released 2/6/2026

Craig Bartholomew, author of Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place for Today (Baker Academic, 2011), reflects on the importance of place to our humanity. He agrees with the vast volume of literature detailing a “crisis of place” in our world, from the aesthetic homogeneity of suburban sprawl to the ecological devastation in various parts of the world to the movements of refugees from their homelands. Bartholomew explains how global culture is primarily structured in such a way as to increase spending and consumption; that is, it’s built like a commercial mall. Not everyone views the diminishment of place as a problem, however. With these people, Bartholomew would agree that modernity brings many blessings, but at the same time, its destructive aspects have become evident and need to be addressed. He suggests that it is the abstraction of truth and knowledge from lived experience by (would-be) pure reason that is responsible for the damaging tendencies of some scientific pursuits, and he traces this practice of abstraction from the Enlightenment to contemporary ways of understanding the pursuit of knowledge. Bartholomew ends by reflecting on the incredible fertility of Scripture’s view of place and the possibility of its sacramental nature. A segment of this interview was originally published on Volume 113 of the Journal and was repackaged as an Archive Feature.

58 minutes

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