These resources explore God’s creation order and its meaning as God’s vision for relationships between human beings, and also between human beings and the created world.

The painting above, Ambrose and Theodosius, is significant to this topic. Roman Emperor Theodosius, in a hotheaded moment of anger, had ordered the Massacre of Thessalonica, where Roman soldiers killed 7,000 people. Ambrose, bishop of Milan in the 4th century, was probably advising him about repentance. Ambrose was later remembered as admitting Theodosius back into Christian worship services only when the Emperor made a law that death sentences would require a thirty day lag before execution so as to allow reconsideration. The way this story was remembered in the painting, while exaggerating Ambrose’s courage and the tension between the two men, was significant in the story of church-state relations.  Even the Emperors were accountable to God for the laws and policies they enacted.

Check out various areas of law and policy, such as bioethics, economics, education, media, power and politics, race, relational personhood, religious freedom, sex and the sex industry. We connect Christian restorative justice to those areas, offering critiques of the Left as that term is used in the U.S.

Check out various areas of law and policy, such as banking, bioethics including abortion, criminal justice, economics, education, health and environment, power and politics, race, and many more. We connect Christian restorative justice to those areas, offering critiques of the Right as that term is used in the U.S.

Our Christian Restorative Justice Study Guide steps you through a learning process. Lesson 101 begins with an examination of four principles of justice: meritocratic-retributive, distributive, libertarian, and restorative. Secular thought does not know how to organize these four principles, but Scripture shows that God does have an order. Explore why God’s justice is restorative first and foremost.

Our Study and Action Guides help individuals and small groups learn and apply Christian restorative justice principles to pressing issues today, such as ecology and environment, criminal justice, housing, racial history, and more.

Sources provides biblical exegesis and sources in Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant traditions that recognize Christian restorative justice.

The section called Church and Empire explores the biblical theme of “empire” as well as faithful and unfaithful examples of Christian use of power.

The field of the Church and International Relations is inherently challenging because international relations are difficult to govern, but especially for Christians in the U.S., which qualifies as an “empire” by biblical standards.