Brad Littlejohn on Freedom and Big Tech

Back in March of 2009 when I migrated over to Front Porch Republic from that inimitable and short-lived artifact of early internet culture, the New Pantagruel, I was most attracted to the goods of place and limits enshrined in the FPR triad of “Place. Limits. Liberty.” I am fortunate to be able to say that liberty was a given for me at the time. The kind of community that can only be built on place and limits—that was the more elusive good that I sought as a young teacher living in Northern Virginia.

But as we slouched into the annus horribilis 2020, I came to appreciate that the venerable founders of FPR had included liberty as well. It became much easier to imagine all forms of tyranny taking hold. While some of the absurdities of 2020 are seemingly behind us, both liberty and tyranny remain slippery, and we do well to be on our guard. 

Brad Littlejohn’s recent book, Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License, offers wise guidance for navigating our way through these times of rapid change. He gives a short definition of freedom early in the book: “capacity for purposeful or meaningful action” (8). A more expansive definition in the conclusion is also helpful for context: “Freedom is not merely a spiritual reality or a worldly ideal; it is not merely inward or outward. Freedom, rather, is experienced above all in the conformity of the soul to reality, the fit between our wills and the world, that moment when everything clicks into place and we find ourselves able to be and to do what it is we feel meant to be and to do” (147).