Restoring Humanity: Essays on the Evangelization of Culture

About the Author\nR. Jared Staudt, PhD serves as the Director of Formation for the Archdiocese of Denver and as Visiting Associate Professor at the Augustine Institute. He earned his undergraduate and master's degrees in Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas and his doctorate in systematic theology from Ave Maria University. He is the author of The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture Yesterday & Today, as well as the editor of The University and the Church; Don J. Briel's Essays on Education. He and his wife, Anne, have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate.\nRestoring Humanity weaves together a many-colored coat of cultural evangelization, centering on how the Christian faith renews all aspects of human life. The book lays out a vision of history and culture that flows from the Incarnation as a ground for a sacramental reality. In turn, the human person, who searches for tangible meaning, is torn by the tension between beauty and vanity, even as fallen humanity seeks redemption in the beauty of Christ. From these general principles, the book examines foundational elements of culture in the land, family life, and education. Land grounds the primordial cultural mission given to Adam and Eve and plays a crucial role in salvation history. The home serves as a central place to build a coherent Christian culture through familial prayer, work, leisure, and mission. Education builds upon the family’s primordial role by forming the mind in a coherent vision of life, as well as developing habits that will leaven the wider world. Finally, the Church seeks to renew all of society by restoring faith to its central and unifying role, which it accomplishes by engaging in the New Evangelization that St. John Paul II linked directly to the renewal of culture. R. Jared Staudt, PhD serves as the Director of Formation for the Archdiocese of Denver and as Visiting Associate Professor at the Augustine Institute. He earned his undergraduate and master's degrees in Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas and his doctorate in systematic theology from Ave Maria University. He is the author of the The Eucharist: What Every Catholic Should Know (forthcoming) and The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture Yesterday & Today, as well as the editor of The University and the Church; Don J. Briel's Essays on Education. He and his wife, Anne, have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate.