Hopeful Realism

A Conversation with Micah Watson on Evangelical Natural Law & Democratic Politics

“Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbour, does not yet understand them as he ought.”

(Augustine of Hippo)

Q. Micah, thank you for taking some time this winter break to talk to me about your brand-new book, Hopeful Realism: Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics (IVP 2025). (Shout out to co-authors Jesse Covington and Bryan T. McGraw as well). I want to begin by asking what was the underlying reasons for writing this book?

A. Thanks for doing this, Anton, it’s an honor. We’re grateful for the faithful work of Christian Legal Society.

We wrote this book because the three of us, independently and then together, were increasingly convinced of a couple things. First, that evangelicals rightly understand that our faith has implications for the public square, and thus faithfulness as citizens of the kingdom of God includes thinking about and living out our roles as citizens in earthly kingdoms. And second, that we have at best a rather uneven record of doing this (putting it very mildly!). We saw these two things in our students, in our churches, and frankly in ourselves. Given we’re in the education business, and professors write books from time to time, we thought we were called to do our part, even if modest, to help equip the church to think and act better about politics.

Q. The framing of the book is focused on “hope” and “realism.” How do these two terms relate to one another and serve to advance your project?

A. Martin Luther is said to have described human beings as a drunk who falls off of a horse on one side and promptly gets back in the saddle only to fall off the other. Whether we like that image, or Aristotle’s golden mean, or Goldilocks and the bears, we do seem to fall into one error given our fear of falling into the opposite error, and so the hopeful realism moniker is our attempt to stay in the saddle without falling into the two of the most common errors that beset Christians thinking about politics. One error is to think we can help God bring about heaven on earth on the political level, and the other error is to withdraw from the political realm entirely. We are “realist” in the sense that we agree with Augustine and Calvin and a host of others about the pervasive stubbornness of sin. We do not think that on this side of heaven that we can wield political tools to bring about the lasting peace and justice that we long for. Even if we could come up with the perfect blueprint or system or constitution, it would still be implemented and operated by sinful human beings. As James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” But the same sinful nature that requires government is so baked into creation that no government can uproot it.

At the same time, some Christians are so struck by sin’s pervasive presence, or so taken with other important priorities like evangelism, that they reject the political realm altogether. So, we are also hopeful, not that we will usher in God’s kingdom through political means, but that throughout Scripture and in Christian history, God calls us to seek justice and, at times, use political means to love our neighbors. If God calls us to this, then we can cultivate the theological virtue of hope insofar as He is up to something in the political realm and gives us the honor of joining Him in that work.

Q. You know that of late, there has been a lot of books that focus on the disreputable aspect of evangelical politics (e.g., Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin DuMez, White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler, Kingdom of Rage by Elizabeth Neumann). Your book is different in the sense that you are trying to provide a reparative and coherent tradition for future engagement. To that end, who is your primary audience?

A. While we hope that our book will be of interest to all sorts of people, we really wrote it for the church, and for our particular corner of the church. And that’s the evangelical church. For all the definitional challenges in recent years, and all the ups and downs that have been chronicled by friends and critics alike, we consider ourselves evangelicals and are writing to our brothers and sisters in that tradition. No doubt there will be some who read us and categorize us as “Big Eva” or among the evangelical elite, and it’s true we have spent time at some of those high-falutin educational institutions. And others may think we’re too easy on evangelicals and/or Trump voters and read us as overly conservative in one way or another because of our theological and/or moral convictions (we may have returned to Luther’s drunk guy on a horse here). But we tried very consciously to write from within our evangelical identities. Yes, we think that there are significant problems within evangelicalism, but we aspire for our approach to be more “how can we do better?” than a sort of anthropological posture that treats our fellow evangelicals more as these strange backward creatures who vote against their interests and live in flyover country. Readers will have to determine whether we pulled that off or not.

Q. One of the dangers you address involves approaching Scripture from the standpoint of seeking to gratify one’s libido dominandi—the lust for domination. You and your co-authors have made it a point to ground your thinking in Scripture and in the natural law tradition. How do you avoid the temptation of turning both into self-serving (political) tools?

A. Two things can be true at once. Power needs to be exercised, and power is a dangerous thing indeed.

We should always be on our guard against the temptation to take the reins of power for our own purposes and at the expense of our neighbors. There’s just no getting around that reality, and I suspect if we ask many of our co-religionists why they’re turned off by politics many will cite examples of Christians behaving badly in politics, whether in office or out. So that’s a crucial truth, and we do well to remind ourselves, and examine ourselves, constantly.

But there’s another truth that jostles uncomfortably sometimes with that first one, and that’s this: nothing has ever been done to improve someone’s life, protect the innocent, champion the poor, uplift the widow and the orphan, secure justice, etc., without the use of power. And that includes political power. Hebrews 11, the great chapter on faith, highlights several heroes of the faith who did things. And it concludes by noting what certain heroes of faith did on the political scene: conquering kingdoms, administering justice, routing armies, putting out fires, etc. In other words, the author of Hebrews gives us as examples of faithfulness God’s people using political power. Note, though, that immediately following those verses the author describes in vivid detail our brothers and sisters who have been subject to the gross misuse of political power: tortured, flogged, stoned, and killed in gruesome ways. The scandal of Christian political practice has been when Christians themselves have done the mistreating.

We could say more about this, but the point is there is no neutral or safe choice. There’s no guarantee that we will not screw up when we take part in politics. But there’s no guarantee that by going the quietist route we will avoid screwing up by omission what God has commissioned us to do (the parable of the talents may have something to say here). So, with fear and trembling, we ask for God’s help, examine the logs in our own eyes, and follow Him into the political field doing the best we can and testing ourselves and each other along the way. The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is also a great comfort here. As we write in the book, we are in sales, and God is in management.

Q. Let me dig further into your thinking here by asking about the proverbial section in Romans 13. Can you talk to me about the important balance between our obedience to the government, the personal responsibility to steward political authority, and the importance of respecting the concurrent powers that extend to our fellow citizens?

A. Christians have been wrestling with Paul’s words about the governing authorities in Romans 13 since he wrote them when Nero was reigning in Rome. We don’t pretend to have ended all those debates in the treatment in our book, but we hope to have highlighted how Paul’s command to respect political leaders plays a bit differently in pluralistic democracies like ours than it might have when Christians read Romans while living under a top-down political system with a king or an emperor in charge.

In the American system, and in most democracies world-wide, we both obey laws and political authority figures (like cops, TSA, judges), and we exercise political power as members of “We the People” who have authorized the very same authority of those laws and authority figures who are supposed to act as “public servants.”

Moreover, as almost all political theorists both secular and religious have recognized, we do all this in what seems to be a permanent state of pluralism in which people agree and disagree about all sorts of things, including how to do politics and what it means to live well. And in that sense, we 21st-century believers have something in common with the early church living amidst non-believers whose lives looked similar in theirs in some ways but radically different in others. How do we live out our Christian convictions, including wrestling with how they relate to the public square, while living with so many neighbors who don’t share those convictions? We hope the book goes some way toward helping us with that challenge.

Q. One of the perennial themes throughout the book is the connection between the way God made us to live and the moral guidelines that we must follow in common. You effectively utilize Augustine on this point in regard to our shared objects of love.

To quote from the book:

When a people’s ‘shared objects of love’ are better, the commonwealth is better. When shared objects of love are worse, the commonwealth suffers. Thus, the shared goods of earthly peace may be more or less robust, more or less well developed, etc., depending on the political community in view. While not a fully articulated democratic principle, this nevertheless has an important democratic element: the ends of the political community vary by virtue of the people within it and the objects of their love. A political community at some level inevitably reflects the people, and the shared objects of love vary among different peoples.

You just mentioned the realities that come with a permanent state of pluralism. Can you talk to me further about the tension between our shared loves, individual virtues, and the limits of political life?

A. Human beings are creaturely, which means we’re limited. And that means that on this side of eternity we will have tensions that are irreducible. Sometimes they may even feel paradoxical. And so it is that just as human beings, we have things in common with all other human beings. We’re all made in the imago dei even if non-believers don’t recognize God’s authorship of their natures. There are goods that are good for us and that all of us can recognize as good. That makes some measure of common living possible. When there was a clean water crisis not far from where I live in Michigan a few years ago, one didn’t have to be Christian, or secular, or Hindu, to recognize a key good needed for human flourishing was lacking.

At the same time, as Christians, we’re a people called apart; we’re to be in the world but not of the world, and that means there will be tension at times between how we live and how our neighbors live, how we raise our kids and how they do, how we act in the market and how they do. And because we’re limited, and because we share spaces with neighbors with whom we share some convictions and not others, we have to use prudence to figure out when and how and how far to pursue some goods and convictions and when we do what we can but recognize our vision for the good life will necessarily be compromised in this world.

Hopefully, with God’s help, we can witness to the better objects of love that God has called us to, and live in such a way that our neighbors will ask us for the reasons for our hope, and we can share those reasons with gentleness and respect. In such a way our pursuit of the genuine loves can act as salt and light in the culture by encouraging our neighbors to also love the better things (and, ultimately God Himself as the best thing).

Q. Sticking with Augustine, you make a fascinating distinction between his vision for political life and Cicero’s present tense commonwealth. You note the difference is fundamentally “eschatological.” Can you talk to me about these competing visions?

A. Cicero’s definition of the commonwealth makes a certain amount of sense from an earthly perspective. He says we can define a commonwealth by its shared account of what’s right, or just. So, on this account, the best commonwealth will be that city that is perfectly just. Augustine criticizes this account precisely because Augustine is always bringing to bear the eternal alongside the earthly frame. To be truly just, any city or country must be perfectly aligned with the standard of justice, and that means to be perfectly aligned with the Author of justice, which is a Who rather than a mere what. Given the reality of the fall and our sinful natures, we will never achieve that perfect justice, and thus we will never have the sort of commonwealth that Cicero’s definition suggests. Alongside that “who” that is the “when,” and as Christians we believe God will bring about His city at the end of earthly time. This is why we follow Augustine in rejecting Cicero’s account, and instead we think Augustine’s “objects of love” account that we discussed in the previous question is on much better ground.

Q. I’d like to also ask about the structural dynamics that play a role in our common life. As part of your discussion on community development, you lay out competing visions based on structures rooted in consolidated power versus subsidiarity. Can you talk to me about the difference?

A. One of the things we try to do in the book is offer concrete examples of how the different principles are applied. Principles are important, absolutely crucial, but even political theorists can recognize that we need to come down from the abstract and discuss how things work on the ground. So, it is in our discussion of applying political principles that we recognize that there is a place for governments to exercise consolidated power while also warning our readers (and ourselves) about how easy it is for consolidated or concentrated power to be abused. Some big problems demand big answers, but it’s also the case that governments, like many organizations, tend to take on growth as an end in itself rather than as possible means to address important ends. Abraham Kuyper warned that governments must not become octopuses, spreading their tentacles into every sphere of life.

While there may be times when the political spirit of the age is minimalist and libertarian with regard to government power, our moment and indeed the last few decades have (with some exceptions) seen a growth in our desire for government at the highest level to solve our problems. Thus, we think it’s important to temper the need for collective governmental action with the wisdom of the principle of subsidiarity, which is basically the notion that, to the extent possible, problems should be solved at the smallest and most local level before ratcheting up to the next level. So, if someone loses his job and has a difficult time providing for a family, the best thing would be for friends, neighbors, and other family members to pitch in to provide relief. If that’s not sufficient, then local churches, civic organization, guilds, etc. If that’s insufficient, then perhaps the local government, and so on. This is not a sort of hard and fast rule but requires the application of prudence. Faced with a potentially crippling pandemic, or an ecological disaster, we would not likely want to start at the local level.

Q. Operating in prudence is certainly a challenge. Our friend Cicero is perhaps a good guide here! Another challenge your book mentions, however, is cultivating civic friendship through the discovery of shared natural goods (i.e., material, moral and social). Can you talk to me about these three and how you’ve come to understand them?

A. This harkens back to the notion that, just as human beings, we hold some goods in common. There are a host of goods that God has created that contribute to human flourishing, or somehow constitute human flourishing. But these goods are not created equal. Augustine helps us here as well, as he insists on rightly ordering our loves. The greatest good of course is right relationship with God, and a second but related good is right relationship with our neighbors (which is why the greatest and second greatest commandments are ordered the way they are). So good things like healthy drinking water, a love for the Los Angeles Lakers (or some inferior sports team), recognizing the creational good that is craft beer, appreciating beautiful music, the importance of family, etc., etc. All these are shared goods that are not the greatest good but are nevertheless good and good for us. Granted, any one of them can become idolatrous when put out of order or in the place of what should be our great love, God Himself. And yet, even though that risk remains, they also provide the possibility of common ground between citizens and neighbors insofar as all of us, Christian or not, can recognize the earthly goodness of these things. They can provide the common interest or meeting point by which we can love and relate to our neighbors. God uses the ordinary earthly things for sacred purposes in both baptism and communion for us as Christians. It shouldn’t surprise us if we likewise can rely on earthly goods to relate well with our fellow citizens when we provide a meal when a neighbor family has lost someone, or work together to clean up a local park, or recommend a good doctor or restaurant.

Q. Let me end this with a practical question since the second part of the book deals primarily with the application of your four basic principles of hopeful realism. What advice do you have for law students and attorneys who seek in earnest to follow your guidance in their daily life?

A. As for advice, if you decide to pick up the book (and we hope you do!), I think I can speak for the three of us in encouraging you to read it with a generous but critical eye. We have gone about our work with the hope that we can play a modest role in helping the church think and act better about how we go about our politics, and we’ve prayed for God’s help in doing so.

As we have worked on this project together, we became painfully aware of how much more there was to know and figure out about living faithful as Christian citizens in the city of God while also being faithful in our roles in our earthly cities. What we hope to have done here is to provide a framework for thinking about these things and putting those thoughts into action, but we don’t by any means think we’ve settled these matters. More important than the framework is the possibility that we can contribute to a conversation among Christians, and it’s hard to think of a more critical conversation partner for those conversations than Christian law students and attorneys, those who have certainly put in the work on the academic side of things, but who also toil in the lived reality of clients, judges, laws, and broken but functioning systems of justice at all political levels. Which is to say we would welcome your reactions to the work!

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Purchase the book here!

Micah Watson is the Paul Henry Chair for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin University, where he also directs the politics, philosophy, and economics program. His research agenda includes ongoing projects on John Locke, a co-authored book on the political thought of C.S. Lewis, and a collaborative effort with his political theory counterparts at Wheaton and Westmont, which has culminated in the book discussed above.

He is a native of the great golden state of California where he completed his undergraduate degree at U.C. Davis. He earned his M.A. degree in Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and holds M.A. and doctorate degrees in Politics from Princeton University.