Hello there. This is Mark Bauerline with another conversation. Before we get to it, a word about one of our sponsors.

Located in the foothills of Wyoming's spectacular wind river range, Wyoming Catholic College, an accredited four-year Great Books Institution is built on the ancient Western tradition of the liberal arts and the freedom of the American West.

The college offers its students an immersion in the primary sources of the classical tradition, the grandeur of the mountain wilderness, and the spiritual heritage of the Catholic Church.

Students experience the illumination of imagination and intellect through the great books and traditional disciplines,

literature and philosophy, mathematics and theology, science and Latin, and an outdoor program second to none.

The college celebrated an in-person graduation with its seniors last year and welcomed its largest freshman class ever this year.

Learn more about the college's unique space in the world of American higher education at Wyoming Catholic.edu.

Chad Pecknold is well known to First Things readers. He doesn't need any introduction, although I'll do it

anyway. He is professor of systematic theology at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., author

of Christianity and Politics, The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning, among other things. He delivered

a lecture a while back that I attended there in Alexandria entitled

The Religious Nature of the City, which has been published, and we want to talk about that.

But first, and another essay that he did on the same substack project called Imago Day as a political concept.

But first, Chad, welcome.

And let me ask you about a few of the projects

in which you are involved.

First, you gave that lecture as a kind of inaugural event

for an institute that you are starting at the Basilica

there in Old Town, Alexandria.

What is that project?

Yeah, thanks so much, Mark, for having me on.

That's always a pleasure to be on your podcast.

...