March 25, 2021
The Ethics and Public Policy Center is pleased to announce the creation of the Theology of Home Project, led by our new Fellows Carrie Gress and Noelle Mering. EPPC’s Theology of Home Project will focus on equipping biblically orthodox Americans in living out the faith under the challenging new circumstances of twenty-first century America.
Gress and Mering are the co-authors of Theology of Home: Finding the Eternal in the Everyday and Theology of Home II: The Spiritual Art of Homemaking. The duo has also developed the online women’s magazine TheologyofHome.com, a site devoted to exploring the far-reaching interests, from lifestyle to faith, of women today.
At EPPC, they will look carefully at the important role the home plays in life, culture, and public policy. With the advent of radical feminism, the home has been denigrated at the expense of the family, the basic cell of civilization. And while efforts have been made to restore the culture, little progress will be made without a restoration the home. For fifty years the importance of home has been ignored, diminished, and even attacked or ridiculed. Yet what it signifies speaks to a universal human longing and is a vital piece for us to reclaim.
The Theology of Home Project will proactively advance an ordered vision of home and family by expanding into broader methods of engaging women such as developing retreats and workshops, hosting a podcast with advice and analysis, and growing and expanding daily engagement through their online magazine and books. All of these efforts will be aimed at assisting and inspiring women (and men) in the vitally important work of home and family.
“Scholars at EPPC advise Church leaders and policy makers, and with the arrival of Carrie and Noelle our scholars will be advising the leaders of the domestic church and the primordial economy. EPPC is committed to defending the family in theory, in policy, and in practice. Carrie and Noelle bring essential insights on how best to do all three. They help ensure that EPPC will remain the preeminent institution for biblically orthodox Americans seeking wisdom on how to navigate the years ahead,” said EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson.
“We are so grateful to EPPC and for Ryan Anderson’s vision to see that the home is not unrelated or somehow separate from the broader issues of culture, law, and policy,” said Gress and Mering. “Our work at EPPC will promote the vital vocation of home-maker, someone who makes the home become more than just a familiar hotel. Home is where we are meant to be nurtured, known, and loved for who we are. This requires sustained work. With this kind of solid foundation, children can then engage the world with courage and moral clarity.”
Carrie Gress, a mother of five, earned a doctorate in philosophy from The Catholic University of America. She has authored or co-authored eight books, including City of Saints: A Pilgrim’s Guide to John Paul II’s Krakow, with George Weigel, and The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity. Read her EPPC bio here.
Noelle Mering, a mother of six, is the author of the forthcoming book, Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology (May 2021), and a regular contributor to secular and Christian media. Read her EPPC bio here.
Gress and Mering have both addressed major issues that have weakened the home and the family, specifically the role of radical feminism in Gress’s The Anti-Mary Exposed, while Mering looks carefully at the rupturing elements of today’s critical theory in her book Awake, Not Woke.
Praise for Carrie Gress, Noelle Mering, and the Theology of Home Project at EPPC
“Any lasting renewal of American life needs to begin with the family: nourishing it, encouraging it, protecting it. Carrie Gress and Noelle Mering have pursued that goal with marvelous skill through their Theology of Home project. Situating their work now in an environment as distinguished and fruitful as the Ethics and Public Policy Center is great news, and I enthusiastically endorse it.”
— Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop Emeritus of Philadelphia
“Theology of Home is an inspired spiritual and cultural project cherishing the details of family life where children are formed in virtue and wisdom and parents grow in the self-giving love that brings joy and maturity. It has never been more needed.”
— Mary Ellen Bork, author and EPPC Board Member
“Wokeness, expressive individualism, and technological tyranny have deeply frayed our cultural fabric, affecting not only law and policy but also relationships and family life. Consequently, any successful effort to renew the culture and project a dynamic vision for the future must begin at home. That’s why I’m so delighted that Carrie Gress and Noelle Mering are bringing their exciting project, the Theology of Home, to EPPC. Their work, which offers an appealing combination of spiritual depth, intellectual vision, and practical realism, is already having a tremendous impact. I feel blessed to have them as colleagues and future collaborators.”
— Mary Rice Hasson, Kate O’Beirne Fellow, EPPC
“Our Lord’s Incarnation sets the pattern for all Christian living. That is, the word must always be made flesh. The truths that we receive and profess must always become incarnate and lived out. The first place that occurs is—as it was for Jesus Christ—the home. God began the restoration of all things in the humble home of Nazareth. Following this fundamental principle, EPPC’s Theology of the Home Project seeks to restore the centrality of the home as the place where the truth of the person is first received and lived out.”
— Fr. Paul Scalia, Episcopal Vicar for Clergy for the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Pastor of St. James Catholic Church
“What a pleasure and privilege to welcome Carrie Gress back to the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where for years she made important contributions as manager of the Catholic Studies program. Since then, Carrie has shown a remarkable ability to ‘translate’ the best of classic and contemporary Catholic thought into meaningful applications for everyday life, including the life of that most basic of human institutions, the family. She and Noelle Mering are pioneers of a new pastoral theology that speaks to some of the most urgent questions in culture and society today, and I look forward to working with them as they make even greater contributions to the renewal of America and the world Church.”
— George Weigel, William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies, EPPC
“There is no denying that what it means to be a woman is under assault. And the traditional idea of family fares no better. Enter the Theology of Home Project. With compelling pictures and engaging content, the project invites weary women home —the place where life unfolds.”
— Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, Director of The Conscience Project, Legal Analyst for EWTN News, mother of 10
