The views expressed in this article are of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
Hopeful Realism: Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics
Jesse Covington, Bryan T. McGraw, and Micah Watson
IVP Academic (2025). 264 pp.
I live in Oak Park, Illinois, an urban-suburban village just outside Chicago known as much for its progressive politics as for its two most famous residents whom I like to refer to as Oak Park’s “patron saints”— Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959). It is a wonderful place to raise a family and my neighbors are, by and large, delightful people. Yet Oak Park’s cultural outlook often stands at odds with evangelical moral commitments. As a pastor theologian, I have often found myself in conversations where my identity as a Christian and a pastor is met with curiosity, sometimes even unease.
Over the years, I have noticed two recurring dynamics in these exchanges. First, the average secular neighbor does not hold evangelical Christians in high regard. It is not outright hostility, but neither is it respect. They simply do not take evangelicals seriously as credible voices on political or moral questions. Of late, it has been hard to blame them.
More recently, however, I have detected a deeper misgiving. My friends and neighbors increasingly wonder whether evangelical convictions even deserve a legitimate place at the table of public discourse. After all, America depends on shared norms and rules, and evangelicals are perceived as departing from them—as if they are no longer playing the common game but insisting on their own. This perception often sharpens around questions of sexual ethics and gender equality, where evangelical views appear to run against the grain of what most consider settled norms. To many, this signals not just a difference of opinion but a breakdown of the rules that make civil debate possible—the moral equivalent, in their eyes, of defending Jim Crow.
It is precisely in this fraught cultural moment that Hopeful Realism arrives as a timely and much-needed guide. The book’s central thesis is that the natural law tradition, appropriated through a distinctly evangelical lens, can provide both the moral coherence evangelicals desperately need and a framework that strengthens rather than undermines liberal democracy. The authors confront two interrelated crises I encounter regularly in Oak Park: evangelicals’ reputation for moral inconsistency—appearing opportunistic or hypocritical in politics—and rising doubts that evangelical convictions can coexist with democratic norms.
The book unfolds in two parts. Part One establishes the biblical, theological, and philosophical foundations of “hopeful realism.” Chapter 1 makes the scriptural case by drawing on three key passages (Gen 1–4; Matt 22:15–22; Rom 13:1–7) to show that government exists to promote human flourishing and that natural law is a reliable guide toward that end.
Chapter 2 situates natural law within evangelical convictions, paying homage to Augustine and the broader Christian tradition. The authors seek to balance the goodness and intelligibility of creation with the realities of redemptive history. To overemphasize one or the other, they argue, leads to distorted moral reasoning: either triumphalist nationalism or world-denying pessimism.
Chapter 3 argues that this framework is both biblically faithful and compatible with liberal democracy. From natural law, the authors derive four principles that sustain healthy democracy: pursuit of the common good and civic friendship, confessional pluralism and religious liberty, democracy and decentralization, and restraint that protects liberty. Chapter 4 complements this by offering a three-step framework for applying hopeful realism to practical political issues. Together these chapters are especially useful for readers less familiar with political theory who seek moral wisdom and sound judgment.
Part Two turns to application. Here the authors illustrate hopeful real ism in practice by addressing four contested areas of public life: economics, marriage and sexuality, the coercive power of the state, and religious liberty. These chapters are not exhaustive, but they offer many helpful insights. The authors model how evangelicals can move beyond ad hoc or partisan calculations and instead reason from deep moral convictions in ways that serve the common good.
In short, Hopeful Realism shows that evangelicals need not choose between moral clarity and democratic responsibility. Refracted through an evangelical lens, the natural law tradition provides both a principled moral compass and a constructive framework for engaging in pluralistic democracy.
As a pastor theologian deeply concerned with evangelical moral wit ness and political engagement, I resonate with this book’s central claim. offers no easy fixes, but it does offer a framework that helps us move beyond reactionary politics toward principled engagement. For pastor theologians there is an powerful implicit invitation to reclaim a vocation akin to natural lawyers: guides who renew the church’s political imagination and equip believers to face contested times with clarity and charity. The calling of the pastor theologian is to present “everyone mature in Christ” (Col 1:28), and the authors make a strong case that this end is served by grounding believers in the natural law tradition refracted through evangelical theological convictions.
Such grounding would empower evangelicals to be more thoughtful and principled in their public witness and, just as importantly, more collaborative and consensus-seeking with their neighbors in the public square. In a time when evangelicals are often seen as opportunistic or combative, if not subversive of American democracy, this vision points to a better way. For those guiding the church’s public witness in places as complex as Oak Park—or wherever you reside—this book is a timely reminder: realism need not lead to resignation, and hope need not be naïve. The two together form the path of faithful witness.
Todd Wilson (PhD, University of Cambridge) is the Senior Fellow of Scripture, Ministry, and Leadership at the Litfin Divinity School of Wheaton College. He is the co-founder and former president of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
