About this episode
James Spencer and Ashish Varma debrief their conversation with William Cavanaugh, and work out what he was and wasn't saying.
They start with a tension: Cavanaugh sounded gentler in conversation than his books read, and both men try to account for it. The answer they land on has to do with audience — that Torture and Eucharist and Being Consumed are written to people who need to resist, while the broader project is aimed at those of us sitting near the center of a global economic order who don't notice we're being formed at all.
Much of the episode turns on Cavanaugh's remark that he couldn't answer a question about the midterms without sounding partisan. James and Ashish read that carefully: not as a coded endorsement, but as a recognition that theological convictions will sometimes land incidentally on one side of a two-party ballot without originating there.
From there they recover the older sense of politics — the life of the polis — through a piece of litter on the ground, a squirrel in the road, and Hebrews on efforts that matter without being ultimate.
Chapters:
00:00 Why he sounded softer than he reads
02:23 The nation state as an ideology, not a neutral container
04:33 Why Cavanaugh reaches for idolatry
07:14 Formation, identity, and voices from the periphery
10:16 "I'm not sure I can answer that without sounding partisan"
16:52 Incidental alignment isn't partisanship
20:52 Recovering the polis
26:26 The litter on the ground
29:35 Creation care and the squirrel in the road
36:00 Amazon, Target, and picking your poison
40:13 Politics as art rather than science
44:16 We don't fix the world; we live faithfully in it
48:15 The fall as an optimistic doctrine
51:04 Hebrews: effort that matters without being ultimate
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