I can always rely on Davey Henreckson at Theopolitical to post some great links, a blogosphere digest of sorts, and his recent post was no disappointment.  They were all interesting, but two in particular caught my eye.  On one, a little essay called “Love and Justice in Politics,” I have no comment, save to say: read it–it’s excellent and fascinating.  

Another, discussing the lates brouhaha over The King’s College’s, caught my interest even more.  The King’s College, an avowedly evangelical institution, turned heads and invited wide criticism among evangelicals for its recent appointment of Roman Catholic Dinesh D’Souza as their new President.  Of course, not being a Catholic hater myself, the idea of an evangelical college appointing a Catholic president doesn’t trouble me that much, and shouldn’t trouble most people given that D’Souza isn’t a very Catholic Catholic–heck, according to the article in Christianity Today, he attends a non-denominational church.  So, when Carl Trueman gets on his high horse about it, I would normally do little more than yawn.  However, Trueman made some very trenchant remarks that echoed my own initial reaction.  

According to Christianity Today,

“Trueman questioned whether D’Souza’s appointment meant that his commitment to conservative economic and social policies is the really important worldview at King’s, while disagreements over papal authority and justification are ‘mere sideshows.’ ‘If so, we can see this appointment as a certain strand of evangelicalism definitively coming clean: it is not the theological issues listed above that are considered critical; it is rather the conservative political and social vision of thinkers such as Marvin Olasky.'”

(Olasky, of course, is the provost at The King’s College.)

Trueman, I think, has hit the nail on the head.  D’Souza, of course, is one of the most outspoken representatives of the kind of right wing American Christianity that spends much more of its time (or at least, more of its radio airtime) bowing down to the gods of American liberty and capitalism than it does to the God of the Bible, and Olasky is another.  Their fundamental faith in right-wing politics and economics is a powerful enough glue to overcome any theological barriers.  This appointment will likely be taken by dissidents at TKC as a strong and demoralizing sign that the College leadership wants to continue to steer the college toward a right-wing political and economic agenda, a trajectory they made very clear last spring in their vehement opposition to visiting speaker Stanley Hauerwas.  For more about that brouhaha, see here.