Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 119

Related reading and listening

• Not good to be alone — In a lecture titled “Gender and the Common Good,” Margaret Harper McCarthy argues that the current ideology regarding gender fundamentally separates people from one another and finally even from themselves. (34 minutes)
• The rediscovery of meaning — Poet and theologian Malcolm Guite explains Owen Barfield’s idea of the development of consciousness over time, an evolution made evident through language that reveals an earlier, pre-modern way of seeing the world. (63 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)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
• Dieleman, Karen — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Karen Dieleman is Professor of English at Redeemer University. In addition to teaching, she pursues scholarship in the field of Victorian poetry, specifically the complexities of religion and theology as they intersect with poetic form.
• In tune with the muses of Zion — Ken Myers on the Christmas music of Michael Praetorius
• In dulci jubilo — Ken Myers introduces some of the music for the season composed by Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), best known for his settings of Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (“Lo how a rose e’er blooming”) and In dulci jubilo. (18 minutes)
• The rich significance of everyday life — In this interview from 2000, Roger Lundin — a frequent guest on our Journal — explains how the poetry of Richer Wilbur connects with the verse of other New England poets. (24 minutes)
• The desires of the heart, the constraints of creation — Roger Lundin describes how Richard Wilbur’s poetry connects aesthetic experience to life in the world.
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
• The family in modern context — Allan C. Carlson explores ways in which the family life has been reconfigured since the Industrial Revolution, with largely destructive effects. (29 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 157 — FEATURED GUESTS: Allan C. Carlson, Matthew Stewart, Steven Knepper, Holly Ordway, Norm Klassen, and Norman Wirzba
• All manner of thing shall be well — T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is regarded by many as his greatest accomplishment. Today’s Feature presents a lecture about this monumental work, a talk given in 2019 by Dr. Janice Brown. (58 minutes)
• “Christianity” is gnostic — Peter Leithart on why what the Church is and practices is not a “religion”
• The consequential witness of St. Patrick — Thomas Cahill describes how the least likely saviors of Western heritage, the Irish, copied all of classical and Christian literature while barbarians rampaged through the rest of Europe. (16 minutes)
• The story of the demotion of stories — Malcolm Guite on the Enlightenment’s rash dismissal of poetic knowledge
• The simplicity beneath the complexity — Theologian Peter J. Leithart offers an outline of the book of Revelation, focusing on the themes of the challenge of faithfulness and the meaning of martyrdom. (46 minutes)
• Man and woman as created realities — Pope Benedixt XVI on “gender” and the devaluation of the family
• Feelings made articulate — Glenn C. Arbery on poetry and the intelligibility of the inner life
• Words as fulcrums — Wendell Berry on the mediating responsibilities of poets
• Richard Wilbur: R.I.P. — Poet Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) describes how poetry is at once profoundly private and yet essentially public. Poetry — like love — calls us to the things of this world. (44 minutes)
• Renaissance music for Good Friday — In a special Feature for Good Friday, Ken Myers shares settings of passages from the Book of Lamentations and of the Tenebrae Responsories by Tomás Luis de Victoria. (18 minutes)
• The Passion and compassion — Richard Viladesau on art, meditation, and the affections
• Peter wept — Poetry and music from the sixteenth century imagining the sorrow of St. Peter in recognizing his betrayal of Jesus
• Meditative music for Passiontide — At the start of Passiontide, Ken Myers introduces listeners to works by the Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus which highlight the theme of lamentation. (18 minutes)
• From cities humming with a restless crowd — In a much-sung hymn and a little-known poem, William Cowper seeks retirement from worldliness
• A very figurative and metaphorical God — David Lyle Jeffrey on the poetic character of the voice of God
• The impact of the rise of non-liturgical worship — Peter J. Leithart reviews Lori Branch’s book Rituals of Spontaneity, in which Branch argues that an “ideology of spontaneity” has led to the modern rise of non-liturgical forms of worship. (29 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 149 — FEATURED GUESTS: Dru Johnson, Steven L. Porter, Reinhard Hütter, Matthew Levering, David Lyle Jeffrey, and Christopher Phillips
• 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)
• Music for St. Cecilia’s Day — Ken Myers introduces several poems and related musical compositions that celebrate the heavenly gift of music and thereby honor St. Cecilia. (21 minutes)
• Analyzing the current indictment of Christopher Columbus — Robert Royal offers thoughtful listeners an alternative to the ignorant and heated indictment of Christopher Columbus that has become fashionable in recent months. (22 minutes)
• Music as medicine for the body and soul — Remy Chiu examines how music in the Renaissance era was marshaled to combat the effects of plague and disease, relating that history to our own response to the current pandemic. (29 minutes)
• Spirits in Bondage: Lewis’s early poetry — Karen Swallow Prior and Don W. King discuss C. S. Lewis’s early poetry and the evidence therein of a “frustrated dualism.” (23 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)
• On reading and “Englishing” Dante — Jason Baxter, Rod Dreher, and Robert Pinsky discuss the age-old appeal and power of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy to awaken our souls to Divine beauty. (25 minutes)
• The public and political dimensions of gratitude — Peter Leithart and Mark Mitchell both assert that gratitude has a public and political concern, and that Christianity caused a significant shift in the understanding of gratitude. (19 minutes)
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 145 — FEATURED GUESTS: David I. Smith, Bruce Hindmarsh, Jason Baxter, John Fea, Laurie Gagne, and Matthew O’Donovan 
• 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)
• Dana Gioia on poets and poetry — In this collection of interview excerpts, poet and essayist Dana Gioia comments on the literary significance and distinctive voices of Longfellow, Donne, Hopkins, and other fellow poets. (25 minutes)
• Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
• 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)
• Peter J. Leithart on Church unity — Peter J. Leithart discusses how the sixteenth-century Colloquy of Marburg shifted the understanding of the Eucharist from something that Christians primarily do together to something about which Christians think or believe a certain way. (70 minutes)
• Mary Midgley, R.I.P. — Philosopher Mary Midgley (1919–2018) was a tireless critic of the reductionist, atomistic claims of modern science. (16 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 136 — FEATURED GUESTS: Thomas Albert Howard, Mark Noll, Andrew Pettegree, Peter J. Leithart, Norm Klassen, James Litton, and Joseph O’Brien
• Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 135 — FEATURED GUESTS: Bob Cutillo, Hans Boersma, Dana Gioia, Matthew Levering, Bruce Gordon, and Markus Rathey
• Peter J. Leithart: The Cultural Consequences of Christian Division — Peter J. Leithart discusses how the sixteenth-century Colloquy of Marburg shifted the understanding of the Eucharist from something that Christians primarily do together to something about which Christians think or believe a certain way. (69 minutes)
• In defense of unity — Peter J. Leithart on the relationship between ecclesial unity and religious liberty
• Creating oneself? Or destroying oneself? — Pope Benedict XVI (and Rabbi Gilles Bernheim) on the anthropological revolution that destroys the family