Peter Leithart and James Wood sit down with Michael R.J. Bonner for a conversation on liberalism, Christianity, freedom, secularism, Iran, and the theological roots of the modern political order.

Michael R.J. Bonner is a scholar, writer, and political consultant based in Ontario. He received his DPhil from the University of Oxford and has written widely on Iranian history, especially the Sasanian Empire and late antiquity. His books include In Defense of Civilization and The Crisis of Liberalism: The Origin and Destiny of Freedom.

In this conversation, Bonner discusses The Crisis of Liberalism, arguing that liberalism is far more difficult to define, defend, and sustain than many of its champions assume. At its heart, Bonner suggests, liberalism is a political commitment to personal freedom, but that commitment rests on deeper assumptions about human equality, free will, individual autonomy, historical progress, and the separation of religion from the secular realm. Drawing on John Gray, Francis Fukuyama, John Locke, scholastic theology, and the Böckenförde dilemma, Bonner argues that liberalism depends on Christian theological claims that it cannot finally justify on its own.

The conversation also explores the contested Christian roots of liberalism, including debates over free will, Pelagianism, Franciscan voluntarism, nominalism, human equality, and the image of God. Leithart, Wood, and Bonner consider whether liberalism’s dependence on Christianity is a strength, a problem, or both. Along the way, they discuss Western and Iranian political imagination, Zoroastrianism and the Sasanian Empire, secularism as a Christian inheritance, Hobbes, Kant, Comte’s religion of humanity, woke liberal catechisms, Orthodox political theology, symphonia, the Investiture Controversy, and whether liberalism can recover a meaningful account of what freedom is for.

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Peter Leithart and James Wood sit down with John Ehrett for a conversation on political theology, economics, Luther, antitrust, and the church’s witness amid fragile regimes.

John Ehrett is an attorney and writer in Washington, D.C., currently counsel at Lex Politica. He has served at the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Education, and as chief counsel for Senator Josh Hawley. He is a graduate of Patrick Henry College, Yale Law School, and the Institute of Lutheran Theology, and writes Between Two Kingdoms, a Substack on political theology, public policy, postliberalism, and the Lutheran tradition. 

In this conversation, Ehrett discusses his book Martin Luther’s Theology of Antitrust, arguing that Luther’s critique of monopoly, usury, and predatory pricing was not merely economic but theological. Against the modern assumption that antitrust is a “morality-free zone,” Ehrett shows how Luther understood monopolistic behavior as a failure to love one’s neighbor, an attempt to usurp divine prerogatives, and a refusal to live faithfully under providence. From regulatory capture and consumer protection to Uber, AI, and the church’s authority to speak about economic injustice, the conversation explores what it might mean to think Christianly about policy areas often treated as spiritually neutral.

The second half turns to Ehrett’s forthcoming work on Gudina Tumsa, the Ethiopian Lutheran theologian and church leader sometimes called the “African Bonhoeffer.” Ehrett sketches Tumsa’s life under Ethiopia’s Marxist regime, his martyrdom, and his deeply ecclesiocentric political theology. Tumsa’s vision relativizes the state without despising the nation, insisting that “there is the Church, and there are these states.” Along the way, Leithart, Wood, and Ehrett discuss two-kingdom theology, Christendom, ecumenism, national belonging, and why the church’s unity is always a political threat to regimes that demand ultimate allegiance. 

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Peter Leithart and James Wood sit down for a second conversation with Dr. Ephraim Radner. 

Ephraim Radner is a theologian, Anglican priest, and one of the most penetrating thinkers on the doctrine of the church today. He is Professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College (University of Toronto) and the author of several major works including Brutal Unity, Hope Among the Fragments, The End of the Church, and Mortal Goods.

In this conversation, they take stock of the modern ecumenical movement — its genuine gains, its institutional failures, and the deeper roots of Christian disunity that no dialogue paper or cooperative venture has yet reached. Radner argues that division is not merely a pastoral inconvenience but a form of murder, and that the path toward unity runs not through procedure but through sacrifice. From the collapse of North African Christianity to the Joint Declaration on Justification to receptive ecumenism, Radner offers a searching and characteristically unsentimental assessment of where the church finds itself — and what faithfulness might actually require.

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Peter Leithart and James Wood have a conversation with Dr. Bradley Birzer, the author of Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson.

Dr. Bradley J. Birzer received his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 1990 and his Ph.D. in American History from Indiana University in January 1999. Currently Amos Kirk Chair in history and director of American studies at Hillsdale College, Michigan, Birzer specializes in the history of the Jacksonian period, the American Civil War, the American West, and the American Indians. He is a senior fellow with the Center for the American Idea (Texas). He has recently edited a collection of James Fenimore Cooper's works of political and social criticism, and is co-author of a forthcoming encyclopedia of the American West.

His publications include:

Russell Kirk: American Conservative (2015)

Neil Peart: Cultural (Re)Percussions (2015)

American Cicero: Charles Carroll of Carrollton (2010)

Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson (2007)

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth (2003)

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Peter Leithart and James Wood have a conversation with Dr. Kevin Flatt, the author of Secularization, Social Order, and World History: Toward a Global Perspective.

Kevin Flatt serves as Professor of History and Associate Dean of Humanities at Redeemer University, and as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Societal Futures at the University of Waterloo. As associate dean, he provides academic leadership for the programs in History, Philosophy, Politics, and Religion & Theology. His teaching has covered several areas of world and Western history, including Canadian, European, and Middle Eastern history. His research on Protestantism in Canada has been widely featured in national and international media. In recent years, his scholarship has focused on the history and sociology of secularization. His most recent book, Secularization, Social Order, and World History (Routledge, 2026) places secularization within a world-historical comparative framework. Dr. Flatt lives with his wife and three children in his hometown of Kitchener, Ontario.

Books

Flatt, K. Secularization, Social Order, and World History: Toward a Global Perspective. Routledge, 2026.

Flatt, K. After Evangelicalism: The Sixties and the United Church of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

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Peter Leithart and James Wood have a conversation with Stefan Borg, the author of The Return of the Common Good: The Postliberal Project Left and Right.

Stefan Borg is Associate Professor in Political Science and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Swedish Defence University. His current research is focused on two distinct agendas: firstly, U.S. foreign, security and defence policy, and secondly, postliberal social and political thought.

Borg is the author of European Integration and the Problem of the State: A Critique of the Bordering of Europe (Palgrave 2015), and The Return of the Common Good. The Postliberal Project Left and Right (Routledge 2025). His work has also appeared or is forthcoming in international peer-reviewed journals such as European Journal of Social Theory, European Political Science, European Security, Geopolitics, Global Affairs, International Affairs, International Journal, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of International Political Theory, Journal of International Relations and Development, Middle East Critique, Parameters, Review of International Studies, and Security Dialogue.

He currently teaches on liberalism (Liberalism and its Critics) and convenes the undergraduate internship course at SDU.

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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 discuss James' recent course on Christian Nationalism and his recent conversation on the legacy of Tim Keller.

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Peter Leithart and James Wood have a conversation with Philip Pilkington, the author of The Collapse of Global Liberalism: And the Emergence of the Post Liberal World Order

Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and former investment professional. He is the author of The Reformation in Economics and the forthcoming The Collapse of Global Liberalism. His writing has appeared in numerous outlets including The Telegraph, The New York Post, American Affairs, Post-Liberal Order, Moneyweek, The Spectator and Unherd. He is the co-host of the Multipolarity podcast.

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