Carl R. Trueman
Fellow
Carl R. Trueman is a fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping civic leaders and policy makers better understand the deep roots of our current cultural malaise. In addition to his scholarship on the intellectual foundations of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution, Trueman is also interested in the origins, rise, and current use of critical theory by progressives. He serves as a professor at Grove City College.
Carl R. Trueman is a fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping civic leaders and policy makers better understand the deep roots of our current cultural malaise. In addition to his scholarship on the intellectual foundations of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution, Trueman is also interested in the origins, rise, and current use of critical theory by progressives. He serves as a professor at Grove City College.
Trueman is the author of the best-selling, award-winning 2020 book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution. Born and raised in England, Trueman is a graduate of the Universities of Cambridge (M.A.) and Aberdeen (Ph.D), and has taught on the faculties of the Universities of Nottingham and Aberdeen before moving to the United States in 2001 to teach at Westminster Theological Seminary (PA). In 2017-18 he was the William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Since 2018, he has served as a professor at Grove City College in the Calderwood School of Arts and Humanities.
Trueman’s earlier academic work focused on Reformation and post-Reformation Protestantism, particularly the reception of Martin Luther’s thought in the English context and also the use of late medieval philosophy by seventeenth century Reformed thinkers. More recently, he has studied the rise of modern therapeutic culture, specifically as it shapes popular attitudes to sexual morality, gender identity, and freedom of speech and religion.
Trueman’s latest book, the best-selling The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, explores the nature of the sexual revolution against the background of the development of expressive individualism. It has been described by Rod Dreher, writing in the Wall Street Journal as “one of the most important religious books of the decade” and by Ben Shapiro as “the most important book of our moment.” A concise version of his argument, Strange New World, is due to be published in February 2022, with a foreword authored by EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson.
Trueman has published widely, with scholarly articles in books from Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Brill. His commentaries on contemporary issues appear regularly in First Things, where he is a contributing editor, and he has also published in Public Discourse, Deseret News, and Catholic World Report. Trueman has had a longstanding interest in Marxist theory and he is currently working on a book examining the origins of critical theory in the western Marxist tradition of the early twentieth century.
Linguistic Violence
Carl R. Trueman
Our political polarization and the violence of our public discourse are symptoms of our problem, not the cause thereof.
Articles
First Things / December 17, 2021
Do I Teach at a Woke School?
Carl R. Trueman
The way a Christian school can hold to its beliefs yet give students a good education is to hold faculty to a standard of belief but then ensure that they engage other viewpoints in the classroom, host speakers from a variety of political and philosophical traditions, and encourage students to wrestle honestly with the great ideas and the hard questions of the past and the present.
Articles
The Institute for Faith and Freedom / December 8, 2021
Culture War or Cultural Appeasement?
Carl R. Trueman
Our culture’s obsession with identity means that the culture war will demand we take a stand, one way or the other.
Articles
WORLD Opinions / December 2, 2021
Blame It on Luther?
Carl R. Trueman
Did Martin Luther cause modernity? Was it the failure of the medieval papacy? Or was it the printing press and the rise of capitalism? Until such time as we eschew the simplistic blame game and start to think more historically, we are unlikely to move beyond partisan point-scoring.
Articles
First Things / December 2, 2021
An Argument for a Revised Feminism, Rooted in a Correct Anthropology
Carl R. Trueman
At the heart of Erika Bachiochi’s The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision is the assertion that human beings are not defined by autonomy but rather by relations of dependency and obligation.
Articles
The Catholic World Report / November 26, 2021
Are There Any Adults Left in America?
Carl R. Trueman
In describing Israel during the time of the judges, the Bible says on several occasions that “in those days in Israel there was no king.” In years to come, when the history of 21st-century America is written, the phrase is more likely to be “in those days, the U.S.A. had no adults.”
Articles
WORLD Opinions / November 19, 2021
Queering Veterans Day
Carl R. Trueman
Georgetown’s mission statement may claim that the school is Catholic, but it seems its Catholicism must comport with the latest trendy ideas about identity touted by the left’s lobby groups.
Articles
First Things / November 18, 2021
The Moral Heretics of the Woke Revolution
Carl R. Trueman
The employee revolt at Netflix carries lessons for Christian leaders.
Articles
WORLD Opinions / November 4, 2021
Lessons from the Reformation’s Pamphlet War
Carl R. Trueman
Twitter is both a symptom and a contributing cause of the collapse of rationality we see all around us. And sadly, too many Christians are willing accomplices in this cultural disaster.
Articles
First Things / November 4, 2021
Notre Dame Students Go to War over ‘Woke’ Catholicism
Alexandra DeSanctis
The University of Notre Dame has failed to articulate the truth of Catholic Church teaching on human sexuality and gender identity.
Articles
National Review Online / November 1, 2021
The Church Among the Deathworks
Carl R. Trueman
Long ago, Nietzsche’s Madman asked the rhetorical question, “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?” Sadly, it seems that too many of the gravediggers these days are members of the clergy.
Articles
First Things / October 21, 2021