Category: Miles Smith

Musings on history, politics, religion, and all the other things we take too seriously in the 21st Century.

Miles Smith — June 10, 2026

A Response to PCA’s CN Study Committee

The Presbyterian Church in America’s Christian Nationalism committee has released a partial report. It is a momentous piece of writing. It is to my knowledge the only report like it…

E.B Pusey and Conscience as the Court of God

Miles Smith — June 1, 2026

E.B Pusey and Conscience as the Court of God

Rev. Dr. James Anderson, Carl W. McMurray Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary Charlotte, posted a helpful engagement at the intersection of Christianity and natural rights on…

The Pope, the President, and the Protestants

Miles Smith — April 20, 2026

The Pope, the President, and the Protestants

The Middle Ages are back in style. Pope Leo XIV and the Trump administration are dueling over political theology. Jest as we might, the war of words in the media…

The Iran War Among the Magisterial Protestants

Miles Smith — April 6, 2026

The Iran War Among the Magisterial Protestants

At The Telegraph this week, Tim Stanley, an Evangelical Baptist turned atheist turned Anglican turned Roman Catholic, posits that President Donald Trump’s Iran War is being pursued at the behest…

Nations as Brotherhood: Mazzini, Protestants and Christian Unity

Miles Smith — March 26, 2026

Nations as Brotherhood: Mazzini, Protestants and Christian Unity

Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini was in many ways the father of modern nationalism. It may surprise 21st-century readers accustomed to thinking of nationalism as a right-wing phenomenon to discover that…

Disestablished Dominion: A Rejoinder to Alan Strange and James Baird

Miles Smith — February 12, 2026

Disestablished Dominion: A Rejoinder to Alan Strange and James Baird

What did the Presbyterians who met in 1788 intend regarding political theology? If the amended Confession did fundamentally change the church’s ostensible relationship to the state, did even a conception…

Evangelicals and Liberalism: A Love Story That Never Happened

Miles Smith — February 4, 2026

Evangelicals and Liberalism: A Love Story That Never Happened

In 2008, James Wellman, a historian at the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, published Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific…

The Scandal of Evangelical Political Theology

Miles Smith — January 30, 2026

The Scandal of Evangelical Political Theology

The late Rev. Dr. Richard Turnbull wrote in 2022 that it was a mistake to think that political theology was an afterthought in John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.…

Open Doors or Moral Example? The Forgotten Protestant Argument Against Intervention and Mass Immigration

Miles Smith — January 14, 2026

Open Doors or Moral Example? The Forgotten Protestant Argument Against Intervention and Mass Immigration

In the reactionary aftermath of the great liberal revolutions that rocked Europe in 1848–49, liberal heroes, or heroes who were at least perceived to be liberal by the Anglo-American press,…

Does the US Military do the Work of Heaven? Augustine, Earthly Peace, and the Birth of Christian Power

Miles Smith — December 16, 2025

Does the US Military do the Work of Heaven? Augustine, Earthly Peace, and the Birth of Christian Power

Christianity informs the peace of earth organized and implemented by the American military abroad and domestically, and American soldiers implement that same peace