Illinois Family Institute (IFI) was blessed to be able to interview three Christian luminaries and astute cultural critics when they were in the Chicago area for the annual Touchstone Conference: Peter Leithart, Carl Trueman, and Rod Dreher.
Sincere thanks to Dr. Leithart, Dr. Trueman, and Mr. Dreher for generously sharing their time and wisdom. Thanks too to James M. Kushiner, writer and editor of Touchstone Magazine and Salvo Magazine, for making these interviews possible, and to Orland Park Christian Reformed Church Pastor Derek Buikema for conducting the interviews.
IFI is pleased to offer these interviews in short savory segments for your edification beginning with Peter Leithart, president of Theopolis Institute and teacher at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Leithart is a prolific writer who has authored many books and writes a regular column for First Things Magazine. He received an A.B. in English and History from Hillsdale College in 1981, and a Master of Arts in Religion and a Master of Theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1986 and 1987. In 1998 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in England. He and his wife, Noel, have ten children and twelve grandchildren.
The first segment of the interview with Dr. Leithart is titled “How Are We Living in Apocalyptic Times?” Pastor Buikema begins by asking what Dr. Leithart means when he refers to “apocalyptic times.” Dr. Leithart explains how he uses that term and shows what “end times have looked like throughout the history of the church. He points to the “fraying of Christian civilization” in America and Europe as evidence that the world system in which we’ve been living is experiencing a “massive upheaval” that signals the end—an apocalypse—of one system, with another one soon to emerge.
