In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World

ECPA Christian Book Award Finalist - Faith and Culture
Christianity Today Book of the Year Award, Politics and Public Life

Common life in our society is in decline.

Our communities are disintegrating, as the loss of meaningful work and the breakdown of the family leave us anxious and alone―indeed, half of all Americans report daily feelings of loneliness. Our public discourse is polarized and hateful. Ethnic minorities face systemicinjustices and the ever-present fear of violence and deportation. Economic inequalities are widening.

In this book, Jake Meador diagnoses our society's decline as the failure of a particular story we've told about ourselves: the story of modernliberalism. He shows us how that story has led to our collective loss of meaning, wonder, and good work, and then recovers each of these by grounding them in a different story―a story rooted in the deep tradition of the Christian faith.

Our story doesn't have to end in loneliness and despair. There are reasons for hope―reasons grounded in a different, better story. In Search of the Common Good reclaims a vision of common life for our fractured times: a vision that doesn't dependon the destinies of our economies or our political institutions, but on our citizenship in a heavenly city. Only through that vision―and that citizenship―can we truly work together for the common good.

Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy, a contributing editor with Plough, and a contributing writer at The Dispatch. He is the author of What Are Christians For? and In Search of the Common Good. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, National Review, First Things, Books and Culture, and Christianity Today. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife and children.