With John M. Owen
You’re invited to Regent's 2025 Evening Public Lecture series! Join us in the chapel or tune in online to explore theology, culture, and much more with this year’s summer faculty.
To livestream this and other Evening Public Lectures, visit us at rgnt.net/live.
About the Lecture
Democracy, or constitutional self-government, has been a blessing to the church and the world in the modern era. But democracy is in trouble in many countries around the world, including some wealthy ones that not long ago looked steady and stable. John Owen will discuss the travails of democracy, focusing particularly on how the content of its underlying philosophy of liberalism—the theory that upholds individual freedom as the highest political good—has shifted over the centuries; why today’s version of liberalism is a mixed blessing; and how Christians might help their societies rethink liberalism and repair their politics.
About the Speaker
John M. Owen (AB, Duke; MPA, Princeton; AM, PhD, 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 (2023), for which he recently received the 2025 Grawemeyer Award for World Order. His other works include Confronting Political Islam (2015), The Clash of Ideas in World Politics (2010), and Liberal Peace, Liberal War (1997), and co-editor of Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order (2011). Owen has published essays in First Things, Providence, Christian Scholars’ Review, Foreign Affairs, The Hedgehog Review, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Dr. Owen 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 is married to Trish, whose late parents, Phil and Marguerite Hill, were blessed to be involved at Regent from its earliest days in roles ranging from manager of the Bookstore to member of the Board. John and Trish Owen attend Holy Cross Anglican Church in Crozet, Virginia. They have three adult children.
Dr. Owen is teaching Christianity & Politics from July 21 to 25 as part of Regent’s 2025 Summer Programs.
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