Robert P. George is the indispensable man of American social conservatism. The Princeton professor is a scholar of such intellectual power that he almost single-handedly rescued the anti-abortion movement from the fringes of the American sociopolitical and legal landscape in the 1990s when the secular left assumed that the reign of abortion on demand for any reason was a done deal. George (born 1955) reset the debate and provided the intellectual framework that enabled a generation of pro-life advocates to craft tactics and policies that led ultimately to the Dobbs decision of 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade. Conservatives are not often regarded as innovators. But George changed the paradigm. The book we will discuss today shows how he has done that.
And that momentous accomplishment is only one milestone in the career of this multi-faceted scholar. George is one of the few scholars to wield influence in multiple fields of study. A lover of the humanities and liberal learning, he has made major contributions in his primary fields of analytic philosophy and its subbranch, the philosophy of law. He has also done important work both in academic writing and through public service in the form of membership and chairmanship of federal government bodies in such fields as bioethics, religious freedom and civil rights.
All of these accomplishments and more are discussed by leading Protestant scholars and thinkers in Social Conservatism for the Common Good: A Protestant Engagement With Robert P. George (Crossway, 2023), edited by the evangelical scholar, Andrew Walker. Walker contributes an introduction and an interview with George himself, both of which make clear why the latter is so admired in evangelical circles and what qualms some of them have about some aspects of his activism. Carl Trueman, for example, suggests that as wokeness has corroded and coarsened public discourse, George’s gentlemanly approach is no longer effective.
Let’s hear from the editor of this study, Andrew Walker.
Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.
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