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.
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