PREVIEW

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Guests heard on Volume 148

Steven D. Smith, author of Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac, on how a modern “religion without God” characterizes what alleges to be secular neutrality

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Willem Vanderburg, author of Secular Nations Under New Gods: Christianity’s Subversion by Technology and Politics, on the costs of forgetting the unity and interdependence of Creation

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Jeffrey Bilbro, author of Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms, on lessons from Wendell Berry’s poetry, fiction, and essays about the virtues that characterize people who foster sustainable cultures

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Emma Mason, author of Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith, on the theological concerns evident in the poetry of Christina Rossetti

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Alison Milbank, author of God and the Gothic: Religion, Romance, and Reality in the English Literary Tradition, on how the Gothic literary genre in England expressed ambivalence about the effects of the Reformation

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Timothy Larsen, author of George MacDonald in the Age of Miracles: Incarnation, Doubt, and Reenchantment, on George MacDonald and Victorian earnestness about faith and anxieties about doubt

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Related reading and listening

  1. A prophetic “wake-up call” — In this 2024 lecture honoring the bicentennial of George MacDonald’s birth, Malcolm Guite explores MacDonald’s power to awaken readers’ spirits and effect in them a change of consciousness. (59 minutes)
  2. “You love the man at once” — Marianne Wright on the generosity and geniality of George MacDonald
  3. Perceiving truths that dazzle gradually — Rolland Hein on lessons from George MacDonald about the imagination as a spiritual faculty
  4. We wonder as they wander — Daniel Gabelman on the spiritual geography of George MacDonald’s fairyland
  5. Foolishness, gravity, and the Church — In this essay, Albert L. Shepherd V explains why George MacDonald’s story “The Light Princess” is meant for “all who are childlike in faith and imagination.” (8 minutes)
  6. Victorian ideas about belief and doubt —
    FROM VOL. 148
    Timothy Larsen situates George MacDonald within a Victorian understanding of faith and doubt. (17 minutes)
  7. “Prophet of holiness” — Timothy Larsen discusses a new edition of George MacDonald‘s Diary of An Old Soul, a slim book of poem-prayers to be read daily as a devotional aid. (30 minutes)
  8. What is lost with labor-saving devices — Romano Guardini on what is lost when cultural pursuits eclipse natural order
  9. How fantasy restores the world — In this 2019 lecture, Alison Milbank shows how fantasy can help restore to us a vision of human flourishing that counters the atomization and meaninglessness of modern life. (43 minutes)
  10. The (super)natural theology of fairy-tales — Alison Milbank describes Chesterton’s belief that story-telling is an affirmation of transcendent meaning
  11. Technology and the kingdom of God —
    FROM VOL. 63
    Albert Borgmann (1937–2023) believes Christians have an obligation to discuss and discern the kind of world that technology creates and encourages. (12 minutes)
  12. The gift of meaningful work — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler argues that genuine work is inherently meaningful and facilitates an encounter with reality and therefore, ultimately, with God. (36 minutes)
  13. Diverting language from its richest possibilities —
    FROM VOL. 75
    Steve Talbott discusses the rich capacities of language and how technology diminishes them. (18 minutes)
  14. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 162 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, R. Jared Staudt, Paul Weston, William C. Hackett, Hans Boersma, and David Paul Baird
  15. Automation and human agency —
    FROM VOL. 150
    Philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford laments the losses of human skill that correspond with gains in mechanical automation. (21 minutes)
  16. “A state of divine carelessness” —
    FROM VOL. 121
    Daniel Gabelman attempts to correct the notion that George MacDonald prizes seriousness and sobriety. (20 minutes)
  17. No neutral view of the cosmos — Ken Myers argues that Christians need to recover a “whole-earth discipleship” that enables them to think Christianly about all areas of life, including public life. (50 minutes)
  18. 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
  19. Productivity or thrift? — Wendell Berry contrasts an economy of productivity (which invites extravagance) and an economy of thrift (which takes care of things)
  20. The destructive logic of short-term thinking — Wendell Berry on the perils of ignoring the nature of Nature
  21. Seeking control, in white magic and The Green Book — Alan Jacobs on C. S. Lewis’s critique of the modern pursuit of god-like control
  22. Bilbro, Jeffrey — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Jeffrey Bilbro is Associate Professor of English at Grove City College and Editor-in-Chief at the Front Porch Republic.
  23. Smith, Steven D. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Steven D. Smith is the Co-Director of the University of San Diego’s Institute of Law and Religion.
  24. Milbank, Alison — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Alison Milbank is Professor of Theology and literature at the University of Nottingham and an Anglican priest, attached to Southwell Minster, where she is priest vicar and Canon Theologian.
  25. Mason, Emma — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Emma Mason is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Her research and teaching are focused on Christianity and literature.
  26. Larsen, Timothy — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Timothy Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College (IL).
  27. 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)
  28. In the image of an Imaginer — Dorothy L. Sayers on the inevitability of analogical language about God (and everything else)
  29. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
  30. Life, liberty, and the defense of dignity — In a 2003 interview, Leon Kass discussed his book Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. The unifying theme in the book’s essays is the threat of dehumanization in one form or another. (36 minutes)
  31. The surrender of culture to technology —
    FROM VOL. 6
    Neal Postman discuses the ways in which how we think about the world has been influenced by communications technology, even in its earliest forms. (11 minutes)
  32. A.I., power, control, & knowledge — Ken Myers shares some paragraphs from Langdon Winner‘s seminal book, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (1977) and from Roger Shattuck‘s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (1996). An interview with Shattuck is also presented. (31 minutes)
  33. A George MacDonald symposium — Excerpts from four interviews talking about the work of George MacDonald: Michael Di Fuccia, Marianne Wright, David Fagerberg, and Daniel Gabelman. (28 minutes)
  34. George MacDonald on the imagination — Readings from two essays by George MacDonald about how the human imagination is “made in the image” of God’s imagination. (20 minutes)
  35. Technology and social imaginaries — In this interview from 1999, cultural historian David Nye insists that societies have choices about how they use technologies, but that once choices are made and established, a definite momentum is established. (19 minutes)
  36. Living into focus — As our lives are increasingly shaped by technologically defined ways of living, Arthur Boers discusses how we might choose focal practices that counter distraction and isolation. (32 minutes)
  37. Albert Borgmann, R.I.P. — Albert Borgmann argues that, despite its promise to the contrary, technology fails to provide meaning, significance, and coherence to our lives. (47 minutes)
  38. Embedded values and dreams — Felicia Wu Song on why our technologies are not neutral tools
  39. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 154 — FEATURED GUESTS: Felicia Wu Song, Michael Ward, Norman Wirzba, Carl Trueman, D. C. Schindler, and Kerry McCarthy
  40. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 152 — FEATURED GUESTS: Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Jeffrey Bilbro, Zena Hitz, James L. Nolan, Jr., Bishop Robert Barron, and Jason Blakely
  41. The consoling hum of technological society — Jacques Ellul on the danger of confusing “technology” with “machines”
  42. We are not Cybermen — Essayist L. M. Sacasas discusses some of the ideas of Ivan Illich, whose work has influenced Sacasas’s own understanding of the anti-human dynamics of technological society. (21 minutes)
  43. America (not the Church) as the New Creation — David E. Nye on one of the founding myths of America
  44. Technological choices become culture — David E. Nye insists that societies do have choices about how they use technologies, but that once choices are made and established both politically and economically, a definite momentum is established. (19 minutes)
  45. Loss of significance — Steve Talbott on how technology alienates us from the world
  46. Technology as magic — Richard Stivers describes how the hyperrationality of technological societies drives many people to lives guided by instinct, emotion, superstition, and fantasy. Also included in this Feature is an interview with David Gill, who summarizes some of the key ideas in the work of Jacques Ellul, a major influence in the writings of Stivers. (24 minutes)
  47. All how, no why — Langdon Winner summarizes a key theme in Jacques Ellul’s writing about technology
  48. Not in tune with the world — Michael Hanby on how the “technological paradigm” flattens our thinking
  49. 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)
  50. Wise use of educational technologies — David I. Smith articulates the difficulties Christian schools face as they seek to use technology in a faithful way. (24 minutes)
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