So I'm hearing from a lot of you out there that you're worried and afraid about persecution,

specifically about state persecution. And I always want to make sure that we're not being overly

dramatic. Things could get a lot worse than they are, but also the state is closing churches.

They're obviously got an animus toward religious practice in this country and toward American

values. And so on this show, we want to be a realist about what the world is like. And I want to

offer you the best of the West when it comes to wisdom and courage in the face of persecution.

So this is a show that's here to equip you with the deep traditions of the West and with

wisdom and faith and courage that goes deeper than just the moment and just the political

fight that we're currently in. That's why it's the classical education that you may have been

denied or you may have missed, maybe you never had a classical education. And the man that I want

to bring forth to you, who maybe you've considered, maybe you haven't, is Saint Thomas more. We're

going to spend two episodes with Saint Thomas more because what I ultimately want to do is I want to

read with you his dialogue of comfort against tribulation. And the reason I'm going to read this is

because this is a work of philosophy and theology by one of the great minds of his day, but it's

also written by somebody who knows where of he speaks because Saint Thomas more wrote the dialogue

of comfort against tribulation while he was in the tower of London that is while he was imprisoned

and awaiting execution for refusing essentially to acknowledge Henry VIII's supremacy over both

church and state and to sanctify his divorce from Catherine of Eragon. More was a man essentially

alone against what was quickly becoming a Protestant church of England. And that part of the story

is kind of famous. More is kind of famous for a lot of reasons, especially for having coined

the idea of utopia. He wrote a work called utopia, which was a sort of parody of utopianism.

And we'll get to that another time. But right now, I wanted to reflect on the part of his life

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