Christians & Global Politics with Robert Joustra

Christians have done plenty of thinking about faith and domestic politics — poverty, abortion, local justice. But almost no one has systematically asked what it looks like to follow Jesus in international relations. Robert Joustra, author of Christ and Covenant in Global Politics: A Christian Introduction to International Relations, joins Brian From to fill that gap. He tackles America First nationalism head-on, arguing that loving one's country is genuinely biblical — fifth commandment stuff — but that ordered love is very different from whitewashed love or willful blindness. He applies the just war tradition to the war in Iran, making the case that all war properly conceived is a form of neighbor love aimed at reconciliation. And he closes with a biographical story about his Dutch father, born under Nazi occupation in 1943, who got his first taste of chocolate from a Canadian soldier — a picture of what war at its most just can look like. A timely, unusual, and genuinely illuminating conversation for anyone trying to think Christianly about a complicated world. Robert is joining the faculty at Calvin University in Michigan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.