Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Acton Line podcast: Yuval Levin on why trust in institutions is declining
Acton Line podcast: Yuval Levin on why trust in institutions is declining
Dec 14, 2025 8:13 PM

It’s not news that America’s trust in public institutions is falling. Gallup polls reveal that confidence in the church is at an all time low, and similarly, Pew Research has found that Americans’ trust in the federal government and in each other is “shrinking.” In his new book, titled “A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How mitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream,” Yuval Levin argues that the widespread lack of trust we’re facing stems largely from weakened institutions – and the path forward rests in strengthening institutions rather than tearing them down. In this episode, he joins the podcast to help explain why our institutions have weakened and what we can do to address it. Yuval is an American political analyst and journalist. He is the founding editor of National Affairs and the director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Buy “A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How mitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream,” by Yuval Levin

“A Time to Build’ Review: When All of Politics Is a Stage”

The Remnant Podcast with Jonah Goldberg: The Ties that Bind Us

Trust no one? Americans lack faith in the government, the media and each other, survey finds

Book Review: Build Them Up, Don’t Let Them Down

The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake: “The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.”

“Book Review: A Time to Build,” by Mona Charen

New to the Acton Line podcast? Subscribe here! We also mend starting with these episodes:

Do you have feedback for the Acton Line podcast team? We want to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]. If you like Acton Line, don’t forget to leave a rating and review on the Apple podcast app!

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
The Impact of John Paul II
I am spending a twenty-four hour sabbath, after a busy six weeks of travel and speaking, at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. Frankly, this 80 acre campus is one of the most gorgeous places in all of Illinois. It is about an hour’s drive north of my home. Last evening I had a lovely dinner, in a very wonderful Sicilian restaurant, with my good friend Rev. Dr. Thomas A. Baima, the provost of Mundelein...
The Social Aspect of the Gospel
In preparing for the paper I’m giving this week on Bonhoeffer’s views of church and state, I ran across the following quotes, which nicely illustrate his view of the gospel and its relation to alleviation of social oppression and suffering. In his essay, “Ultimate and Penultimate Things,” he writes, It would be blasphemy against God and our neighbor to leave the hungry unfed while saying that God is closest to those in deepest need. We break bread with the hungry...
Green Elephants
Prior to yesterday’s vote, Republicans for Environmental Protection had announced its slate of endorsed candidates for U.S. Congress. ‘Each of these candidates is a conservation-minded Republican dedicated to responsible environmental stewardship,’ said REP President Martha Marks. ‘While our party as a whole is not where it should be when es to environmental stewardship, electing this slate of Republican candidates would represent a giant stride toward changing that.’ Thought it might be interesting to see how they did in the election....
International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted
John Calvin called prayer the “principal” or “perpetual exercise of faith.” Philip Yancey’s latest book, Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference?, seeks to show how this irreplaceable spiritual exercise continues to be a necessity in today’s world. There is perhaps no better cause for which to pray than the cause of those suffering for Christ, and ing Sunday, November 12, is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP). Promoted by a host of groups, including The Voice...
The Catholicity of the Reformation: Musings on Reason, Will, and Natural Law, Part 7
This post concludes my series on the largely forgotten catholicity of Protestant ethics, with a few brief remarks and reflections. My goal for this series, as stated in Part 1, was to show that voluntarism and nominalism are not the same thing, that two important Reformed theologians (Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi) had more than a passing interest in Thomism (or intellectualism as Pope Benedict XVI referred to it in his now famous Regensburg address), and that evangelicals need...
State and Local Faith-Based Initiatives
One thing that President Bush’s formation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives did was lead the way for the formation of similar offices at various other levels of government. For example, in Michigan, Gov. Granholm formed the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives by means of an executive order in March, 2005. And the city government in Lansing also has such an office, formed in August of this year, and has recently announced the agenda...
Creativity and Capital
How can developing countries pete in a global economy? Humberto Belli, president of Ave Maria College of the Americas in Nicaragua, points to the power of education and human resources. In many cases, poorer countries have a long way to go. “This imbalance in the development of human resources, if not corrected, will negatively impact many countries, impeding them from enjoying the benefits of globalization,” Belli writes. Read mentary here. ...
More on Gerson and Evangelical Politics
As a follow-up to John Armstrong’s post, I point you to this excellent response to Gerson’s article by Joe Knippenberg at No Left Turns (HT: Good Will Hinton). Knippenberg raises the relevant question whether “the ‘new evangelicals’ he describes will have sound practical judgment to go along with their decency and moral energy.” I think it’s true that the potential is there for the “new” evangelicals to go the Jim Wallis route, who is proclaiming the election as “a defeat...
Conservatives and the GOP
In an op-ed last week, Acton senior fellow Jerry Zandstra argues that in Michigan, even though the GOP lost, conservatives won. In “GOP loses, but conservatives win in Michigan” Zandstra explains the phenomenon that “Conservative positions won in the ballot initiatives but Republican candidates lost.” Some more evidence that Republicans have generally abandoned conservative economic es from Cato@Liberty’s examination of the voting records of ousted GOP lawmakers (HT: AmSpec Blog). The conclusion? “The great majority of losing Republicans were economic...
A New Kind of Evangelical Presence
Pundits and pollsters are sorting out the results of Tuesday’s elections day-by-day now. Most are agreed that these mid-term elections do not signal a huge victory for the political left. But why? The Democrats did win both houses of Congress didn’t they? Most of the seats lost by Republicans were lost to candidates as a result of the Democrats running men and women who were far less extreme than the voices of the post-60s crowd that has controlled their party...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved