We find ourselves living in a time between times—a hinge point when inherited frameworks are collapsing, trust in one another and in our institutions is eroding, a shared sense of reality is fraying, and power, untethered from humility, turns predatory.

Dear friends,

Into this unsettled moment, Comment invites all those quietly building a more human future—rooted in the dignity of each person, the beauty of our interdependence, and the courage to build what love requires—to join us for the inaugural Understory festival happening at the Washington National Cathedral next May.

As a Comment reader, you know that hope, for us, is not a passive wish but an act of vision and the glue of a community that endures. The Understory will gather a diverse choir of voices, thoughtful yet tested, who are living out this vision in the trenches of cultural and institutional renewal. Together, we’ll draw from the currents of a two-thousand-year-old tradition that has, time and again, subverted the direction of popular despair and revived the parched longings of human beings created to co-create with God.

Beneath today’s fractures and fatigue, something vital is unfurling: a quiet uprising of moral imagination, institutional vision, and spiritually serious public life. The Understory seeks to name and nourish this underground root system—to help a scattered constellation of souls recognize itself, reach across boundaries, and recover a Christian humanist imagination articulate enough to resist the trendlines of a brutalizing age.

WHAT TO EXPECT

This will not be a traditional conference. Picture instead a living magazine, a cathedral congress, a multi-sensory festival—braided together by exultant beauty, powerful stories, feasting, and debate; seminal lectures on Christian humanism and how it might uniquely resource this moment; and shared discernment as we seek to read the signs of the times together.

Every element—from lectures to meals to music—will unfold like a living issue of Comment itself, blending ideas, art, and encounter into one embodied experience.

WHO IS THIS FOR?

This is for those who not only lead organizations but also help shape the kind of world those organizations serve. If you’re asking long-view questions about the future, the commons, and the moral imagination behind your work, this gathering is for you.

Curated by the Comment team and our contributing editors, under the leadership of Cardus and with guidance from civic, artistic, and spiritual leaders across North America, the festival will gather over six hundred people across generations and sectors:

• Artists and culture-makers
• Institutional and civic leaders
• Builders of businesses and nonprofits
• Scholars, pastors, and theologians
• Writers, musicians, and reformers
• Family and community leaders

ROOTED IN CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

The subterranean architecture of the festival draws from the six convictions of the Comment Manifesto:

• The dignity of the human person
• The call to build
• The value of institutions
• The power of encounter
• The global cast of Christianity
• Multiple ways of knowing

These convictions form the root system from which every session will grow—whether in an exhibit under a portico, the hushed intimacy of a crypt chapel, the sparks of a debate, a tactile artistic workshop, or a king’s-table feast in the Cathedral nave.

Like the hidden layer of a forest that shelters life and strengthens what grows above, the Understory seeks to protect and renew the fragile roots of our common life. Please consider tending those roots with us.

EARLY REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

Early registration for the Understory festival is now open. A limited number of tickets are available, and this opportunity will close on January 15. We hope you can join us!

We hope this feels like an invitation to something rare: a space of uncommon trust and holy ambition, where the soul can breathe, the imagination can stretch, and together we remember what’s real, recovering the patience, imagination, and courage to live it, side by side in holy friendship.

With hope and anticipation,

The Comment Team

P.S. The Understory festival is being designed as an expression of abundant hospitality, and we invite those who feel called to support the festival more broadly to consider a Patron Ticket.