Joshua Mitchell
Story Stream
The Politics of Competence December 15, 2021
America will always be a religious nation. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville wrote, in fact, that America will always have a Puritan character. We have had two Great Awakenings, so called, in America: one in the 1740s, whose emblematic preacher wa...
White Guilt and the Promise of a Color-Blind Society November 05, 2021
The 1950s may have seemed stifling to some, but to many they were happy days. In 1957, an astonishing 96 percent of Americans told Gallup that they were very or fairly happy. Then innocence quickly faded. What happened?...
The Theology of Identity Politics January 04, 2021
In American Awakening, Georgetown political theory dean Joshua Mitchell unmasks identity politics for what it is: a toxic outgrowth of Protestant Christianity that threatens the American regime of liberty and self-government. The book builds on popul...
Books for Christmas 2020 December 09, 2020
How bad a year has it been? Let me not count the ways. Good books can hearten us in 2021 and beyond, though. Herewith, then, some suggestions for Christmastide book-giving:Prison Journal, Volume 1, by Cardinal George Pell (Ignatius Press): The remark...
How Critical Race Theory is Poisoning America December 01, 2020
How likely are we to heal our country’s wounds if we divide our fellow citizens into “white people” who are stained, and “people of color” who are innocent and pure? This ghastly enterprise is being undertaken by the left in America today.White emplo...
Guilt Without Vice, Innocence Without Virtue November 24, 2020
Encounter BooksGeorgetown political theorist Joshua Mitchell has written that rare book that captures the state of our souls and describes our situation with clarity, astuteness, and spiritual depth. American Awakening is a book that expertly combi...
Lest We Forget November 23, 2020
Everyone interested in understanding the real scope of the challenge identity politics presents for the West should read American Awakening. Joshua Mitchell proposes that the many threads of this movement ought to be understood as a species of civic ...
Blood on Their Hands November 20, 2020
Joshua Mitchell, a Tocquevillean political philosopher with an impressive grounding in theology, has written a penetrating analysis of identity politics in the modern age. Like John McWhorter and Andrew Sullivan, he correctly views today’s dominant i...
Yoram Hazony with Joshua Mitchell November 20, 2020
Yoram Hazony talks with Joshua Mitchell, author of “American Awakening.” They discuss the rise of Trump and nationalism, the sources of the moral authority of the black community in America, the Protestant roots of the woke left and the future of Ame...
A Double American Awakening November 16, 2020
America has been a land of religious awakenings. The First Great Awakening happened in the 1730s and 1740s; the Second Great Awakening occurred between the 1790s and 1820s. Protestant revivals and the formation of new Evangelical groups marked Christ...
Teaching Tocqueville in Arabia October 18, 2013
Joshua Mitchell, professor of political theory at Georgetown University, helped establish Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar and taught there from 2005 to 2008. From 2008 to 2010, he was acting chancellor of the American University of...
