Date
October 19 at 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM EDT
Location
Statler 198
Chesterton Perspectives presents:
Christianity and the Crisis of Liberalism
Monday, October 19th, 2026
Statler 198 or via Zoom
6pm
dinner reception to follow
There is something about the soul that longs for freedom and an inviolable dignity that’s protected from such controls as arbitrary rule and government overreach. We recognize this impulse especially in our American founding and culture and often label it “liberalism.” An imperfect construct, but certainly a net good…right?
Patrick Deneen would argue no. Historically, freedom was understood to require discipline and self-limitation of our desires as well as social and political institutions that encouraged such virtues. Deneen argues that modern liberalism rejected this understanding in favor of a freedom centered on individual choice and liberation from outside constraints. Ironically, this unconstrained “freedom” ultimately requires greater government oversight in an attempt to manage the unrestrained behavior of its citizens. The result, he claims, is both moral and material depletion.
In summary, liberalism is failing because of itself, not in spite of itself, and Deneen believes we must look beyond it.
Before throwing liberalism out the window, however, respondent John Owen cautions that the constitutional democracy associated with liberalism is still our best late-modern political option. Additionally, he believes there is an alternative form of liberalism to be retrieved, one grounded in the historic Christian tradition and more supportive of virtue, institutions, religious practice, and individual conscience than the modern take that Deneen critiques.
Join us for an evening of lively conversation with Patrick Deneen and John Owen as they consider the weaknesses of modern liberalism and the role of the historic Christian tradition as we evaluate whether to retrieve what was lost or retire what has run its course.
Patrick Deneen; Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame
Patrick J. Deneen holds a B.A. in English literature and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University. From 1995-1997 he was Speechwriter and Special Advisor to the Director of the United States Information Agency. From 1997-2005 he was Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. From 2005-2012 he was Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, before joining the faculty of Notre Dame in Fall 2012. He is the author and editor of several books and numerous articles and reviews and has delivered invited lectures around the world.
Deneen was awarded the APSA’s Leo Strauss Award for Best Dissertation in Political Theory in 1995, and an honorable mention for the APSA’s Best First Book Award in 2000. He has been awarded research fellowships from Princeton University, Earhart Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Virginia.
His teaching and writing interests focus on the history of political thought, American political thought, liberalism, conservatism, and constitutionalism.
His widely-discussed 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed, has been translated into over twenty languages and was praised by former President Barack Obama.
John M. Owen; Taylor University Professor of Politics and Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia
John M. Owen (A.B., Duke; M.P.A., Princeton; A.M., Ph.D., Harvard) is Taylor Professor of Politics, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, at the University of Virginia. He is author of The Ecology of Nations (Yale, 2023), winner of the 2025 Grawemeyer Award in World Order, and of Confronting Political Islam (Princeton, 2015), The Clash of Ideas in World Politics (Princeton, 2010), and Liberal Peace, Liberal War (Cornell, 1997) and co-editor of Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order (Columbia, 2011). Owen has published numerous academic articles, as well as essays in First Things, Providence, Christian Scholars’ Review, Foreign Affairs, The Hedgehog Review, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. He has held fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford, the Free University and WZB (Berlin), and the University of British Columbia. In 2015 he received a Humboldt Research Prize (Germany). He has served on the boards of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers and the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville. He and his wife Patricia attend Holy Cross Anglican Church in Crozet, Virginia. They have three adult children.
