But all too often he makes judgments based on highly disputable claims, like his identification of the profit motive with greed… He also bypasses substantive biblical arguments that support the American political tradition and instead directs the reader’s attention to the apparent relativity of shifting historical positions.

Despite all the talk about the conservative evangelical political consensus breaking up, Bible-believing Christians are still lodged in the Republican camp. Occasionally they become suspicious that maybe they are being catechized without realizing it by Fox News and Rupert Murdoch instead of by the Bible. So they look around for something to challenge their political assumptions.

Lisa Sharon Harper, my co-author in our forthcoming book, Left, Right, and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics (Russell Media), argued in an earlier book that an evangelical faith does not entail being either Republican or Democrat. But the position she articulates there would challenge the Democratic Party only by pulling it leftward.

There are first principles that govern political life, and thus a logic to the policies that political parties advocate. So it is not surprising that Harper is writing starkly opposite me in Left, Right, and Christ.

Carl Trueman attempts to help the politically self-critical in Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative. He claims that when Christians support the entire platform of a party that is not committed to Christ, they are inevitably drawn into taking un-Christian positions and confuse the wisdom of men with the teachings of God. Point well taken. People who are concerned to live consistently for Christ will subject broad political theories as well as specific policy positions to the biblical test.

But anyone who looks to this book in search of, for example, a position on healthcare will find no guidance. That’s not Trueman’s purpose for the book. It is cautionary and critical, not prescriptive. Trueman, a professor of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary who brings a British perspective to American politics, wants to challenge Christians not to be led by the political passions of the day: “[T]he politics of nations and the destiny of God’s people, the church, must never be identified.” This is a welcome reminder.

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