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 vice president of the Davenant Institute and the editor in chief of Mere Orthodoxy, an online magazine covering the Christian faith in the public sphere. He lives with his wife and children in his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska.



Foreword by Timothy Keller

Introduction



Part 1: The Breakdown of Community

1. The Passing of the American Church

2. The Unwinding of Common Life in America



Part 2: The Problems for Community

3. The Loss of Meaning

4. The Loss of Wonder

5. The Loss of Good Work



Part 3: The Practices of Community

6. Sabbath and the Chief End of Man

7. The Membership

8. Work



Part 4:The Promise of Community

9. Political Doctrine and Civil Virtue

10. The Eternal City

Acknowledgments

Notes