Assessing the Augustinian Democrats

Abstract

In this essay I argue that Christian political participation as envisioned by those I term “Augustinian democrats”—a group of Protestant ethicists following a path cleared by Jeffrey Stout’s 2004 Democracy and Tradition—is founded upon an elegantly rendered political ontology, but leaves incomplete a description of the practical task and place of the church. My contention is that this incompletely developed practical task is not accidental to the manner in which these Augustinians complete the speculative, ontological task. The completion of the speculative task combined with the incompletion of the practical task, I conclude, nevertheless results in a hybrid and especially interesting picture of personhood that points to an understanding of Protestantism as the attempt to recover human individuality within Christianity.

On the Structure and Significance of Augustine’s Moral Grammar

“…Education separates itself out from mediation. The pattern is not unique to Gregory: Jonathan Tran has recently identified a new wave of “Augustinian democrats” who wish to develop positive accounts of Christian involvement in the political sphere, but who seem unsure how to fit conceptions of mediation within this project (Tran 2018). The result is moral grammars that are closer to Locke than to Augustine in downplaying dependence and mediation.…”

Liberating Discernment: Language, Concreteness, and Naming Divine Activity in History

“…For a qualified re-iteration of the critique of political messianism in the context of black abolitionism, see(Glaude 2000, pp. 144-59).15 Consult(Tran 2018) for an assessment of how other established trends in contemporary theology similarly strand the task of concretization. For an example of such an ontology in the discourse of political theology, see the constructive account of divine presence without identity in(Smith 2014, esp.…”