In Search of the Common Good - by Jake Meador

About the Book

Common life in our society is in decline--our communities are disintegrating, our public discourse is hateful, and economic inequalities are widening. In this book, Jake Meador reclaims a vision of common life for our fractured times: a vision that doesn't depend on the destinies of our economies or our political institutions, but on our citizenship in a heavenly city. Only through that vision can we truly work together for the common good.

Book Synopsis

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 systemic injustices 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 modern liberalism. 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 depend on 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.

Review Quotes

"In Search of the Common Good offers a vision for life together that is deep, compelling, and wise. This is a profound and important work by an exceptional writer."

--Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well and Fierce Convictions

"In Search of the Common Good is not just a good book, it is a necessary book for our time. Jake diagnoses many of the deep problems in our society and offers a distinctly Christian path forward. I have already begun recommending the book widely, and I suspect that the church in America will be reading and discussing it for a long time to come."

--Alan Noble, author of Disruptive Witness

"If the bonds of modern society show signs of strain, it is in part because the goods we share as members have ceased to be common or perceived as good. Yet, as Jake Meador reminds us in In Search of the Common Good, the love that unites us around the goods we share in common is reaffirmed through our practices of community and renewed by the promise of community. Meador has provided here an important recovery of the deeply Christian notion of the common good, offering a knowledgeable diagnosis of the common good's fall into disfavor and an equally knowledgeable proposal for recovering it. Meador reminds us that the common good is worth searching for, and in searching for it we share in it together, eager for all to receive the gifts God has given. Read this book--for you and for your community."

--Matthew Arbo, assistant professor of theological studies, director of the Center for Faith and Public Life

"In this beautiful and compelling book, Meador offers readers more than a list of our societal ills. He offers us hope--and a clear and steady path to restoring our homes, churches, and communities. For those already on that path, In Search of the Common Good will breathe new life into their efforts, encouraging them that their lives of quiet faithfulness and goodness are far more significant than they realize. And for those still finding their way, Meador's words beckon us to the path of life."

--Hannah Anderson, author of Humble Roots and All That's Good

"There are voices today that seem either to rub our noses in the church's failures or to revel in the culture's fragmentation. While In Search of the Common Good does confront us with the considerable ills of our time, it does so without giving up on either the church or the culture. Instead, it calls us back toward a vision of the 'good life'--a vision both abandoned by those who have given up on Christian faith and obscured by the harrowed activism of others striving to do influential things in prominent ways in order to demonstrate Christianity's continued cultural viability. Indebted to his own deep Nebraskan roots (and to thoughtful others far beyond his local community), Meador has written a clear, compelling, and distinctly Christian volume focused on restoring communal flourishing. Born of the belief that Christianity is good news for a world beset by evil and for a church struggling with compromise, so we are encouraged to make our difference by taking up a humbler set of Christian disciplines and practicing ordinary piety. Should Wendell Berry, Charles Taylor, and Francis Schaeffer ever have met to discuss the need for the church to lead by loving Jesus in daily neighbor-benefitting fashion, and should that conversation ever have been recorded, then I can imagine it looking and sounding rather like Jake Meador's In Search of the Common Good. A bracing, prayer-inducing yet hope-filled read, I am only glad to have read this volume and pray that it finds a wider audience that will take it to heart."

--Mark P. Ryan, director of the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute, adjunct professor of religion and culture, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis

About the Author

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.