The current Friday Feature

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Recommended listening

Music for St. Cecilia’s Day

The Church’s musical culture

Music & the meaning of Creation

Portals to reality

Meet one of our Partners

Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. It provides a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church. To the confusion of voices in the world on matters of order in religious, social, and cultural life, it speaks with a unified voice of that which, manifest in creation and divine revelation, flows from the life of God himself. 

Never evasive and never dull, Touchstone is acclaimed by a wide range of Christian leaders for its honest reporting, thought-provoking analysis, and bold commentary. The magazine features cultural criticism and editorials that tackle tough issues, learned and fresh Bible commentary, interviews, book reviews, news of the Church across denominational lines and around the globe, and more.

On this page, you can browse a listing of the articles and lectures that Touchstone has made available as Features for Mars Hill Audio members.

A recent Bonus Feature

In this July 2015 lecture, Ken Myers explains how it is that our participation in harmonic beauty in music is a kind of participation in the life of God, in Whom all order and beauty coheres and is sustained. Rather than being simply an abstract concept, the harmony of Creation is a reality we can experience through our senses. As an example, Myers describes the power of singing together in harmony; there is power in mutual interaction and submission to a shared order. He charts composer Arvo Pärt’s journey to “purge the chaos” that was the modernist rejection of tonal composition — which was ultimately a rejection of cosmological order — and rediscover the essence of melody and harmony. Myers concludes with a reflection on how we use our physical senses to engage Creation and perceive its harmony and order.

The 18 most recent Conversations and Features we’ve released are described here.

If you’re not yet a member, you can get a free Visitor’s Pass and listen to hours of free audio. Details are here.

Our most recent Journal

Guests on Volume 163

  • ANDREW YOUNGBLOOD, author of Know Thyself: Classical Catholic Education and the Discovery of Self, on the rise of the classical education movement 
  • R. J SNELL, author of Lost in the Chaos: Immanence, Despair, Hope, on living in a chaotic universe
  • NICHOLAS DENYSENKO, author of The Church’s Unholy War: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and Orthodoxy, on the historical background to Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine
  • NIGEL BIGGAR, author of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, on the need for a historically informed moral accounting of the British empire
  • ROBERT MCNAMARA, author of The Personalism of Edith Stein: A Synthesis of Thomism and Phenomenology, on the deep inner life and penetrating philosophical insights of Edith Stein
  • DAVID CAYLEY, author of Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey, on Illich’s understanding of modernity

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