Politics

These reflections concern Carl Trueman’s Republocrat, Chapter 1. (For notes on the foreword and introduction, see A Serialized Review). Two questions were on my mind as I approached Chapter 1: (a) Is Trueman really a political liberal? (b) Does he accurately understand the conservatism he left behind?

Two themes comprise Chapter 1. Theme 1 is expressed in the chapter title, “Left Behind”: how those of “Old Left” (Trueman’s term) political views are now homeless because liberalism has been “hijacked by special interest groups” (p. 14). Theme 2 makes the first interesting: how Left thought about oppression developed from the 19th century to the present.

The chapter is divided into eight sections.

• (Introductory paragraphs, p.1-2)
• A Brief History of the Old Left (p. 2-5)
• The Strange Love Affair of the Intelligentsia with Marxism (p. 5-6)
• Success and Failure: the Road to Redefinition (p. 6-8)
• Mr. Marx Meets Dr. Freud: the Changing Face of Oppression (p. 9-11)
• How Authenticity Made the Left Inauthentic (p. 11-15)
• Evangelicals and the New Left (p. 15-17)
• Conclusion (p. 17-19)

[amazon 1596381833 thumbnail] The name “Carl Trueman” didn’t mean a whole lot to me until recently. For some time, the name popped up often in blog-post links folks would email me. Sometimes something at the “Reformation 21” blog would catch my eye and turn out to be Trueman’s work.

Then a few months ago he began to really get my attention—in his response to the Elephant Room 2 confusion as well as subsequent insightful evaluations of the state of evangelicalism in general.