May 29-31, 2025

Steubenville, OH 43952

The fifth annual New Polity conference takes “the people” as its theme and object of wonder. Motivated by the apparent victory of populism in the United States’ 2024 election, and inspired by the Holy Roman Pontiff’s love for Latin America’s “theology of the people,” this meeting of theologians, philosophers (and, let’s face it, preachers) is devoted to thinking deeply about "the people."

What makes us a people? Is it blood? Is it language? Is it love? Violent assertion? A shared history? Is the United States "a people"? How do "a people" get formed out of a mass, a crowd, a mob, a family, a village? And where does God enter into all of this? Does the Church, the universal People of God, negate or embrace the particular peoples that it liberates and saves? Can nationalism be redeemed? What about folk music? All of this is up for discussion and debate, the subject of our good humor and great conversation at New Polity 2025: Our Kind of People.

Register now!

Conference Price: $195 $150 Early Bird

We hope you can attend in person! Digital access will not be offered this year.

Rocco Buttiglione is a Professor of political science at Saint Pius V University in Rome, and member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He has served as a Minister for European Affairs and as the vice president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. He is the author of the 1997 book: Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II. His book Modernity’s Alternative: How History is Formed in the Depths of the People is forthcoming from New Polity Press.

Andrew Willard Jones holds a PhD in Medieval History from Saint Louis University with a focus on the Church of the High Middle Ages. Jones’s work is primarily concerned with historical political theology and with the reconciliation of the post-modern with the pre-modern. Methodologically, his work treats history as a theological discipline and not as a secular archaeology. Jones is the author of Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in St. Louis IX’s Sacramental Kingdom and the one-volume history of the Catholic Church The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics. His most recent book The Church Against the State is available now from New Polity Press

R. R. Reno is the editor of First Things magazine. He was formerly a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University. Reno is the author of several books, including Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, Fighting the Noonday Devil — and Other Essays Personal and Theological, In the Ruins of the Church, Redemptive Change: Atonement and the Cure of the Soul, Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West, and a theological commentary on the Book of Genesis in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series, for which he also serves as general editor. He has also coauthored two books, Heroism and The Christian Life and Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible. His scholarly work ranges widely in systematic and moral theology, as well as in controverted questions of biblical interpretation.

Michael Hanby is associate professor of religion and philosophy of science at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America. He is the author of No God, No Science?: Theology, Cosmology, Biology and Augustine and Modernity. He has contributed chapters to a number of volumes and is also author of several articles appearing in Communio, First Things, New Polity, The Political Science Reviewer, Modern Theology, Pro Ecclesia, and Theology Today. He was a principal author of The St. Jerome Education Plan, a nationally recognized curriculum for Catholic elementary and middle schools and is a founding board member of the St. Jerome Institute, a Washington DC liberal arts high school in the Catholic tradition.

Marc Barnes is a father of three, the editor of New Polity magazine, and the president of the Harmonium Project, a nonprofit dedicated to urban revitalization and transformation in Steubenville, Ohio.

Jacob Imam is the founder of the College of St. Joseph the Worker and Executive Director of the Institute for Political Philosophy and Theology. He holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford. His work focuses on the ethics of Christian investment and the theology of work. He lives in Steubenville with his wife, Alice, and sons, Blaise and Leo.

Reuben Slife is one of the editors of New Polity magazine. In addition to preparing several edited volumes for New Polity Press, he has an article forthcoming in Communio on David L. Schindler's Catholic understanding of America. He is also the president of the Poor Players of Steubenville, a theater company. Reuben lives in Steubenville, Ohio.