I got to guest on a podcast this past week. “Micro-Christendoms and Local Government” released a few days ago. It’s episode 24 of The Civitas Podcast, hosted by Peter Leithart and James Wood.
The Civitas Project is a mostly an academic endeavor out of Theopolis Institute, focused on what they’re calling “ecclesiocentric postliberalism.” That’s a jawbreaker of a term, but it describes a very practical reality. The classical liberal order–the political and social world championed by the likes of John Locke and John Stuart Mill–is dying. The old-line secular liberals weren’t able to contend with the “anything–no, really, anything!–goes” relativism of the potsmoderns, who in turn lack the resources to contend with the dictatorial howlings of everybody from rabid feminists to woke fascists to Muslim fundamentalists. We live in a world that is rapidly abandoning relativism for a new morality hostile to anything true, good, or beautiful. That’s the “postliberal” part. The “ecclesiocentric” part argues that any sane response to the world we now live in has to begin with the church at the center. The Civitas Project exists to figure out what, exactly, that might mean. The project existed for a few years before going public with the podcast, and has also produced a book of essays, Hell Shall Not Prevail, which is well worth reading.
On the podcast, Peter and James mostly interview academics from a wide variety of fields. If you’ve been hanging out here long, Gentle Reader, you know that I’m not entirely without academic chops, but I gotta tell you, I’m nowhere near the stratospheric level of the average Civitas guest. So how’d I end up on the show? Peter and James got interested in coming down to the other end of the spectrum to chat with some practitioners. Peter was kind enough to think of me, and given his area of interest, I immediately thought of Joe Anderson. The resulting conversation was a great deal of fun, and you can hear it online or wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy it!
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