EP#46 Forming Christian Life in the Rust Belt with Reuben Slife
In this episode, Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Reuben Slife about the challenges of Christian life within the realities of late modernity. Growing up in America’s Deep South and beginning in the United Methodist Church tradition, Reuben planned to teach theatre. However, his path took him, via GK Chesterton and the plays of the late St John Paul II, into full communion with the Catholic Church and to life in Steubenville, Ohio, a small town in the American Rust Belt. Reuben finds himself living within an emerging community of Catholic families drawn to building a Christian life together. Reflecting on the dynamics within the town, he describes his experience, both as a Catholic and through his work as an editor of political theology. Reuben explores both the creativity and the tensions around forming Christian life in the midst of a modern Egypt, recognising its harsh categories of self, the state and the market. Drawing on ways of thinking gifted to us from outside the modern West, Reuben is devoted to bringing forward traditions that were vital before the birth of the modern.Reuben Slife is the editor of New Polity Press, in Steubenville, Ohio. New Polity publishes essays, books and podcasts and is a think tank for political theology, dedicated to cultivating the Catholic tradition and fostering a movement to resist the cultural and political trends of the liberal state. Reuben edited and oversaw the translation of Rocco Buttiglione’s Modernity’s Alternative, on Latin America’s “theology of peoples” [teología del pueblo], and currently is working on America in the Mystery of Christ and the Church by David L. Schindler. LinksFor Reuben Slife:https://newpolity.com/presshttps://newpolity.com/https://newpolity.com/podcastshttps://newpolity.com/magazineBooks mentioned in this episode:Modernity's Alternative: How History Is Formed in the Depths of the Peoples by Rocco Buttiglione (Steubenville, OH: New Polity Press, 2025)The Church Against the State: on Subsidiarity and Sovereignty by Andrew Willard Jones (Steubenville, OH: New Polity Press, 2025)America in the Mystery of Christ and the Church by David L. Schindler, edited and with an introduction by Reuben Slife (Steubenville, OH: New Polity Press, forthcoming)For Alan J Roxburgh:http://alanroxburgh.com/aboutFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetworkBooksForming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World (with Roy Searle)Joining God in the Great UnravelingLeadership, God’s Agency and DisruptionsJoining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our TimeFor Jenny Sinclair:Website: https://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclairLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CGFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUKInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/ Get full access to Leaving Egypt at leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/subscribe
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