The Civitas Podcast

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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