At the 2024 New Polity conference, Matthew B. Crawford gave the keynote address in which he contrasted the view of man inherent in technocratic rationalism with that of a Christian view. Drawing from the work of Joseph Ratzinger and Michael Oakeshott, Crawford draws a distinction between an orientation toward receiving life as gift and cramped rationalism that views man as an object to be synthetically remade. The current push for technocratic control over every sphere of life collapses the vertical order of reality and aims to eliminate contingency, risk, and play. In contrast, one who affirms the inherent goodness of being is able to experience a real vitality of life in a meaningful world.

In the 20th century, a movement of priests and laypeople sought to find a way past the clash of ideologies that wracked Latin America. They found a solution in Latin America itself, which was born out of the conflict between Europeans and natives when, with the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Guadalupe, the grace of God forged one, new people out of strangers and enemies. This movement—called “theology of peoples”—focuses on the reality known as “a people.” Every human person belongs to a people. And every people has a “world”: the way it makes sense out of life, work, love, and the uncertain future. In this podcast, Reuben Slife and Marc Barnes discuss Modernity's Alternative by Rocco Buttiglione.

What is the difference between a people and a nation? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Ernest Renan's influential lecture "What is a nation?". Renan argues that a nation is not formed by common descent, language, religion, or geography. Rather, a nation is a spiritual principle that requires sacrifice, and a forgetting of the past. Marc and Alex discuss Renan's definition of a nation and how it formed the development of nation states in the modern period.

In this special episode of Political Saints, Marc Barnes and Nicolas McAfee discuss the heroic political life of St. Thomas More. Thomas More was the Lord High Chancellor of England from 1529 until 1531. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and was executed. Pope Pius XI canonized Thomas More as a martyr in 1935.

For the last five years, the Political Right has been debating over a program for regime change in America: should populism be used to construct a new elite class? Should a new administration retire all government employees? Can the bureaucratic state be maintained but filled with new conservative staff? In this podcast, Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Willard Jones discuss subsidiarity as the solution to this debate, and how it provides a program for genuine regime change.

What is the meaning of national identity? Does strong national identity necessarily create a hostile relation with other nations? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Joseph Ratzinger's short book "The Unity of Nations." Through a discussion of the political theology of Origen and St. Augustine, Ratzinger shows how the early Christians viewed their relation to the nations, and Christianity's nation-unifying gospel.

In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's book "The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood." What is distinct about the brotherhood of Christians? Are there different ethical modes of acting to the brother and the non-brother? How does this impact our understanding of peoples and Christianity?

Are we headed to a grand and glorious technological future? In this talk, Andrew Willard Jones expects the opposite: "The Future is Always Worse Than You Think It Will Be." As he explains, there are two paths with the development on new technologies: one which leads to an extension of the humane world into greater areas, and another, the technocratic, which closes and mines the world from within.

In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley review the latest New Polity Magazine, Issue 5.3, which includes articles on sex discrimination in the workplace, the demise of the hippocratic oath, the state of the pro-life movement, and more.

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.

The Church sees the world as God’s good and harmonious Creation, a primordial peace. In his acclaimed book Before Church and State, Andrew Willard Jones revealed that society in the High Middle Ages was a striving toward liberation by grace, which led to subsidiarity. In The Church Against the State, he argues that this uniquely Christian political form is still with us, present in our love, our courage, and in all that is noble within us, brought to new life through the Church. In this podcast, Marc Barnes interviews Andrew Willard Jones on his new book The Church Against the State.

All the energy and vitality today is on the political right; the old conservative reactionary stance has been replaced with active, rival voices aimed at constructing a new regime. One such voice is Bronze Age Pervert and his followers. Through their series "The Politics of Paganism," Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones have explored the Nietzschean proposal, arguing that it is doomed to failure. The pagan cosmos is a closed world which cannot provide the freedom and vitality that Nietzsche extols. In this final episode, Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones discuss the failure of the Nietzschean alternative and the open world of a Christian political order.

Why do we not feel free? As modern liberalism continues to isolate and divide, our common experience is a lack of freedom, of being constrained and enslaved. But, how can true freedom be restored? In this episode of the Politics of Paganism, Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones discuss the New Law and how grace restores true freedom.

St. Thomas Aquinas presents salvation history in three stages: The Age of Nature, the Age of Law, and the Age of Grace. The pagans are stuck within the age of nature; fallen humanity inevitably declines into idolatry and slavery. But, God has a plan for saving man. From the time of Moses until Christ, God's chosen people are in the Age of Law which points forward to the coming of Christ. In this podcast, Alex Denley and Dr. Andrew Jones discuss salvation history and the culmination of the Age of Law in the Cross.