Introduction

What is ideology? What are the consequences of an era when seemingly every human issue is viewed through an ideological lens?

In October of 2021, the Trinity Forum and Comment magazine partnered for an evening conversation to explore precisely these questions. Cherie Harder and Anne Snyder moderated a conversation with philosopher Peter Kreeft and Rev. Eugene Rivers to unpack the nature and implications of ideology’s reign in our present culture — both what it’s doing to our intellectual vitality as a society, but perhaps more urgently, what it’s doing to our civic and organizational life across sectors and geography:

“So from a Christian point of view, what's the most important and first thing we must do in order to save Western culture or Western civilization?...Well, I think the first answer is stop idolizing it. Stop making the salvation of Western civilization your summum bonum, your final end, and religion a means to it. Religion is not a means to politics.” - Peter Kreeft

This wide ranging conversation takes on the spiritual dimensions of our ideological age, and centers our hope not in politics, but squarely in the love of God in Christ. Dr. Kreeft and Rev. Rivers call us back to the first things, asking us to look afresh at our political commitments, and to see the image of God in the face of our neighbor.

This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in 2021. Get a full transcript and watch a video of the conversation here. Learn more about Dr. Peter Kreeft and Rev. Eugene Rivers.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Christianity for Modern Pagans, by Peter Kreeft

Three Philosophies of Life, by Peter Kreeft

Suma of the Suma, by Peter Kreeft

If Einstein Had Been a Surfer, by Peter Kreeft

The Philosophy of Jesus, by Peter Kreeft

Doors in the Walls of the World, by Peter Kreeft

Socrates

Elizabeth Anscombe

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis

Donald Williams

The Dust of Death, by OS Guinness

Frantz Fanon

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Abraham Heschel

The End of Ideology, by Daniel Bell

Exodus and Revolution, by Michael Walzer

Francis Schaeffer

Carl F. Henry

James Boyce

John J. DiIulio

Achieving our Country, by Richard Rorty

St. Augustine

Billy Graham

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.