Guests on Volume 105: Julian Young, on the historical context of Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas and on why he still believed in the necessity of religion; Perry L. Glanzer, on the failure of American universities to adequately address the challenge of moral formation; Kenda Creasy Dean, on why churches are to blame for the "moralistic therapeutic Deism" so common among teens; Brian Brock, on how the centrality of technology in Western culture encourages us to see the gift of Creation as merely "nature" awaiting our manipulation; Nicholas Carr, on how the distracted character of multi-tasking ruins reading and how social networking systems sustain a "transactional" view of relationships; and Alan Jacobs, on how the literary form of the essay reproduces the unpredictable way that our thoughts develop.
Guests on Volume 106: Adam Briggle, on how Leon Kass's leadership of the President's Council on Bioethics attempted to reframe public thinking about ethical matters; John C. Médaille, on why economics should be concerned with ethical matters from the bottom up; Christopher Page, on how the presence of choral music in the Church shaped the rise of the West; Christian Smith, on why sociologists need a richer understanding of human nature and human personhood and should recognize "love" as an essential human attribute; Herman Daly, on why he and Wendell Berry are disturbed by the lack of attention paid by classical economics to the realities of the material world; and Thomas Hibbs, on the dark nihilism in the films of Woody Allen.
Guests on Volume 107: Victor Lee Austin, on why authority is not a barrier to true freedom and is necessary for human flourishing (and will be forever); Ellen T. Charry, on why happiness has been underplayed in Christian theology (and why it shouldn't be); Anthony Esolen, on the explicit and implicit teaching that has caused many young people to be cynical and unhappy; Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, on the ambivalence of postwar Germans to the anti-Nazi resistance movement (and to Dietrich Bonhoeffer); Allen Verhey, on why it's dangerous to draw too stark a line between nature and supernature; and Calvin Stapert, on the historical, theological, and musical elements that combined to produce Handel's Messiah.
Guests on Volume 108: Thomas Albert Howard, on why many nineteenth-century Europeans were nervous about the shape of American religious life; Jean Porter, on how natural law provides a rationale for the rule of law and for legislative and judicial authority; Peter Augustine Lawler, on how neither ancient philosophy nor modern science explain human nature (but the Logos does); Hans Boersma, on why Christians should reject the modern separation of Heaven and Earth and recover a "sacramental ontology"; Felicia Wu Song, on how online communication systems shape relationships and community; and Elias Aboujaoude, on how life online makes us think we’re bigger, badder, and smarter than we really are.
Guests on Volume 109: Douglas Coupland, on the strange and wonderful life and thought of media guru Marshall McLuhan; Charles Mathewes, on lessons from Augustine on thinking about our political lives in theological terms; William T. Cavanaugh, on how the modern state is a unique kind of political entity, inviting a new kind of idolatry; William Dyrness, on the challenges of developing a positive theology of desire and the imagination; Steven Guthrie, on relating the Spirit's work in making us human to what happens in art and human creativity; and Susannah Clements, on the changing view of evil evident in the evolution of vampires from Bram Stoker to Sookie Stackhouse.
