Power Politics and Moral Order: Three Generations of Christian Realism--A Reader - Paperback

by Eric D. Patterson (Editor), Robert J. Joustra (Editor)

Christian realism is undergoing a renaissance in both American Christianity and around the world. Caught between globalist liberalism, on the one hand, and pragmatic realism on the other, Christians are in search of international ethics, a standard and tradition in foreign policy, that takes the two great books of life, the Christian Scriptures and the world we live in, seriously. This book is an extended, edited collection that mines the tradition of Christian realism in international relations and finds in it voices and mentors urgently fresh for a new age. With classic authors like Reinhold Niebuhr, Herbert Butterfield, Paul Ramsey, and Jean Bethke Elshtain, and contemporaries like Marc LiVecche, Rebecca Heinrichs, and others, this collection offers for the first time an organization, periodization, and collection of primary Christian realist sources for the initiate and the expert in foreign relations.

Author Biography

Eric D. Patterson is executive vice president of the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington, DC, scholar-at-large at Regent University (USA), and a fellow of Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He has written or edited fifteen books, including Christianity and Power Politics Today (2008), The Christian Realists (2003), and Just American Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in U.S. Military History (2018).



Robert J. Joustra is Associate Professor of Politics & International Studies, and founding-Director of the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University. He is author, co-author, and co-editor of seven books, including Modern Papal Diplomacy and Social Teaching in World Affairs (2019) and more recently Calvinism for a Secular Age (2022).