“To Save the World from the Church Basement: On Christian Humanism,” Fare Forward (December 2020)

But if the goods of Fortune do not perfectly follow upon the cultivation of virtue, then Christian educators mislead our students when we hide the real price of moral formation. The acquisition of virtue and the cultivation of the liberal arts may, in fact, bring an unintended estrangement from family and friends—as it frequently does when formation in the classical tradition places one into a different social class than one’s friends and family. If one is in a society that is sufficiently hostile to the Good, that form of training may even bring martyrdom, as it did for Socrates. A society in which some enclaves are humanistic while others are not may contribute to the historic polarization underway now in America. In all these ways, humanistic learning comes to bring not peace, but a sword.

Read the whole piece at Fare Forward.