Confronting modernity through farming

Related reading and listening

• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 163 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Youngblood, R. J. Snell, Nicholas Denysenko, Nigel Biggar, Robert McNamara, and David Cayley
• Cosmetic surgery and human perfectibility — Elizabeth Haiken examines the shift that occurred in 20th century America from a focus on developing character to a focus on developing “personality” and achieving physical perfection. (19 minutes)
• Beauty, the body, and the “true self” — FROM VOL. 62 Lilian Calles Barger shows the necessity and beauty of healthy embodiment and challenges gnostic ideas found in the church that particularly distort the experiences of women. (15 minutes)
• Science’s need for philosophy and revelation — D. Stephen Long explores a consistent theme in the work of theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar: the relationship between Christianity, modernity, and secularity. (46 minutes)
• Augusto Del Noce’s critique of modernity — FROM VOL. 128 Physicist and mathematician Carlo Lancellotti discusses the life and work of twentieth-century Italian philosopher, Augusto Del Noce. (25 minutes)
• Faith as the pathway to knowledge — Lesslie Newbigin on authority and the Author of all being
• The integration of theoretical and mythic intelligence — FROM VOL. 156 William C. Hackett discusses the relationships between philosophy and theology, and of both to the meaning embedded in myth. (29 minutes)
• A fearful darkness in mind, heart, and spirit — Roberta Bayer draws on the work of George Parkin Grant (1918–1988) to argue that our “culture of death” must be countered with an understanding of reality based in love, redemptive suffering, and a recognition of limitations to individual control. (33 minutes)
• Creation’s goodness and human faithfulness — J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael R. Stevens on Wendell Berry’s understanding of how Creation is a gift with certain givenness
• Productivity or thrift? — Wendell Berry contrasts an economy of productivity (which invites extravagance) and an economy of thrift (which takes care of things)
• The destructive logic of short-term thinking — Wendell Berry on the perils of ignoring the nature of Nature
• Farming and our primal vocation — Shawn and Beth Dougherty make a theological case for biomimicry, or fulfilling our original vocation of tending the earth by working according to the nature of Nature. (68 minutes)
• A theology of eating — FROM VOL. 113 Theologian Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between food and faith. (24 minutes)
• Honoring the pigness of pigs — FROM VOL. 137 Popular innovator and speaker on farming practices Joel Salatin talks about the challenges of caring for Creation within an agricultural and food system that pays little attention to the purposes and inclinations of Creation. (25 minutes)
• Cleansing sea breezes — Thomas C. Oden argues that rather than being conformed to contemporary ideological trends, we should be informed by 2000 years of the Church’s wisdom. And Darrell Amundsen corrects some false claims about the early Church’s views on suicide. (27 minutes)
• Divorcing the spirit of the age — Thomas C. Oden on overcoming the theological faddism of the late twentieth century
• Orienting reason and passions — In an essay titled “The Abolition of Mania” (Modern Age, Spring 2022), Michael Ward applies C. S. Lewis’s insights to the polarization that afflicts modern societies. (16 minutes)
• Lessons from Leviticus — The book of Leviticus may be assumed to be irrelevant for charting a way through the challenges of modernity. Theologian Peter J. Leithart disagrees. (22 minutes)
• Distributist & sustainable economics — Two interview from 2010: John C. Médaille summarizes how distributist economics differs from both capitalism and socialism. Then Herman Daly discusses the danger of economic theory abstracted from the actual stuff of Creation. (44 minutes)
• Where mortals dwell — FROM VOL. 113Theologian Craig Bartholomew provides a biblically rich critique of the contemporary “crisis of place,” a disorienting condition caused by neglect of the meaning of our embodiment. (21 minutes)
• Making peace with the land — Fred Bahnson challenges us to consider how we might honor our created and redeemed relationship with the earth as God’s stewards. (48 minutes)
• Resituating discussion of “science” and “religion” — Peter Harrison argues that modern Western culture’s partitioning of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ into distinct spheres is a novel categorical conception in history. (58 minutes)
• Sources of wisdom (and of doubt) — Roger Lundin shares what he has appreciated about Mars Hill Audio conversations, and he discusses what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (32 minutes)
• Living in a meshwork world — Theologian Norma Wirzba believes that Creation is the “material manifestation of God’s love” and that this fundamental teaching affects everything, especially our understanding of the meaning of modern environmental crises and climate change. (17 minutes)
• “Broken Bodies Redeemed” — Today’s Feature presents a reading of a 2007 article by Gilbert Meilaender that explores the significance for bioethics of the mystery of human being as body and soul. (39 minutes)
• Aspects of our un-Christening — In this Friday Feature — presented courtesy of Biola University — Carlo Lancellotti talks with Aaron Kheriaty about the central ideas in Augusto Del Noce’s writings. (43 minutes)
• Thinking Christianly about the body — Theologian and ethicist Gilbert Meilaender discusses some of the themes he explores in two of his books: Body, Soul and Bioethics; and Bioethics: A Primer for Christians. (19 minutes)
• What is at stake for us in a self-driving future? — Matthew Crawford vividly details the “personal knowledge” acquired in interaction with physical things, their mecho-systems, and the people who care for them. (16 minutes)
• Words as fulcrums — Wendell Berry on the mediating responsibilities of poets
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 148 — FEATURED GUESTS: Steven D. Smith, Willem Vanderburg, Jeffrey Bilbro, Emma Mason, Alison Milbank, and Timothy Larsen
• The loss of awe, the idolatry of partial thinking — Thaddeus J. Kozinski on reading modernity’s symptoms wisely (and wonder-fully)
• Post-liberalism of an earlier generation — Allan C. Carlson discusses an anthology of articles from Free America, a magazine published between 1937 and 1947 whose writers believed that political democracy could only survive if coupled with decentralized economic democracy. (26 minutes)
• Beer brewing and monasticism — Fr. Andrew Bushell talks about why and how he became a brewer and about the intertwined history of brewing and monasticism. (28 minutes)
• The paradoxes of therapeutic culture — Stephen Gardner and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn discuss Philip Reiff’s diagnosis of how psychology replaced the social roles of religion, morality, and custom, redefining the meaning of what is public. (39 minutes)
• “Death lies at the heart of modern medicine” — Dr. Kimbell Kornu, who teaches health care ethics and palliative medicine at St. Louis University, talks about why modern medicine can’t adequately explain health or suffering, even as doctors promote health and try to eliminate suffering. (28 minutes)
• Lessons from quarantine: Making do with tinned fruit — In this audio reprint of “Wendell Berry and Zoom,” Front Porch Republic editor Jeffrey Bilbro reflects on two metaphors that can help put our new-found “dependency” on web-based video conferencing into perspective: tinned fruit and a prosthetic limb. (17 minutes)
• When “follow the science” doesn’t work — Peter Leithart reflects on the all-too-human nature of science and the effects of quarantine on the Church’s embodied mission. (32 minutes)
• Perceiving the common good during a pandemic — D. C. Schindler reflects on the shape of our way of life in wake of a killer virus, seeing signs both encouraging and sinister. (35 minutes)
• Is there a transcendent order of which we are a part? — Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues that the spirit of the (hyper) modern world is one of relentless disposability and of denial of a transcendent order to the cosmos. (36 minutes)
• Deconstructing the Enlightenment — Peter Leithart discusses Johann Georg Hamann’s insights about the nature of language and his prophetic critique of the Enlightenment. (17 minutes)
• Thomas Howard: “The ‘Moral Mythology’ of C. S. Lewis” — Thomas Howard describes C. S. Lewis’s fictional works in terms of a mythological re-presentation of the Christian and pre-modern moral and cosmic vision. (41 minutes)
• James Matthew Wilson: “T. S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy” — James Matthew Wilson examines T. S. Eliot’s cultural conservatism and religious conversion in light of his intellectual and familial influences. (79 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 143 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Regnerus, Jessica Hooten Wilson, John Henry Crosby, John F. Crosby, Wynand De Beer, and Sørina Higgins
• Chesterton and Tolkien as theologians — Alison Milbank discusses how both Chesterton and Tolkien restore reason to fantasy and help us to see things as we were meant to see them. (20 minutes)
• The inevitability of escalating public animosity — With excerpts from books and lectures by Alasdair MacIntyre, Oliver O’Donovan, and Wendell Berry, Ken Myers argues that modern political theory has guaranteed increasing levels of public conflict. (19 minutes)
• The mythic song of modernity — In his book Returning to Reality, philosopher Paul Tyson imagines a grand “Song of Modernity.” In it, he captures the triumphant sense of enlightenment characteristic of modern thought. Ken Myers summarizes some of the key themes in Tyson’s book. (17 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 140 — FEATURED GUESTS: Matthew Rubery, James A. Herrick, Jack Baker, Jeffrey Bilbro, Timothy Gloege, David Hollinger, and Barrett Fisher
• Robert W. Jenson: “How the World Lost Its Story” — Theologian Robert W. Jenson describes how a postmodern world is characterized by the loss of a conviction that we inhabit a “narratable world” that exists coherently outside of ourselves. (40 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 137 — FEATURED GUESTS: Gilbert Meilaender, James L. Nolan, Joel Salatin, Michael Di Fuccia, Robin Leaver, and Michael Marissen
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 130 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jacob Silverman, Carson Holloway, Joseph Atkinson, Greg Peters, Antonio López, and Julian Johnson