Gary Chartier

So-called “urban renewal” programs provide some compensation for the properties they take, but no compensation is possible for the subjective value of these lands to the individuals displaced and the indignity inflicted by uprooting them from their homes…. [E]xtending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful. If ever there were justification for intrusive judicial review of constitutional provisions that protect “discrete and insular minorities,” surely that principle would apply with great force to the powerless groups and individuals the Public Use Clause protects.

Case studies, both real and fictional, help to clarify the significance and implications of the ecological theory of free expression for both state and non-state actors. These concern “intellectual property” rights, putative rights against defamation, state maintenance of controversial monuments, attempted suppression by the legal system of the cinematic documentation of rights-violating conduct, a journalist’s tweets critical of the President, a fictional sports agent’s distribution to his co-workers of a memo critical of their firm and their industry, and professional athletes’ decisions to publicly, if silently, protest during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The Introduction explains the book’s purpose—describing an ecological theory of free expression, focused on an institutional environment capable of respecting and furthering expressive activity and realizing the goods associated with it. It also outlines the natural-law approach that frames the book’s arguments. It goes on to preview those arguments—focused on possessory rights, the range of putative and actual injuries that might be thought to trigger restraints on expressive activity, the risks associated with empowering political authorities to restrain expression, the role of autonomy and human flourishing in grounding protections for expressive freedom, and the various instrumental functions served by expressive freedom—before considering issues related to governmental land and workers and private associations, as well as a range of topical case studies.

In Christianity and the Nation-State, Gary Chartier provocatively offers readers unexpected critical distance from some familiar ways of understanding, justifying, and navigating existing political arrangements. People in multiple societies are posing important questions about the authority and functions of the contemporary nation-state and about potential alternatives to this seemingly inescapable institution. Chartier seeks to develop a distinctive theological response to the conditions prompting these questions. Affirming liberalism and cosmopolitanism, he reflects critically on nationalism, localism, religious establishment, and theological accounts of political authority. He highlights links between sin and state power and underscores deficiencies in democratic rhetoric and theory. He rejects the idea of a global government, advocating a nonterritorial alternative he labels 'radical consociationalism. Moreover, he presents concrete suggestions for life under the rule of the state.

Is it true that all we need is love? Does love capture the essence of Christian ethics? Does a love-centered ethic need to be impartial in a way that leaves no room at ground-level for relationships and projects? What is the place of well-being in an ethic of love? Loving Creation: The Task of Moral Life seeks to answer these questions by showing how a love-ethic and an ethic of creation are not at odds but rather reinforce each other. Gary Chartier articulates a love-centered creation ethic--or a creation-centered love-ethic--and applies it to such issues as sex, economic life, love for enemies, and political order. In the book, Chartier offers a powerful alternative both to natural-law theories that seem to lose sight of the welfare of actual people and to the accounts of Christian love that embrace an alienating impartiality. He develops an understanding of Christian love as focused on creation that can contribute effectively to enriching both social practices and personal lives. Loving Creation is unabashedly theological. But the theological considerations it adduces are ones that will allow Christians to engage in the public sphere with adherents of other religious traditions and of none. It is a contribution not only to theological understanding but also to personal moral reflection, to church practice, and to Christian participation in public life.