We imagine modern American writers as either godless radicals or god-fearing reactionaries, but this misses a vital tradition of Christian Leftists challenging both camps. Communion of Radicals is the first history of writers who were political radicals because they were theological conservatives; their reverence for tradition impelled them to work for social justice. From the Gilded Age to the Great Depression to the Civil Rights movement, traditional faith empowered the rebellious writing of socialists, anarchists, and Catholic personalists including Vida Scudder, Dorothy Day, Claude McKay, F. O. Matthiessen, and W. H. Auden. By recovering their strain of traditioned radicalism, I show how strong faith in the past can fuel the struggle for an equitable future. 

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Hear me talk about this project on the Theology Now! podcast from The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia.