This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

Over the last several years, American Christians have learned to talk in terms of worldview and world picture.

Every single thinker has a world picture, a basic understanding of the way the world is.

And every thinker, every brain, also operates on the basis of a worldview,

those basic assumptions that make the world plausible to us.

But the problem for many American Christians is that our worldview

actually is based upon, well, an insufficient

understanding of the world.

And that's where we need help in conversations with people such as my guest today,

Walter Russell Mead.

Walter Meade is the James Clark Chase Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.

He also serves as editor at large of the American interest.

For several years he was a fellow of the Council of Foreign Relations,

serving as the Henry A Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. foreign policy from 2003 to 2010.

Walter Russell Mead is one of America's leading intellectuals, not only in looking at the

world in terms of foreign policy and geopolitics, but at the United States as well.

Professor Mead, welcome to thinking in public.

Thanks for having me.

I have followed your writings for quite a long time,

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