Democracy & Solidarity with James Davison Hunter and David Brooks

One of the biggest questions in the Christian life is what it means to love one's neighbor, both in the personal and the public spheres. While these questions have always been challenging and contested, they seem to have grown increasingly divisive and demoralizing.

So how do we begin to restore and reweave solidarity and a love for neighbor into our civic fabric?

Today's episode features our recent evening conversation with sociologist and author James Davision Hunter and cultural critic and author David Brooks. Together they help us explore the cultural roots of America's crisis of solidarity, and what it may mean to move together towards a renewed commitment to the common good.

We hope this conversation helps you consider how you’re engaging in relationships, and how the smallest acts of seeing another person and listening to their story can help begin to restore our social fabric and establish new cultural norms.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in September of 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about James Davison Hunter and David Brooks.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Culture Wars by James Davison Hunter

The Death of Character by James Davison Hunter

Science and the Good by James Davison Hunter

To Change the World by James Davison Hunter

Democracy and Solidarity by James Davison Hunter

The Social Animal by David Brooks

The Road to Character by David Brooks

The Second Mountain by David Brooks

How to Know a Person by David Brooks

George Marsden

Aristotle

The Public Philosophy, by Walter Lippman

Arthur Schlesinger

John Bowlby

Parker Palmer

David Hume

Edmund Burke

Eddie Hillison

Simone Weil

Mother Theresa

American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, by Sam Huntington

Clarence Thomas

The Upswing, by Robert Putnam

Howard Usock

Nicholas Epley

The Communist Manifesto

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Wrestling with God, Simone Weil

Children of Light and Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr

Politics, Morality, and Civility,  by Vaclav Havel

The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt

The Federalist Papers

A Practical View of Real Christianity, by William Wilberforce,

Who Stands Fast? by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Related Conversations:
Hope Beyond Tribalism with James Mumford

Faith, Fear & Conspiracy with David French

The Fall, the Founding and the Future of American Democracy

How to Be a Patriotic Christian

Extremism and the Path Back to Peace with Elizabeth Neumann

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

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.