The Third Coming

How Catholic Radicals Medievalized American Politics and Set the West Ablaze

De: Peter H. Schwartz

A groundbreaking reframing of post-war America through the lens of conservative Catholicism, and the medieval Catholic moral philosophy that has transformed the nation’s politics and culture

In the 1980s, a generation of conservative Catholic radicals rose from the cul‑de‑sacs of postwar suburban America to wage war on Enlightenment liberalism—the foundational creed of the American republic. We live today with the consequences.

In The Third Coming, political theorist Peter H. Schwartz delivers an intellectually fearless account of the rise of this Catholic elite and the thirteenth‑century theological doctrine providing the blueprint for a future in which human sovereignty gives way to the sovereignty of God. Catholic natural law—the doctrinal north star for this religious counterculture—has underpinned Project 2025 and guides Federalist Society judges, Heritage Foundation scholars, MAGA legislators, and right‑wing “new media” personalities.

Ultimately, Schwartz argues, this medieval resurgence will prove helpless against a third force, the quantum future of the information age in which the algorithm is sovereign—a future arriving faster than we can imagine. Provocative, enlightening, and brilliantly argued, The Third Coming is an essential guide to understanding the collision of America’s past and present, and what comes next.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Are we all Catholics now? Peter Schwartz demonstrates, over the last half century, how intellectuals and suburbanites combined to alter American governance and politics beyond recognition. Fun, informative, and well-written, The Third Coming gives attempts to reclaim Catholic orthodoxy in our day a rather unorthodox treatment—and the outraged scrutiny they deserve.”
—Samuel Moyn, author of Gerontocracy in America

“A bracingly ambitious act of civilizational diagnosis. Schwartz traces the American Right's transformation not to populism or evangelicalism but to the deep, systematic architecture of Catholic natural law—and in doing so rewrites the intellectual history of our present crisis. Erudite, unsettling, and original.”
—Linda M. G. Zerilli, author of A Democratic Theory of Truth

“The Third Coming is a significant contribution to the field of political theory and more broadly to rethinking our moment of multiple crises. It is an ambitious and epic narrative about the successive cosmologies that have governed politics and culture since the medieval moment of Catholic dominance. In lively, vivid prose, Schwartz writes with passion about what is at stake in each of the organizing faiths human beings have lived by and compels readers to travel the grand sweep of historical change. The book is meant to be controversial, and readers will likely disagree with many specific claims, but they are certain to be provoked into deep reflection about our moment.”
—George M. Shulman, author of American Prophecy