Chalcedon Podcast

The Chalcedon Podcast featuring Mark Rushdoony, Martin Selbrede, and Andrea Schwartz. Watch it now!Years ago—before podcasting was—Chalcedon published a regular discussion-based audio series entitled “The Easy Chair.” We’re excited to bring back a new version of that format in the digital age.

  1. vor 5 Tagen

    Sovereignty, Power, and Dominion

    The question of who holds ultimate authority is not merely political — it is inescapably theological. In this episode of the Chalcedon Podcast, Mark Rushdoony, Martin Selbrede, and Andrea Schwartz discuss R.J. Rushdoony's book *Sovereignty* and examine why the transfer of this divine attribute to human institutions has been the driving engine of tyranny, utopianism, and cultural disintegration. They trace the historical trajectory from America's founding — where sovereignty was deliberately withheld from the Constitution as a term reserved for God alone — to the present day, where competing claims of human sovereignty generate endless conflict and the steady expansion of state power. The conversation moves beyond diagnosis to address what faithful Christians are called to do. Drawing on the dominion mandate, the Great Commission, and the ministry of reconciliation, the hosts argue that Christian Reconstruction is not a political program but a call to comprehensive obedience — applying God's law to every area of life, beginning with self-government and extending generationally. They push back against both pietistic retreat and humanistic power-grabbing, insisting that moral authority rooted in Scripture is the only force capable of genuine cultural transformation. The episode also addresses the critical distinction between dominion and domination, between ideas and faith, and between principles as abstractions and the personal lordship of Jesus Christ over all things.

  2. 6. Juli

    Blessed are the Peacemakers

    When Jesus declared "blessed are the peacemakers," was He describing a passive inner feeling, or commissioning His people to actively establish the conditions for genuine human flourishing? As the United States marks its 250th anniversary — a nation born from a declaration that led to war before it led to peace — the hosts of the Chalcedon Podcast explore what biblical peacemaking actually requires. The answer, they argue, is far more demanding than either pacifism or mere conflict avoidance. The episode draws a critical distinction between peacekeeping and peacemaking. Peacekeeping maintains a status quo; peacemaking proactively establishes the conditions under which true shalom can flourish. Mark Rushdoony traces the counterfeit versions of peace — the Pax Romana, the "peace of Islam" — showing that coerced order is not biblical blessedness. Martin Selbrede develops the argument that peace is always a byproduct of something else: the propagation of God's law and the gospel working through the Holy Spirit. Without peace between God and man, any peace between man and man is merely a "brotherhood of thieves and murderers." The discussion also addresses the practical question of doctrinal disagreement within the church, arguing for organic unity and charitable co-belligerence while refusing to compromise the standard of God's Word. For Christians navigating an age of social fragmentation, tribal hostility, and shrinking attention spans, this episode offers a bracing reorientation. Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of God's order — and its establishment is not optional for those who name the name of Christ. It is a commission rooted in the very character of the Prince of Peace whose government and peace shall increase without end.

  3. 2. Juni

    The Nature of the American System

    What made America great is almost universally misunderstood — not only by secularists who have revised the record, but by Christians who have accepted the revised version. The phrase "Make America Great Again" assumes a prior greatness that most people cannot actually define or explain. In this episode, the hosts of the Chalcedon Podcast take up R.J. Rushdoony's early work *The Nature of the American System* and trace what that greatness actually consisted of, why it was possible, and through what mechanisms it was dismantled. The answer, as Rushdoony documents from original sources, runs through two elements almost entirely absent from secular historical accounts: the theological dispute that precipitated the War of Independence, and the destruction of localism. The colonies were not unified by abstract Enlightenment ideals — they were Christian communities with distinct theological identities, chartered separately, governed locally, and grounded in a biblical ethic that shaped law, education, economics, and family life. The "second American revolution" was the progressive subversion of that order: the spread of Unitarian influence, the rise of statist education under Horace Mann, the centralization of charitable functions in government, and the steady migration of power from counties and families to a federal apparatus with no ceiling on its ambitions. For Christians seeking to understand how to recover what has been lost, this episode offers something more useful than nostalgia: a precise diagnosis of where the founding order was eroded, what was lost at each stage, and what kind of recovery is actually required. The path forward is not a political slogan — it is the repossession of Christian self-government, beginning at the county, the school, and the family.

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The Chalcedon Podcast featuring Mark Rushdoony, Martin Selbrede, and Andrea Schwartz. Watch it now!Years ago—before podcasting was—Chalcedon published a regular discussion-based audio series entitled “The Easy Chair.” We’re excited to bring back a new version of that format in the digital age.

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