The Via Media: A Way of Integrity in Public Life
By +Brian Ernest Brown, CWC
In an age of outrage and algorithms, it can feel as though every conversation demands that we choose a side before we’re even allowed to speak. We are pressed to declare allegiance not to truth or conscience, but to party and tribe. Yet I have long believed, and my journey through faith and ministry has confirmed, that there remains a sacred space between these extremes. It is the Via Media: the middle way.
For me, the Via Media is not the coward’s compromise or the politician’s half-measure. It is the pilgrim’s path, the ancient Christian practice of balance, humility, and discernment. It listens before it condemns, seeks understanding before victory, and remembers that the image of God is found in both our neighbor and our adversary.
I was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church, where I first learned the wisdom of this way. The via media was once described as the bridge between Rome and Geneva, but I have come to see it as something even more essential: the bridge between hearts. It is the discipline of conscience that asks, not “How can I win?” but “How can I love rightly, and live truthfully?”
In our current public life, this way is urgently needed. It is time for clergy and lay voices alike to speak again of compassion, ethics, honor, honesty, and integrity, not as pious abstractions, but as practical virtues for a democratic society. Politics, at its best, is a sacred calling: the art of building community for the common good. At its worst, it becomes the idolatry of power.
The Via Media calls us back to sanity. It asks us to hold together what our culture has torn apart, faith and reason, conviction and humility, justice and mercy. It invites us to critique our own biases with the same fervor with which we critique others. It refuses to let cynicism have the last word.
This blog, and soon, this podcast, is an effort to nurture that conversation. Here I hope to explore how the principles of the common good, the preferential option for the poor, the sanctity of truth, and the generosity of orthodoxy can guide us through the tangled questions of our time.
Whether you stand on the left, the right, or somewhere beyond the compass points of politics, you are welcome here. The Via Media is not a partisan banner. It is a pilgrimage of conscience.
“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
-Micah 6:8
Let us walk this middle way together, not to escape the struggle, but to redeem it.
Coming Soon: The Via Media Podcast – Hosted +Brian Ernest Brown, CWC
The name Via Media, Latin for “The Middle Way,” speaks to balance, reason, and moral courage. It rejects extremism without surrendering conviction, choosing dialogue over dogma and discernment over reaction. In a culture driven by noise and rivalry, Via Media reminds us that the true center is not compromise, but conscience, where justice and mercy meet, and where faith can illuminate politics with humanity and hope.
The Via Media Podcast delves into the moral and spiritual dimensions of politics and the fragile social contract that binds us together. Rooted in faith and conscience, it explores how ethics, justice, and compassion can reclaim our public life from division and distrust. Each episode examines the responsibilities we share as citizens and neighbors, the duty to tell the truth, to care for the vulnerable, and to uphold integrity in governance. Via Media is a call to rebuild civic virtue and rediscover the common good in a polarized age.
Come, join me and let us saunter together, the via media!
+Brian Ernest Brown, CWC