James Davison Hunter is one of those rare scholarly giants who is also a Christian but who does not specialize in theology or biblical studies (Hunter and the late, great Timothy Keller were both members of the "Dogwood Fellowship," a select group of Christian clergy, academics and businessmen who read landmark books by the likes of Robert Bellah, Charles Taylor, etc...). Hunter coined the term "culture wars" (which is also the title of his most famous book) and he has written perceptively about the USA's evolving sociocultural landscape, including in 'Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis.'

In this book, he looks further back than he has before, chronicling how from its founding and throughout its history, the USA was marked by a "hybrid-Enlightenment" that mixed reason, pragmatism, and democracy alongside enduring qualities derived from (largely Protestant) Christianity. America's aspiration to be a diverse nation (exemplified in the motto "E pluribus unum) has largely been just that - aspirational - because throughout its history the USA has marginalized Native Americans, blacks, women, and sexual minorities. But in recent decades this hybrid-Enlightenment has been dissolving, so much so that Americans with vastly different beliefs are finding it increasingly impossible to come together to dialogue around contentious political, moral, and cultural issues.

As Hunter journeys from America's founding to the early twenty-first century he draws upon key figures who articulated public philosophies and shaped the culture around them, such as Lyman Beecher, Phoebe Palmer, Frederick Douglass, John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Rorty, Richard John Neuhaus, Cass Sunstein, Adrian Vermeule, Chantal Mouffe, and others.

This tome offers an abundance of insights and its difficult in a review to capture all of them. Hunter's coverage of American politics in the early twenty-first century, specifically the Trump era, is quite cogent (though as Rod Dreher commented somewhere on Twitter, Hunter is soft on the media; the pundits today who look back fondly on Mitt Romney and John McCain as genial conservative standard-bearers excoriated them in their heydays). Hunter points out that part of the working class' shift to the populist right is due to the fact that the Democrats' base has also changed from organized labour to college/university-educated upper classes who imbibe left-wing tenets from liberal academia; a working-class Italian Catholic teamster in Boston no doubt sees the world in very different ways from a secular non-binary gender studies major at Berkeley.

Anything James Davison Hunter writes is worth reading but 'Democracy and Solidarity' really seems like a capstone to a "trilogy" that began with 'Culture Wars' in 1991 and which continued with 'To Change the World' in 2010, especially for Christian audiences. This book will be one to study and engage with as America slouches towards yet other divisive election and an uncertain political future.

It's increasingly common to come across evangelicals who've convert to Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism (some might even be part of one of your favourite bands or a classmate). Many have conducted rigorous and prayerful investigations into the depths of the Christian tradition and have become convicted and convinced that they must leave behind their Protestantism. Testimonies of these intra-Christian conversions abound on Twitter and the blogosphere. Family, friends, and fellow churchgoers may express concern that a loved one or congregant is leaving Methodism or Pentecostalism to swim the Bosporus or the Tiber but the former are often ill-equipped to grapple with church history and arguments based upon tradition and doctrinal development. For evangelical Protestants, the Bible alone is the only infallible authority but this reverence for Scripture has often led to an almost total neglect of other areas of theological authority.

Last year I came across Gavin Ortlund's video ministry. I was impressed with his well-produced videos where he charitably and constructively engaged in intra-Christian apologetics representing a Protestant perspective. I listened to several of his debates and dialogues with apologists of other streams of Christianity such as Trent Horn. Here was an evangelical Protestant who closely examined biblical exegesis, tradition, and church history and could cite church fathers back at detractors of Protestantism. When I learned Gavin was going to be releasing a book that resembled a lot of the content on his TruthUnites channel it became one of my most-anticipated books of the year and it did not disappoint.

'What It Means to be Protestant' is an excellent introduction to what divides Protestantism from Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Gavin generally builds his arguments based upon the insights of the magisterial Reformation (Luther, Calvin, and John Jewel are cited but the Anabaptists and pentecostals do not make much of an appearance if at all). He also specifically draws inspiration from the Mercersburg theology (he makes the astute observation that it was highly ironic for John Henry Newman to quip that "to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant" when his contemporary across the Atlantic in America, Philip Schaff, was working on the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collection).

Gavin presents some fairly typical Protestant apologetics such as the scandals and corruptions endemic in the medieval Church and arguments against the papacy alongside a positive championing of "sola Scriptura." One of Gavin's key arguments for Protestantism is that it is the most irenic of the major streams of Christianity. For instance, he conducts two case studies (the Assumption of Mary for Catholicism and the veneration of icons for Orthodoxy) and not only demonstrates how these are later accretions to tradition but also critiques Rome and the East for condemning those who reject these doctrines and practices. Gavin builds his cases based upon recent scholarship (such as Stephen J. Shoemaker's work on the Virgin Mary) as well as on the teachings of the church fathers (who, it turns out, often vigorously disagreed with each other and even contradicted themselves as their thought evolved).

Not that I expect an Orthodox or Catholic Christian to convert to Presbyterianism or Methodism by reading this book but I was surprised that all of the endorsements in the book seemingly come from Protestants; surely an irenic Catholic scholar could have been solicited for a blurb? As well, as I mentioned, this is an introductory book for a wide audience; it is not Stanley Hauerwas and Matthew Levering slugging out esoteric tenets). Still, I think any Christian reader will benefit from this book though I also suspect most of its readership will the "very online" Christian who inhabits Twitter and YouTube. Gavin is irenic and pastoral, cautioning readers to avoid triumphalism, to listen to the best of both sides (i.e. don't let Mark Driscoll and Eric Metaxas represent evangelical Protestantism on the one side and Henri de Lubac and Pope John Paul II represent Rome on the other side) and to deeply and prayerfully reflect if they feel called to change churches.

When I first started reading Christian books in earnest in 2010, apologetics was focused on answering the objections of skeptics including the "four horsemen" of the New Atheism. Can we trust the Bible? Can we believe in the Virgin birth? In more recent years there has been an increase in intra-Christian apologetics, especially among those who are "very online." Christians don't argue over whether we can trust the Bible but rather whether we can rely on Scripture without tradition. Christians don't doubt the Virgin birth but rather whether Mary was a perpetual virgin. Rejecting the polemical approaches of some zealous Catholics (and there are parallel examples of these among Protestants and Orthodox), the prolific theologian Matthew Levering shares the compelling reasons why he was drawn to Roman Catholicism.

To list all of Levering's reasons would be to give away his personal story and besides that, a testimony is not a genre of writing that can really be critiqued. In His amazing grace God calls us to Himself through an array of means and paths. One of Levering's early motivations for seeking God was "fear of death" (p. 21) which I resonated with, as well as how much reading played a role in his conversion - "Take up and read!" (p. 25, 40). I found Levering's "methodology" of presenting his arguments to be very, well, Catholic as page after page he offers up moving insights not only from "the usual suspects" like St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Teresa of Avila but also less-heralded figures such as Ephrem the Syrian, Gertrude the Great of Helfta, and Alfred Delp. He also shares about his experiences and friendships with non-Catholic Christians including Stanley Hauerwas, Hans Boersma, and John Behr.

Given that this book is barely past 150 pages, naturally it isn't an extensive defence of Roman Catholic distinctives, though topics like the papacy and Mary are certainly addressed. Readers wanting more substantial arguments for Roman Catholic distinctives would do well to read Levering's other titles such as Mary’s Bodily Assumption and Christ and the Catholic Priesthood: Ecclesial Hierarchy and the Pattern of the Trinity.

In Why I Am Roman Catholic, Levering models principled irenicism that I hope the other authors in this series emulate - and that all Christians should strive for! Personally, while the cursory cases for Catholic doctrines did little to stir up doubts about my Protestant convictions, Levering's mining of rich reflections from the Catholic tradition drew me into greater awe and admiration for Our Lord.