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Institutional
Affiliations
Ethics
and Public Policy Center: Senior Fellow (1996-current); President
(1989-1996) (1)
The Center
for Bioethics and Human Dignity: Open Letter to President George
W. Bush on Human Cloning: Signatory (2002) (2)
Project
for the New American Century: Statement of Principles: Signatory
(1997) (3)
Institute
on Religion and Democracy: Member of Board of Directors (4)
Discovery
Institute Religion, Liberty & Public Life Program: Adjunct
Fellow (5)
James Madison
Foundation: Founding President (1986-1989) (1)
Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars: Scholar-in-Residence
(1984-1985) (1)
World Without
War Council: Scholar-in-Residence (1977-1984) (1)
St. Thomas
Seminary School of Theology: Assistant Professor of Theology;
Assistant Dean of Studies; Acting Dean of Studies (1)
First Things:
Member of Editorial Board (1)
Orbis:
Member of Editorial Board (1)
American Committee for Peace in Chechnya:
Member
Education
St.
Mary's Seminary and University: B.A. (1)
University
of St. Michael's College: M.A. (1)
Right Web Connections:
Institute for Religion and Democracy
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Project for the New American Century
Institute for Religion and Public Life
Puebla Institute (Group Watch profile)
Nina Shea
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Highlights
& Quotes
George Weigel, a senior scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) and a charter signatory of the Project for the New American Century, argues for a foreign policy shaped by realism and "moralism without illusions." For Weigel and other social conservatives, one must accept that there is no escaping the threat of evil. Evil cannot be negotiated with, reformed, or constrained by international norms, as the "mainline old" Protestant denominations advocate. Facing the reality of the natural order where evildoers still roam free, U.S. foreign policy should be guided not by naïve moral notions about how nations should behave, but by moral reasoning, Weigel says.(6) In some cases, he adds, moral reasoning may require that the United States support authoritarian regimes to fend off the greater evils of moral decay and threats to the security of the United States, which is the champion of all that is good and right.
In Weigel's view, the tendency for Christians--especially progressives he considers befuddled by Catholic liberation theology and the national bureaucracies of the Protestant churches--to view the morality of the Sermon on the Mount as a guide to foreign policy is not only bad theology but dangerous politics. During the Reagan administration, Weigel was associated with three institutions that gave him the opportunity to put into practice his political theology. He was president of the right-wing James Madison Foundation, which received funding from the federal government's U.S. Institute for Peace to monitor what it called "peace groups."
Weigel was also a principal at the Puebla Institute and an associate of the anticommunist World Without War Council, which promoted U.S. military action to secure Pax Americana. There he worked with Director Nina Shea, whose investigation of alleged Sandinista government religious persecution was carried out in close coordination with the CIA and its Contra directorate. (7) The Puebla Institute received U.S. government funding channeled through the National Endowment for Democracy to the front group PRODEMCA. Like many of the Contra supporters in the 1980s, Shea returned to government during the Bush II administration as a member and vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom, a permanent panel created in 1999 at the Republican Congress' behest with Elliott Abrams as its first president. As the current director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, Shea also is closely linked to the right-wing network of human rights and religious organizations.
George Weigel is the author of Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II (1997), Building the Free Society (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1993), Changing Witness (Eerdmanns & Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1995), Idealism Without Illusions (Eerdmanns/Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1994), Soul of the World (Eerdmanns/Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1996), and The Final Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1992).
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