This article was published in The Bulwark. Not only do I predict what will happen in Hungary’s election, but I explain why making this prediction is easy – because Hungary’s not a democracy. This first two paragraphs of the article… Read More ›
Politics
Interview with Zoltán Fleck, Chair of Péter Márki-Zay’s Constitutional Working Group
Zoltán Fleck is a Professor of Law and Sociology at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest. He was recently appointed by Péter Márki-Zay, the leader of Hungary’s democratic opposition, to head up a working group tasked with examining constitutional… Read More ›
CPAC Is Going to Hungary, Never Mind Viktor Orban’s Attacks on Churches
Here’s a short piece about Hungary that I wrote for The Unhttps://theunpopulist.substack.com/Populist, a substack newsletter started by Shikha Dalmia which is committed to defending liberal democracy and opposing the rise of authoritarianism around the globe. “In his Metamorphoses, written after… Read More ›
Three Myths About Viktor Orbán and His Remaking of Hungary
This article was published in The Bulwark. Below is a teaser. You can read the full article by clicking the link at the bottom of the post. “When Hungarian armies invaded Europe around A.D. 900, shooting arrows from horseback and… Read More ›
Is Rod Dreher’s Live Not By Lies a Good Book?
H. David Baer (professor of theology), Alexander Faludy (journalist, church historian), and Joseph Novak (Hungarian Baptist pastor) discuss Ron Dreher’s new book, Live Not By Lies, and consider the questions: How well has Dreher described the experience of East European Christians? Is Dreher right to draw parallels between 20th century communism and American today?
Secularization Strikes Back: The End of American Religion?
“One striking feature about religious commitment today is how closely it aligns with conservative politics. Religiously committed Americans are very likely to vote Republican. Yet it wasn’t always that way. Alexis de Tocqueville famously attributed the strength of American religion… Read More ›
A Time for Theologians during the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Twenty-five years ago when I first started graduate school, I used to enjoy reading First Things, the “journal of religion and public life” founded by Richard John Neuhaus. Neuhaus was a Lutheran “neoconservative” who eventually converted to Catholicism and became… Read More ›
Hungary’s New Church Law is Worse than the First
Hungarian Parliament on December 11, 2018 / source: AP Download a copy of this article here This article was published in, and can be cited as, “Hungary’s New Church Law is Worse than the First,” (2019) Occasional Papers on Religion… Read More ›
Return of the Tyrants
My latest column for The Cresset, about lessons from Aristotle and Plato on current politics. “Democracy today is under siege. It is being replaced in parts of the world with soft authoritarian regimes that preserve but manipulate democratic trappings to… Read More ›
Russia’s Influence on Cultural Conservatives
Here’s my latest piece for The Cresset on how cultural conservatives have lost their moral bearings. “Cold War themes have returned unexpectedly with the renewal of Russian informational warfare. But unlike the Cold War, Russian propaganda today targets those on… Read More ›
H. David Baer 