What is Creedal?
Some background: For years now, Sally and I have been running the Vernacular Podcast Network, a project focused on the advancement of human flourishing through engaging conversations on a variety of different topics. The original Vernacular Podcast continues to have an audience, and has spawned spin-off projects on theology (Creedal Catholic), sports (Third String), and film criticism (Breaking Pod).
Several years ago while in graduate school, I published a regular newsletter called The Clapham Dialogues. The idea was to curate interesting articles from around the web that advance interesting, original, and sometimes provocative arguments. This substack is a reincarnation of that idea, but with some added structure, original longform essays, and seven guiding principles.
The Seven Principles
Advance human flourishing. This has been the aim of our media venture since the beginning: to help people live their lives the way that humans should. The first and fundamental goal of this newsletter is to engage people in activities of the soul that accord with virtue. In my podcasting work, I’ve employed Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia to talk about this aim of flourishing. What is eudaimonia? I’ll let the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Arisotle’s Nichomachean Ethics be our guide:
No one tries to live well for the sake of some further goal; rather, being eudaimon is the highest end, and all subordinate goals—health, wealth, and other such resources—are sought because they promote well-being, not because they are what well-being consists in. But unless we can determine which good or goods happiness consists in, it is of little use to acknowledge that it is the highest end. To resolve this issue, Aristotle asks what the ergon (“function”, “task”, “work”) of a human being is, and argues that it consists in activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue . . . The good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what happiness consists in. Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and therefore living well consists in activities caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence. (emphases added; source)
Respect human dignity. I am persuaded that every single human being has inherent and inalienable dignity, and that the inherence of that dignity entails a duty on the part of everyone to recognize, respect, and uphold it in everyone. Practically speaking, when engaging people in the realm of ideas, this means that we refrain from ad hominem fallacies and distinguish between the rectitude of the idea and the dignity of its proponent.
Find Delight. Robert Frost once said that poetry “begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” Frost’s quote is instructive for our purposes because it both underscores the enjoyment of delight and its ultimate end. Creedal obviously isn’t poetry, but I intend it to be something that begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Reject reactivity. A thriving free press is vital to an open and democratic society, but a reactionary 24/7 news cycle is destructive. A news culture that races to put the most attention-grabbing headlines in front of a viewing public is not one that is interested primarily in human flourishing. Creedal is intentionally designed to be a purveyor of thoughtfulness rather than reaction.
Embrace Nuance. As part of our mission to avoid the reactionary news cycle, Creedal will always seek to identify the contours of difficult issues and reason through them, rejecting tribalism, identitarianism, and partisanship.
Inform, don’t inflame. Perhaps the greatest scourge of our current media environment is publishers’ dependence on clicks and pageviews to drive revenue from advertisers. Creedal will not seek to inflame but to inform, to investigate rather than to instigate.
Empower originality. The long and winding road of 21st century media is pocked with defects, but one bright spot in our landscape of so-called “new media” engagement is the degree to which original, innovative voices can find an outlet. Creedal exists in part to call attention to perspectives outside of the echo chamber. To the extent that we can, we will find, share, resource, and commission original voices on substantive topics.
Questions? Email me: zac@creedalpodcast.com. In the meantime, tell your friends!
