The Civitas Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Peter Leithart and James Wood have a conversation with Peter Harrison, the author of Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age.

Peter Harrison is a former Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford and is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy at the University of Queensland. He presently holds a Professorial Research Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame, Australia and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford.

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Peter Leithart and James Wood have a conversation with Dr. Jason Staples, the author of Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites.

Jason A. Staples (Ph.D., UNC-Chapel Hill) is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NC State University, where he teaches courses on biblical literature, early Judaism, Christian origins, ethics, globalism, conflict, and various theoretical perspectives in the study of religion and society.

He is the author of Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites (Cambridge University Press, 2024), The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and numerous scholarly articles. He was a 2008 recipient of the U.S. Department of Education’s Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and is a member of the UNC Royster Society of Fellows.

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Peter Leithart and James Wood have a conversation with Jeff Shafer. 

Jeff Shafer is Director of the Hale Institute. He graduated with honors from the Regent University School of Law in 1995. Early in his legal career, he operated a general practice firm in Cincinnati with a particular emphasis on criminal defense litigation. Thereafter, he practiced in a law partnership, focusing on elections law and civil constitutional cases. From 2005 to 2020, he served as Senior Counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom at its Washington, D.C., and Scottsdale, Arizona offices. Mr. Shafer has litigated public interest cases in federal and state trial and appellate courts throughout the United States, as well as developing academic and advocacy initiatives on matters of policy concern. Outside of the courtroom, he has addressed a wide array of audiences in academic and community venues, in the US and abroad, on matters of legal and cultural interest.

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by: Jeff Shafer
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James Wood and Peter Leithart have a conversation with Jon Askonas. 

Jon Askonas is an assistant professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America, where he works on the connections between the republican tradition, technology, and national security. He is currently working on two books: A Muse of Fire: Why the U.S. Military Forgets What It Learns in War, on what happens to wartime innovations when the war is over and The Shot in the Dark: A History of the U.S. Army Asymmetric Warfare Group, the first comprehensive overview of a unit that helped the Army adapt to the post 9/11 era of counterinsurgency and global power competition. His writing has appeared in Russian Analytical Digest, Triple Helix, The New Atlantis, Fare Forward, War on the Rocks, and the Texas National Security Review.  

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by: Jon Askonas
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Peter Leithart and James Wood answer some of your questions, closing the episode with a discussion of what they have been reading.

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Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with Rod Dreher about his recent work, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age.

Purchase the book:
Rod Dreher
Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age
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About Rod Dreher

Rod Dreher is a journalist and author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Little Way of Ruthie Leming (2013), The Benedict Option (2017), and Live Not by Lies (2020). His work covers the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. Dreher has worked as a columnist for the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News, National Review, the American Conservative, the European Conservative, and other publications, and his work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Time. He is an Orthodox Christian. A native of Louisiana, Dreher lives in Budapest, where he is a senior fellow at The Danube Institute.

More Books by Dreher

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents
The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation 
The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with Tim Nichols and Joe Anderson about their work in Englewood, Colorado.  

Joe Anderson is a Pastor at Christ the Anchor church in Englewood, Colorado. For the last 10 years, Joe has led the local pastors prayer group and organized meetings between the pastors and local government officials that have led to several collaborative initiatives between the Church in Englewood and the city government. Additionally, since 2019, Joe has served on City Council in Englewood.

Tim Nichols cut his teeth in ministry teaching at the seminary level while pastoring a small church plant in the California desert, frequently getting whiplash in the transitions between the two. He presently teaches middle school at Hammersmith School, a homeschool hybrid program, operates a bodywork practice, teaches martial arts, and serves in pastoral roles at Christ the Anchor church and at Centerpoint Church, an outreach to the homeless community in Englewood.

Together, they've founded Headwaters Christian Resources, a nonprofit devoted to local ministry and producing resources for the broader church, and written the Victorious Bible curriculum for middle school, Loving: Spiritual Exercises in Tangibly Loving your Literal Neighbors, and an assortment of smaller projects.

Links:
Peter Leithart's article on Micro-Christendoms can be found HERE.
Tim and Joe's Theopolis Conversation on "Proclamation" can be found HERE.
Click HERE for Tim Nichols' excellent articles at Theopolis.

Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with D.C. Schindler about his recent work, God and the City, and how to think about politics ontologically. 

Purchase the book:
D.C. Schindler
God and the City: An Essay in Political Metaphysics
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About Dr. Schindler

Dr. Schindler’s work is concerned above all with shedding light on contemporary cultural challenges and philosophical questions by drawing on the resources of the classical Christian tradition.  His principal thematic focus is metaphysics and philosophical anthropology, but he also works in political philosophy, phenomenology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, and philosophical theology.  His main historical areas are ancient Greek philosophy (especially Plato and Neoplatonism), German philosophy (especially Hegel and Heidegger), and Catholic philosophy (especially Aquinas and 20th Century Thomism).

Dr. Schindler studied the Great Books as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, received a Master’s degree in theology at the John Paul II Institute, and then completed his education with a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in philosophy at The Catholic University of America.  After teaching for twelve years at Villanova University, first as a teaching fellow in philosophy and then as a founding member of the Humanities Department, Dr. Schindler returned to Washington, DC to teach philosophy courses at the Institute.  He has published more than a dozen books—including two volumes of a planned trilogy on the nature of freedom with the University of Notre Dame Press and a Robert Spaemann Reader with Oxford University Press—and more than 70 articles and book chapters, and his work has been translated into six languages.  He is an editor of the English-language edition of Communio: International Catholic Review, and a board member of The Review of Metaphysics and New Polity: A Journal of Post-Liberal Thought; he is a translator of books and articles from French and German; he is a Fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at CUA and served on the Executive Council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association; and he has been invited to deliver named annual lectures in a variety of venues, including the Thomas Aquinas Lecture at four universities and colleges, the Bitar Memorial Lecture series at Geneva College, the John Paul II Lecture at the University of Dallas, the Lorenzo Albacete Lecture in New York City, and the Areopagus Lecture at Mars Hill Audio Journal in Charlottesville, VA.

Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with Philip Bess about architecture, cities, and his book titled Till We Have Built Jerusalem.

 
Philip Bess is Professor of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame.

Peter Leithart and James Wood talk with David Dusenbury about his books "I Judge No One" and "The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: How the Roman Trial of Jesus Shaped History."

David Lloyd Dusenbury is a philosopher, historian of ideas, Times Literary Supplement contributor and senior fellow at Budapest's Danube Institute. He is also Chair for Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Antwerp.

Titles from Dusenbury:
I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus
The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: How the Roman Trial of Jesus Shaped History

Articles by George Steiner mentioned in this episode:
The Scandal of Revelation
Two Suppers