The Intellectual Work of Civilization Renewal
The Senior Fellows program produces the intellectual work that underwrites everything CHI does. Fellows live and work inside actual Halls, in actual places — not in institutions abstracted from the work.
Place-Rooted by Design
The Senior Fellows program is designed around a single non-negotiable: Fellows reside in actual Halls in actual places, ideally as Tutor or Director. The integrated Fellow/Tutor/Director archetype is the strongest possible witness to the CHI model — an intellectual who has committed to a place, formed students in it, and produced scholarship from within it.
A Fellow who is also a Tutor or Director is not dividing their time between intellectual work and operational work. They are doing the same work at two levels: forming students in the particulars of their place, and articulating for the network what that formation means and why it matters.
This is the program's design principle: not a fellowship for people thinking about place-based education, but a fellowship for people doing it.
Produces intellectual work — essays, canon curation, sector definitions, the public honor reframing
Teaches in the Hall — tutorial instruction, student mentorship, formation in the particulars of place
Leads the Hall — organizational responsibility, relationship with the community and university partner
"The long intellectual labor: a fuller account of what flourishing means in a place, written from inside the work, in actual places, by people who have committed to those places."
Three Flows, One Movement
Field Guides are the connective tissue between Fellows and Halls. They translate in both directions — from Fellows to Halls, and from Halls to Fellows. They are the reason the intellectual program does not float free of the operational reality.
Intellectual work made operationally usable. The Fellow's essay becomes the Field Guide's training material. The Field Guide translates it for the Director who is also a first-time Hall founder in rural West Texas.
Lived reality returned to the intellectual conversation. What is actually happening in Halls — the successes, the friction, the unexpected formations — shapes the intellectual agenda. Without this upward flow, the program becomes an ivory tower.
The integrated archetype that closes the loop. A Fellow who lives and works in a Hall doesn't need the loop explained — they are the loop. The upward and downward flows are a single continuous act of formation and reflection.
A Rich Inherited Tradition
The Fellows program curates, extends, and deepens an intellectual tradition that spans traditions — because the insight it is working from genuinely belongs to all of them. The diversity is not forced eclecticism; it is the natural consequence of a principle that is genuinely cross-traditional.
Affection for place — the argument that real knowledge of a place, and genuine fidelity to it, is the basis of responsible stewardship.
The moral imagination — the tradition of ordered liberty, local attachment, and the permanent things that make civilization possible.
Oikophilia — love of home, of the familiar, of the particular — as the foundation of culture and political community.
Faith, freedom, and the calling — the argument that vocation is the key link between faith, formation, and civic life.
Subsidiarity applied in Centesimus Annus — the positive articulation of the principle for a post-Cold War world.
Sphere sovereignty — the principle that different domains of life (family, church, state, school) have their own proper authority.
Also: Catholic Social Teaching · Reformed Sphere Sovereignty · The Anti-Federalist constitutional tradition · The broader Christian and classical canon on family, community, and society
What Fellows Are Building
The long intellectual labor: a fuller account of what flourishing means in a place, a deepened theological articulation of subsidiarity across traditions, a publicly defensible economic vision for place-rooted life, and the ongoing articulation of why this work matters.
A Christian Economic Vision for Place
Seeded by Mark Tarpley. A substantive theological and economic account of how place-rooted business, agriculture, and trade build rather than extract from communities.
Sector-Specific Definitions of Flourishing
What does a flourishing local medical community actually look like? A flourishing local legal culture? Each sector needs its own account, not a generic definition.
Place-Fidelity Across Diverse Communities
The place-fidelity question across the full diversity of American communities — Hispanic Catholic, Black Protestant, rural evangelical, urban Orthodox — each has its own particulars.
The Public Honor Reframing
The intellectual case that staying with intention is more ambitious than leaving by default — written at the level of cultural argument, not just CHI marketing.
Canon Curation
Bibliographies, reading guides, and syllabi for Halls and tutors. The canon that underwrites the CHI model, made accessible and deployable.
Voices From Every Tradition the Work Reaches
The Fellows program needs voices whose intellectual and ecclesial home is in the traditions of the places where Halls operate. As Halls take root in Hispanic Catholic communities, the program needs Fellows from that tradition. As Halls take root in historically Black communities, the program needs Fellows from the Black Church traditions.
The growth of the Fellows roster tracks the growth of the actual work. This is not a principle of demographic representation — it is a principle of place-fidelity. Serving a place requires intellectual voices formed within it.
The Senior Fellows program is currently in formation. If you are a scholar, pastor, or practitioner doing intellectual work at the intersection of place, formation, and Christian tradition — and you are committed to a specific community — we want to hear from you.
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