Jonathan Leeman

In summer 2021 I prepared a talk for the young adults in my church on resources that have helped me make sense of our pagan culture. I recently updated that for the Spring 2022 issue of CBMW’s journal Eikon:

Andrew David Naselli. “Ten Resources That Have Helped Me Make Sense of Our Current Culture and How Christians Are Responding to It.” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 4.1 (2022): 116–41.

PDF | web version

These are the ten resources I commend and annotate (the first five are by non-Christians):

1. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure (New York: Penguin, 2018).

I recently teamed up with my friend Jonathan Leeman to write both a book and an article on politics, conscience, and the church:

New Book (Crossway)

Leeman, Jonathan, and Andrew David Naselli. How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics? 9Marks: Church Questions. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020. (63 pp.)

[Update on 9/2/2020: The book is available for free as an audiobook.]

New Article (Themelios)

Leeman, Jonathan, and Andrew David Naselli. “Politics, Conscience, and the Church: Why Christians Passionately Disagree with One Another over Politics, Why They Must Agree to Disagree over Jagged-Line Political Issues, and How.” Themelios 45 (2020): 13–31. (PDF | Web Version)

Here’s the abstract:

Today many evangelical churches feel political tension. We recommend a way forward by answering three questions:

(1) Why do Christians passionately disagree with one another over politics? We give two reasons: (a) Christians passionately care about justice and believe that their political convictions promote justice, and (b) Christians have different degrees of wisdom for making political judgments and tend to believe that they have more wisdom than those who differ.

(2) Why must Christians agree to disagree over jagged-line political issues? After explaining straight-line vs. jagged-line political issues, we give two reasons: (a) Christians must respect fellow Christians who have differently calibrated consciences on jagged-line issues, and (b) insisting that Christians agree on jagged-line issues misrepresents Christ to non-Christians.

(3) How must Christians who disagree over jagged-line political issues agree to disagree? We explain three ways: (a) acknowledge leeway on jagged-line political issues; (b) unite to accomplish the mission Christ gave the church; and (c) prioritize loving others over convincing them that your convictions about jagged-line political issues are right.

How the Book and Article Compare

The message is basically the same in the book and article, but we target different audiences. In the little book we target laypeople, and in the more academic article, we target church leaders. (The book contains no footnotes.)

3 Recent Presentations

I recently presented the gist of our work in three settings:

1. Bob Jones University Seminary (November 12, 2019)

I addressed this topic for the annual Stewart Custer Lecture Series: Part 1 | Part 2.

Sam Horn interviewed me about it (5.5 minutes):

2. Bethlehem College & Seminary Chapel (February 12, 2020)

3. Thabiti Anyabwile’s Just Gospel Conference in Alexandria, Virginia (March 6, 2020)

In the final video above, Thabiti’s introduction starts about 7 minutes in. About 49 minutes in (at the end of my talk), Thabiti joins me on stage for about 11 minutes to dialogue. He is a gracious man.

I spoke on Day 2 of 3 at the Just Gospel Conference. On Day 1 and at the beginning of Day 2, I got the sense that many of the Christians attending this conference were more left-leaning politically than I am. Rather than mask any differences or throw out red meat, I decided to try to love my brothers and sisters by uncomfortably addressing a controversial topic—political parties in America—in order to encourage some hard conversations. The controversial content I added is not in the book or article. It illustrates how I am wrestling with political issues in my American context this election season. Here’s that section from my manuscript: [Read more…] about Politics, Conscience, and the Church