Seasons and everyday saints

Related reading and listening

1. Seven Messianic titles, seven attributes of Christ — Ken Myers introduces listeners to four composers who each have set all seven of the O Antiphons to music. (17 minutes)
2. Unmasking claims of “secular neutrality” — Lesslie Newbigin on the Church’s prophetic duty concerning public life
3. The kingdom of God has public consequences — Lesslie Newbigin on the subversiveness of the Church’s message to the world
4. Sports in America — FROM VOL. 21 Robert Higgs looks at the history of sports in American experience and at how organized religion has interacted with that history. (12 minutes)
5. Divorcing the spirit of the age — Thomas C. Oden on overcoming the theological faddism of the late twentieth century
6. Developing a Christian aesthetic — In the inaugural lecture for the Eliot Society, titled “Faithful Imaginations in a Meaningful Creation,” Ken Myers addresses the question of the relationship between the arts and the Church. (59 minutes)
7. 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)
8. Let saints on Earth in concert sing . . . — In this audio reprint of an article from First Things, Church historian Robert Wilken describes how the lives of virtuous Christians became models for imitation.(46 minutes)
9. Consecrating the world — Paul Evdokimov on the cosmic effects of the Incarnation
10. The music and the notes are precious — Ken Myers encourages an understanding of the Church as a particular culture that should be nourished and sustained, and then describes the history of an Advent hymn written by St. Ambrose. (27 minutes)
11. Eternal seeds, temporal fruit — Henri de Lubac on how the Church should (and shouldn’t) make a difference in the world
12. The mysteries and glory of Christmas and its music — Ken Myers presents examples of music from five centuries that captures some sense of the astonishing fact of the Nativity of our Lord. (26 minutes)
13. Beckoning to wisdom — Poet Malcolm Guite and composer J.A.C. Redford talk about their collaboration on a song cycle inspired by the O Antiphons of Advent. (22 minutes)
14. David K. Naugle, R.I.P. — Philosophy professor, author, and compassionate mentor David K. Naugle (1952-2021) explains the long history of the concepts of “worldview” and “happiness.” (26 minutes)
15. Walter Hooper, R.I.P., and Christina Rossetti’s Advent poems — Walter Hooper (1931-2020) describes his first meeting with C. S. Lewis, a man he so admired and long served. In a second chapter in today’s Feature, Emma Mason explains how Christina Rossetti’s hopeful eschatological beliefs influenced the poems she wrote about the season of Advent. (21 minutes)
16. Questioning the “sacred-secular” division — With the stage set by Michael Sandel, Jean Bethke Elshtain, David L. Schindler, and John Milbank, Andrew Willard Jones examines a medieval alternative to the modern liberal paradigm. (61 minutes)
17. Fr. Chad Hatfield and Peter J. Leithart on Alexander Schmemann — Alexander Schmemann’s book asks a set of questions about “Christianity and culture” that typically don’t get asked, questions that re-center our lives in gratitude and worship. (20 minutes)
18. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: Malcolm Guite and J. A. C. Redford on the Advent O Antiphons — Poet and priest Malcolm Guite and compose J. A. C. Redford talk about how poetry and liturgy invite repetition, and also about how music interprets a text and alters how one inhabits poetry over time. (64 minutes)
19. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 132 — FEATURED GUESTS: David I. Smith, Susan Felch, D. C. Schindler, Malcolm Guite, and J. A. C. Redford
20. Not just a counterculture — Peter J. Leithart on the public (and prophetic) mission of the Church
21. Assimilation or identity in Christ — Francisco Javier Martínez Fernández on the modern choice given the Church to conform or die
22. The Church as a public reality — William Cavanaugh on how we must be disciples in public, not just citizens
23. Intellectual apostasy and Christian witness — Harry Blamires on unfashionable beliefs about the ends of human beings
24. Cultural participation in reconciliation — Jonathan Wilson on faithfully representing Creation in the culture of the Church
25. The publicly inert Christ of modernity — Dom Anscer Vonier on secularism’s confidence in its freedom from Christ
26. Which story is ours? — “Instead of allowing the Bible to shape us, we may in fact be allowing our culture to shape the Bible for us.”
27. The dead-end of privatized faith — T. S. Eliot on the Church’s duty to interfere with the World
28. True transcendence, true immanence — D. C. Schindler on how believers can be practical atheists
29. The disabling consequences of winsomeness — Stanley Hauerwas on how many modern Christians offered atheists less and less in which to disbelieve.
30. Crowd Culture — Bernard Iddings Bell: “It is because the Church has thus obscured the socially prophetic note that it seems to most people to have no relevancy.”
31. Who strangled God? — James Turner examines the ways in which the pursuit of “relevant” theology helped to make atheism plausible in Western culture
32. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 92 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jake Halpern, Stephen J. Nichols, Richard M. Gamble, Peter J. Leithart, Bill Vitek, and Craig Holdrege