Brad Littlejohn

Fellow

Brad Littlejohn, Ph.D., is a Fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping public leaders understand the intellectual and historical foundations of our current breakdown of public trust, social cohesion, and sound governance. His research investigates shifting understandings of the nature of freedom and authority, and how a more full-orbed conception of freedom, rooted in the Christian tradition, can inform policy that respects both the dignity of the individual and the urgency of the common good. He also serves as President of the Davenant Institute.

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Brad Littlejohn, Ph.D., is a Fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping public leaders understand the intellectual and historical foundations of our current breakdown of public trust, social cohesion, and sound governance. His research investigates shifting understandings of the nature of freedom and authority, and how a more full-orbed conception of freedom, rooted in the Christian tradition, can inform policy that respects both the dignity of the individual and the urgency of the common good. He also serves as President of the Davenant Institute.

A scholar and writer in the fields of Christian ethics, historical theology, and conservative political thought, he earned his PhD in Theological Ethics at the University of Edinburgh in 2014, where he studied the relationship of freedom and authority in the English Reformation. He is the author of The Peril and Promise of Christian Liberty and The Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed, among other books, as well as numerous peer-reviewed and popular-level articles and book chapters on topics ranging from freedom of conscience to the nature of property rights to the moral architecture of digital technology.

In 2013 he founded the Davenant Institute, an organization dedicated to retrieving and renewing the Protestant theological and ethical tradition, and frequently writes, speaks, and teaches for their publications, conferences, and courses. He has also taught at Moody Bible Institute and Patrick Henry College, and served as Headmaster of Loudoun Classical School.

Most recently, he worked as a Senior Fellow of the Edmund Burke Foundation as lead author on multi-year project entitled “Foundations of Liberty: Rediscovering the Anglo-American Conservative Tradition.” His essays arising out of this research have appeared in journals such as National Affairs, American Affairs, The American Conservative, First Things, and Modern Age.

He is also a weekly Opinion Contributor at WORLD Magazine, and publishes regularly on questions of Christian ethics and political theology for outlets such as The Gospel Coalition, American Reformer, Desiring God, and Mere Orthodoxy.

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A simple matter of math turns out to be a call for courage

Brad Littlejohn

Europe’s looming pension crisis is a warning to the United States

Articles

WORLD Opinions / May 22, 2023

Reparations and reality

Brad Littlejohn

Political institutions just aren’t equipped to right every historical wrong

Articles

WORLD Opinions / May 16, 2023

Let’s put AI on pause

Brad Littlejohn

We aren’t prepared to unleash this powerful technology

Articles

WORLD Opinion / May 10, 2023

Who is really winning the culture war?

Brad Littlejohn

The contest of “rights” reveals a major worldview conflict

Articles

WORLD Opinions / May 3, 2023

Don’t scapegoat the tax collectors

Brad Littlejohn

Defunding the IRS should not be a shibboleth on the right

Articles

WORLD Opinions / April 18, 2023

What is the realistic plan in Ukraine?

Brad Littlejohn

Just war principles do not endorse the funding of perpetual armed conflict

Articles

WORLD Opinions / April 13, 2023

The Case for Christian Nationalism

Brad Littlejohn

Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism presents a paradox for any reviewer, defying the genre boundaries that usually quarantine works of academic history or theory from the hurly-burly of popular politics.

Articles

The Gospel Coalition / April 1, 2023

An app for destruction

Brad Littlejohn

Government exists to protect society from entities like TikTok

Articles

WORLD Opinions / March 24, 2023

Taking the Founders at Their Word

Brad Littlejohn

The Founders were learned men. They knew what they were doing, and their education and writings illumine this fact.

Articles

First Things / March 20, 2023

When basic respect disappears

Brad Littlejohn

The intolerance of the liberal campus

Articles

WORLD Opinions / March 14, 2023

“He Gets Us” as cultural barometer

Brad Littlejohn

Unhinged responses to a gentle ad campaign indicate hostility to Christianity

Articles

WORLD Opinions / March 1, 2023

America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding: A Review

Brad Littlejohn

Brad Littlejohn reviews Robert Reilly’s bizarre case for the influence of Roman Catholicism upon the American founding.

Articles

Ad Fontes Journal / February 23, 2023