This seminar explores an array of interrelated questions about the contemporary, largely secular, “post-modern” West. It begins with a deep analysis, rooted in discussion of Brad S. Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation, of the character and historical origins of some major present-day phenomena and conflicts, especially the relationships among politics, religion, rival truth claims, relativism, and a consumerist culture. The next major segment of the course will focus on a Catholic theological and cultural analysis of and response to the post-modern “death of God,” through discussion of Conor Sweeney’s Abiding the Long Defeat. During the last segment of the course, we will read Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies, which argues that our post-modern political, economic, and cultural environment now tends toward a “soft totalitarianism” that could severely restrict the living out of Christian commitments. Dreher relies on various thinkers (such as Hannah Arendt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Shoshana Zuboff) in analyzing our present moment, and he offers practical suggestions based on the experiences of Christians under Soviet domination. Over the course of the semester, we will thus seek to understand the character of our present world and to explore how Christians might live amid its particular challenges.