’” Richard Rorty, “Religious Faith, Intellectual Responsibility, and Romance,” in Philosophy and Social Hope (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 148–67, at 151, quoting Michael Williams, Unnatural Doubts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 116. In the case at hand, Christian conservatives are arguing that binary gender, heteronormativity, and other facts are basic, rooted in human nature and biology, for example, and that the law's treatment of gender and sexuality is only justified if it corresponds to, if it is built upon the foundation of, those basic facts.
189 Holmes, “Phenomenology and the Relativity of World-Views,” 335 (“[t]he irreducible fact of human subjectivity implies” that we are “inextricably involved in the values and purposes in terms of which” we interpret the world).
190 There is a related debate among philosophers concerning whether metaphysical worldviews can be rationally compared. See, for example, Kopf, “A Problem for Dialogue: Can World-Views Be Rational?”; Vidal, “Metaphilosophical Criteria for Worldview Comparison.” The particulars of that debate are beyond the scope of this present article. Suffice it to say here that I do not believe metaphysical worldviews are ipso facto irrational, and I do believe that they can be rationally compared so long as the standard of rationality used for the comparison is a non-foundationalist one along the lines of what I defend in the next section.
191 Pierson, “Evangelicals and Worldview Confusion”; Reppmann, “Worldview: An Untimely Meditation”; Seerveld, “The Damages of a Christian Worldview.”
192 A “personalist” approach is one that “regards or tends to regard the person as the ultimate explanatory, epistemological, ontological, and axiological principle of all reality.” Jan O. Bengtsson and Thomas D. Williams, “Personalism,” in Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/. For a discussion of my personalist approach to law and religion in a related context, see Jason E. Whitehead, “Faith, Reason, and Liberal Legal Neutrality,” Tulsa Law Review 53, no. 2 (2018): 375–93.
193 See Holmes, “Phenomenology and the Relativism of World-Views,” 342 (“philosophy is indeed a rational activity, but the point is that reason is personal activity, and the person is a social and historical individual”).
194 See Holmes, “Phenomenology and the Relativism of World-Views,” 335 (arguing that the nonexistence of an “Archimedian point” from which to “lever” ourselves into a “place of final certainty . . . does not deny all value” to investigation of our worldview but “simply means that its universal characteristics remain historical and that a phenomenology of the lived-world is inevitably an analysis of historical existence rather than of timeless essences”).
195 Anne Phillips, “Religion: Ally, Threat, or Just Religion?” in Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy, ed. Jean L. Cohen and Cécile Laborde (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 47–65, at 51.
196 Heidegger, Being and Time, 71.
197 Heidegger, 84–85.
198 Heidegger, 86–87.
199 R. D. Laing, The Divided Self (New York: Penguin Books, 1960), 21.
200 My reliance on narrative and storytelling is heavily indebted to Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of “narrative unity.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth Publishing, 1981), 208–17. An understanding of a human practice, he argued there, is “utterly doomed to failure” unless it takes into account the “intentions, beliefs, and settings” that give that practice its meaning. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 208. This is because “man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. . . . I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ . . . To be the subject of a narrative . . . is to be open to being asked to give a certain kind of account of what one did or what happened to one.” MacIntyre, After Virtue, 216–17.
201 Michael Jackson, The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression, and Intersubjectivity (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002), 35.
202 Nancy Levit, “Legal Storytelling: The Theory and the Practice,” Journal of the Legal Writing Institute 15 (2009): 259–83, at 262.
203 Kim Lane Scheppele, “Foreword: Telling Stories,” Michigan Law Review 87, no. 8 (1989): 2073–98, at 2079–80; See also, Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Law's Stories as Reality and Politics,” in Law's Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law, eds. Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
204 Kristin M. Langellier, “Personal Narratives: Perspectives on Theory and Research,” Text and Performance Quarterly 9, no. 4 (1989): 243–76; Elaine Lawless, Women Escaping Violence: Empowerment through Narrative (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001); Bernie D. Jones, “Critical Race Theory: New Strategies for Civil Rights in the New Millennium?” Harvard Blackletter Law Journal 18 (2002): 1–90, at 46–73. The power of these outsider narratives in a quasi-legal context has been realized and validated by the restorative justice movement composed of: nongovernmental organizations that collect stories of “arbitrary detention, forced labor, rape, torture, and cultural genocide;” the United Nations Commission of Experts, which collects stories to determine whether to set up international criminal tribunals; and Truth and Reconciliation commissions in places like South Africa, which have used storytelling as a way to heal a society and restore “a measure of ‘human justice’ that no court could ever impose.” Levit, “Legal Storytelling,” 264, citing Sharon A. Healey, “Prosecuting Rape under the Statute of the War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 21, no. 2 (1995): 327–83, at 328; Eric K. Yamamoto, Interracial Justice: Conflict and Reconciliation in Post-Civil Rights America (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 265–67; Richard Goldstone, “Historical Evolution—From Nuremburg to the International Criminal Court,” Penn State International Law Review 25, no. 4 (2007): 763–77, at 774; Patricia M. Wald, “International Criminal Courts—A Stormy Adolescence,” Virginia Journal of International Law 46, no. 2 (2006): 319–46, at 335; Ian Ward, “Narrative Jurisprudence and Trans-National Justice,” Texas Wesleyan Law Review 12, no. 1 (2005): 155–87, at 160.
205 See, for example, Eliza Gray, “Inside the Love Story That Changed the Gay Marriage Battle,” Time, June 26, 2015, https://time.com/3937733/supreme-court-gay-marriage-ruling-3/.
206 See, for example, Alliance Defending Freedom, “Stand with Jack Phillips,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.adflegal.org/stand-with-jack-phillips.
207 Outsider stories, such as LGBTQ stories, are often reacting to a hegemonic narrative that is related to the Christian conservative worldview. Christian conservatives, it could be argued, have traditionally been the insiders whose hegemonic worldview is shared “by lawmakers, judges, witnesses and juries,” while persons affected negatively by Christian conservative policies are the “outsiders” who need to use narrative praxis “to question the legitimacy of the prevailing truth.” Scheppele, “Telling Stories,” 2079–80. This has certainly been true for much of Western history and is still true in some parts of the United States. But the Christian conservative worldview has declining salience within contemporary American culture just as it does in other liberal democracies. See, for example, Phillips, “Religion: Ally, Threat, or Just Religion?,” 51, 61; Aurelia Bardon, “Religious Arguments and Public Justification,” in Cohen and Laborde, Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy, 273–92, at 283. This declining salience is illustrated well by the SOGI laws being passed in countless jurisdictions around the nation and by the number of Christian conservatives fined and otherwise punished under those laws. Human Rights Campaign, “Cities and Towns with Non-discrimination Ordinances That Include Gender Identity,” accessed March 19, 2020, http://www.hrc.org/resources/cities-and- counties-with-non-discrimination-ordinances-that-include-gender. At the very least, many Christian conservative leaders, activists, and ordinary people perceive that they are losing cultural ground. Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation; Esolen, Out of the Ashes; Reno, Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society; Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: New Press, 2016). Thus, while the Christian conservative and LGBTQ communities are by no means equally marginalized, they each have their own reasons for telling their personal stories in a way that attempts to resist what they perceive as a hegemonic master narrative arrayed against them.
208 Taylor, A Secular Age, 473–535; Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1992).
209 For examples of these dynamics in the literature on Evangelical conversion stories, see, for example, Klaver, Miranda, Roeland, Johan, Versteeg, Peter, Stoffels, Hijme, and Mulligen, Remco van, “God Changes People: Modes of Authentication in Evangelical Conversion Narratives,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 32, no. 2 (2017): 237–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Popp-Baier, Ulrike, “Narrating Embodied Aims: Self-Transformation in Conversion Narratives—A Psychological Analysis,” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 2, no. 3 (2001)Google Scholar, https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/911/1990; James S. Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals: Faith, Modernity, and the Desire for Authenticity (New York: NYU Press, 2011), 29; Harding, Susan F., “Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion,” American Ethnologist 14, no. 1 (1987): 167–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peter G. Stromberg, Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For examples of the same dynamics in the literature on coming-out stories, see, for example, Lovelock, Michael, “‘My Coming Out Story’: Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Youth Identities on YouTube,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 22, no. 1 (2019): 70–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kim, Alex, “Speaking ‘Out’: Ideologies, Identities, and Individuals in Coming Out Stories,” Intersections 10, no. 1 (2009): 239–78Google Scholar; Rossi, Nicole E., “‘Coming Out’ Stories of Gay and Lesbian Young Adults,” Journal of Homosexuality 57, no. 9 (2010): 1174–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manning, Jimmie, “Communicating Sexual Identities: A Typology of Coming Out,” Sexuality and Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 19, no. 1 (2015): 122–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
210 Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” New Yorker, February 25, 1967, 49–88, at 49, 54, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/02/25/truth-and-politics.
211 Beckwith, Francis J. and Moreland, J. P., “Series Preface: A Call to Integration and the Christian Integration Series,” in Beckwith, Francis J., Politics for Christians: Statecraft as Soulcraft (Downer's Grove: IVP Academic, 2010), 18Google Scholar.
212 Beckwith and Moreland, “Series Preface,” 21.
213 Naugle, Worldview, 106.
214 Naugle, Worldview, 106.
215 Naugle, 258.
216 Sire, Naming the Elephant, 140.
217 Sire, 140.
218 Sire, 47–48.
219 Wolters, “On the Idea of Worldview,” 23.
220 John Stonestreet, “How Relativism is Destroying the Christian Worldview,” Christian Headlines: Breakpoint, July 28, 2015, https://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/breakpoint/how-relativism-is-destroying-the-christian-worldview.html.
221 Beckwith, Francis J. and Koukl, Gregory, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-air (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998)Google Scholar.
222 Freddy Davis, “The Christian Worldview Basis for the Rule of Law,” Marketfaith Ministries (website), 2014, http://www.marketfaith.org/the-christian-worldview-basis-for-the-rule-of-law/.
223 See Berger, A Rumor of Angels, 44–53.
224 Berger, 44–45.
225 Berger, 46.
226 See Berger, 46; Whitehead, “Faith, Reason, and Liberal Legal Neutrality,” 389.
227 Berger, A Rumor of Angels, 46.
228 Berger, 47; Whitehead, “Faith, Reason, and Liberal Legal Neutrality,” 390.
229 Berger, A Rumor of Angels, 47; Whitehead, “Faith, Reason, and Liberal Legal Neutrality,” 390.
230 Naugle, Worldview, 77, citing Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 51; see also Heidegger, Being and Time, 384.
231 Rorty, Richard, “Faith, Responsibility, and Romance,” in The Cambridge Companion to William James, ed. Putnam, Ruth Anna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 84–102Google Scholar, at 96.
232 Stanley Fish, “Change,” in Doing What Comes Naturally, 141–60, at 152. See also, Fish, Stanley, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 338–55, 365–69Google Scholar; Fish, Stanley, “Almost Pragmatism: The Jurisprudence of Richard Posner, Richard Rorty, and Ronald Dworkin,” in Pragmatism in Law and Society, ed. Brint, Michael and Weaver, William (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 47–81Google Scholar.
233 Blaise Pascal, The Thoughts of Pascal, trans. C. Kegan Paul (London: George Bell and Sons, 1889), 306.
234 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 349.
235 Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil, 351.
236 Ricoeur, 351.
237 Ricoeur, 351.
238 Linards Jansons, “What is the Second Naiveté? Engaging with Paul Ricoeur, Post-Critical Theology, and Progressive Christianity,” Presentation at Australian Lutheran College, October 30, 2014, 14n3 (copy in author's possession).
239 See, for example, Perry, Michael J., The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1–57Google Scholar; Maritain, Jacques, Christianity and Democracy and the Rights of Man and the Natural Law, trans. Anson, Doris C. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 65–138Google Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, Time of Transitions, ed. and trans. Cronin, Ciaran and Pensky, Max (Malden: Polity Press, 2006), 150–51Google Scholar.
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