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Steven P. Millies

Professor of Public Theology
Director of The Bernardin Center

Education

B.A., Loyola University Chicago

M.A. and Ph.D., The Catholic University of America

Contact

smillies@ctu.edu

Biography

Steve Millies’s scholarship explores the Catholic church’s relationship to politics in a perspective that embraces history, theology, law, ethics, sociology, philosophy, and political theory.  As Pope Francis has called for a “politics which is farsighted and capable of a new, integral, and interdisciplinary approach,” Millies’s work resists seeing politics only as a conflict over individual interests. Instead, in Pope Francis’s words, politics expresses our “conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for each other and the world.”
Millies studied political theory at The Catholic University of America, completing his degree with a study of religion in British statesman Edmund Burke’s political ideas.  Before coming to CTU, he was associate professor of political science at the University of South Carolina Aiken where he held the Strom Thurmond Endowed Chair in Political Science.

Millies is a member of several learned societies, including the Association for Political Theory, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Society of Christian Ethics.  As well, he participates in the International Thomas Merton Society, the Eric Voegelin Society, and he is the secretary for the Edmund Burke Society of America.  His book, Joseph Bernardin: Seeking Common Ground (Liturgical Press, 2016), won first place in the biography category for the Catholic Press Association’s 2017 Book Awards.  He is a regular contributor to the National Catholic Reporter, and his commentaries have appeared in several periodicals that include America, Commonweal, The Hill, and the Washington Post.  In 2020, he was the Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ Visiting Fellow in Catholic Studies at Loyola University Chicago’s Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage.

 

Millies is at work on his fourth book, a Catholic theological reflection on constitutional government, under the working title—​A House for All Peoples: Roman Catholicism and the Modern Constitutional State.​
Publications
See Also
  • Joseph Bernardin: Seeking Common Ground (Liturgical Press, 2016)
  • Good Intentions:  A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump (Liturgical Press, 2018)
  • A Consistent Ethic of Life: Navigating Catholic Engagement with U.S. Politics (Paulist Press. 2024)