Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License

Christians in the modern West hear a lot about—and talk a lot about—“freedom.” The word has taken on so many meanings that Christians often fail to realize how much our contemporary ideals of freedom stray from what freedom has meant in Scripture and the Christian tradition.

Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License by Bradford Littlejohn seeks to define and disentangle theological, moral, and political concepts of freedom and provide a deeper understanding of what true Christian freedom is—liberation from the bondage of fear and sin.

Littlejohn builds his argument from the Protestant doctrine of Christian liberty anchored in Martin Luther’s Reformation classic The Freedom of a Christian. He then looks at conflicts over technology, the market, and religious liberty as case studies of how a full-orbed Christian idea of freedom helps us respond faithfully to these challenges in our spiritual lives, our churches, and our civic engagement.

Littlejohn argues that a great source on contemporary social problems and trends towards illiberalism derive from a faulty understanding of human freedom which places individuality and authenticity as the highest good for society. Littlejohn argues that the Christian tradition presents a much more compelling vision, namely that freedom cannot lead to flourishing for everyone unless it is rightly ordered to God’s moral commands and divinely ordained sources of authority in our lives. As such, he presents a case against modern secularism and charts a vision for what Christian faith actually has to say to our political and social lives.

Brad Littlejohn (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and is the founder and president emeritus of the Davenant Institute.