conversation with Rainn Wilson, Hart shared briefly about an “indescribable” past experience of his own on Mount Athos: I was in this state of spiritual despair, and I also had an encounter. ...So I understand both the difficultly of explaining it and the impossibility of forgetting it, at once, and how it can change your life. But it doesn't come as a set of instructions. It sure as hell didn't turn me into a saint but did actually make me realize that the spiritual dimension of reality is reality. Hart is a Christian socialist and a democratic socialist and has been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. On August 8, 2020, Hart wrote: I’m basically an anarchist and communalist. I believe that all that lilies of the field nonsense that Jesus preached was more than a daydream; and I think the longing for strict social hierarchy ...as an antidote to modernity is simply a longing for a reprise of the same sins that created modernity. With a few more specifics, Hart wrote on April 3, 2022: In my heart of hearts, I want to vote for someone whose entire political philosophy is derived from John Ruskin by way of Kenneth Grahame, with lashings of William Cobbett, Gilbert White, and William Morris; failing that, I want to enjoy the luxury of writing in Wendell Berry on every ballot. But the imminent collapse of the civil order of the entire world doth make pragmatists of us all. I long for the day, however, when I can return to my posture of airily insouciant disdain for the whole system and can again cast votes only for hopeless third party candidates with a clear conscience. But I suspect I will die before that day comes. See also References External links Leaves in the Wind, Hart's subscription newsletter Eclectic Orthodoxy, where Hart has been a long-time commenter David Bentley Hart, Featured Author at First Things from 2012 to 2017 1965 births 21st-century American essayists 21st-century American theologians 21st-century Christian universalists 21st-century Eastern Orthodox theologians Alumni of Lancaster University Alumni of the University of Cambridge American Christian socialists American Christian theologians American male essayists Christian continental philosophers and theologians Christian socialist theologians Christian universalist theologians Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Anglicanism Critics of atheism Duke University faculty Eastern Orthodox socialists Eastern Orthodox philosophers Greek Orthodox Christians from the United States Living people Loyola University