Psychiatry & the Spirit of the Age
Dr. Paul McHugh, who teaches psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, talks about the ways in which therapists allow themselves to be highjacked by trendy ideas, and leave behind the disciplines of their science.

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The Public Poetry of W. H. Auden
Literary critic Alan Jacobs talks about how W. H. Auden returned to the Church after recognizing that liberal humanism had no answers to the problem of human evil. He also discusses the social themes in Auden's poetry, which avoided utopianism and apocalypticism.

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Church, Community, & History
Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University discusses his book Sharing the Journey. He highlights the advantages and dangers of the small-group movement. Then Richard Lints, professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, discusses his book The Fabric of Theology, and the need for a return to an understanding of the importance of theology.

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Edge of Life, Edge of Death
Richard Doerflinger recounts the deliberations of the Human Embryo Research Panel, appointed by the National Institutes of Health. On side two, Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things magazine, talks about the legitimization of suicide and euthanasia in a society bankrupt of moral and political coherence.

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On Heroes & Skeptics
On side one, Richard Keyes, of the Massachusetts L’Abri Fellowship, discusses his book about the theme of the heroic in Christianity, True Heroism in a World of Celebrity Counterfeits. On side two, Gene Edward Veith, Jr. investigates postmodernism and its hold on both society and the Church.

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The Quest for the Historical Jung
Scholar Richard Noll discusses his book, The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, in which he uncovers disturbing information about Carl Gustav Jung and Jungian analysis. Noll highlights the decidedly pagan and occult influences that mark Jung’s thought and work, influences that practitioners and other scholars have generally overlooked or ignored.

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Decadent Immortals: Alan Jacobs on Anne Rice
Literary critic Alan Jacobs muses on the popularity of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Unlike traditional horror stories that portray vampires as blood-sucking fiends, Rice’s books extol the power and freedom that the immortals enjoy. Jacobs explores the moral and literary consequences of this unabashed celebration of decadence.

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Bread & the Hungry Soul
Leon Kass, physician, biologist, and professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, discusses his book The Hungry Soul, in which he explores how the activity of eating provides clues for understanding human nature and helps guide morality and communal life. Then Brother Peter Reinhart talks about the art of breadmaking as a metaphor for spiritual life.

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The Supreme Court and Abortion
Russell Hittinger, associate professor of theology at Catholic University, talks about the evolution of the Supreme Court’s reasoning about abortion, privacy, and liberty, culminating in the extraordinary views of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

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The Word Made Scarce
Dr. Barry Sanders (A Is for Ox) chronicles the development of literacy as a cultural force in human history, and explains how it is that, through literacy, we learn to experience regret, guilt, and self-consciousness. He is concerned that television and computer-assisted communication will redefine human experience in dramatic ways.

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Self, Society, & the Diagnosis of Addiction
Sociologist John Steadman Rice maintains that the concept of codependency is rooted in the tenets of “liberation psychotherapy,” a way of thinking about the self that sees all psychological problems as a function of the restrictions placed on individuals by social institutions, especially by the family. Rice asks what kind of society will result if a critical mass of people are converted to an asocial existence.

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Youth Culture & the Church
Mardi Keyes, from the Southborough, Massachusetts branch of L’Abri Fellowship, explains how modern assumptions about the nature of adolescence differ from biblical understanding of human development. She also describes ways in which intergenerational fellowship within the Church can deter many adolescent crises. Then pastor Mark DeVries describes the ideas in his book Family Based Youth Ministry.

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Life Work: On the Christian Idea of Calling
Paul Marshall, author of A Kind of Life Imposed on Man, discusses how society and the Church have understood work throughout history, and what positive ramifications we might expect to see if Christians began to understand their life at work as part of their life in Christ. On side two Os Guinness, author of The Call, explains how vocation and identity have lost their theological moorings among Christians.
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Till We Have Faces and the Meaning of Myth
C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces is, in his own words, “a myth retold,” specifically, the ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche. As literary critic Thomas Howard explains, the ideas explored in the work are wide-ranging and profound: the mystery and “otherness” of the transcendent; human rebellion against the demands of the Divine; servanthood and vicarious suffering. Lewis chose myth as the form through which to wrestle with these ideas, for the mythical way of seeing the world is fundamentally opposed to the tenets of modernism for which Lewis had such unrelenting criticism. Howard discusses the difference between myth and the novel, and suggests that, in many ways, Christianity can be understood as the myth that is true.

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Not by Accident: The Improbability of Life Itself
In 1953, a graduate student at the University of Chicago produced experimental support for the idea that life could have arisen by chance when he combined methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and an electrical spark. The soon-to-be renowned Stanley Miller and his colleagues in science claimed that the resulting amino acids were evidence that life possibly could be derived from non-life. This boast added tremendous momentum to the assertions that there is no God and that, indeed, there exists no objective value whatsoever. In Not By Accident: The Improbability of Life Itself, Dean Overman discusses the inadequacy of historic and current scientific understandings of the origin of life. Author of A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization, Overman delivers a powerful critique from within the scientific tradition. Examining the mathematical impossibility of accident, as well as the problems of complexity inherent in self-organization theory, Overman clears the way for a creator possessing “intelligence with power.”

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The American Way Toward Marriage
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead discusses the rising age of first marriage, the prevalence of premarital cohabitation, and other key elements of modern courtship. Whitehead argues that the new mating system has little to do with the goal of marriage and favors men over women. She suggests ways in which harmful trends in American courtship may be tempered or reversed.

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Maker of Middle-Earth
While it is not a story set in the twentieth century, Tom Shippey (author of J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century) claims that Lord of the Rings is very much a work of the twentieth century; the momentum of evil sweeps characters into action before they understand the events in which they are involved. Joseph Pearce (author of Tolkien: Man and Myth) defends the Lord of the Rings fantasy genre against those who would claim that realistic fiction is a better vessel for truth; because mythology is stripped of the factual, he explains, it can deal with truth unencumbered and therefore convey its moral more directly. Literary critic Ralph Wood explains why he has been drawn to J.R.R. Tolkien's moral Middle-Earth since his first reading of Lord of the Rings in the 1960s. It is a world ordered by heroism, friendship, loyalty, and hope. These ties alone, he states, enable the hobbits to complete their quest and go where no one else can. 86 minutes

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Human Life, Human Dignity
Modern people tend to ignore questions about the nature and purpose of things while learning to control them more efficiently. But as science and technology offer us the ability to fundamentally transform human nature, we can no longer avoid addressing metaphysical questions. The crisis of our time, many thinkers agree, is one concerning the definition of human nature. In “Human Life, Human Dignity,” Leon R. Kass outlines what is at stake and sets forth a framework for indispensable discussions surrounding biotechnologies. Kass stresses that we must approach the discussion with reverence and awe and that a major component of the discussion should be the notion of human dignity. Kass recommends that we turn first not to the findings of science and technology, but to the canon of “residual wisdom” in the East and West—found in literary, philosophical, and religious traditions—that vividly depicts human nature in its glories and tragedies.

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The Crisis of Islam and the Crisis of the West
Since the events of September 11, 2001, many people in the West have been pursuing crash courses in understanding Islamic belief and history. They have realized the wisdom of acquiring some historical perspective on what appears to be a clash of civilizations. In “The Crisis of Islam and the Crisis of the West,” Bernard Lewis, a Western historian of the Middle East whose work is recognized around the world, helps provide that essential perspective.

Shortly after 9/11, a book written by Dr, Lewis before the horrible events of that day was published. It was called What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. The question in the title is asked from the point of view of the Islamic world, and refers not simply to recent events, but to a centuries-long pattern of frustration and disappointment. As Lewis writes in the introduction, “For many centuries the world of Islam was in the forefront of human civilization and achievement.” But the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in the siege of Vienna in 1683 began a period of decline in world influence, and a rise in the influence of Western ideas and habits in the region once totally ruled by the laws of Islam.

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Texts, Sex, and Sanctity: Robert Gagnon on Homosexuality and the Bible
Against Biblical scholars who find that an “ethic of love” transcends biblical prohibitions on various sexual practices, in his book The Bible and Homosexual Practice, Dr. Robert Gagnon demonstrates quite the opposite: that scripture is unequivocally opposed to sexual impurity, including same-sex intercourse.

In a new MARS HILL AUDIO Conversation, “Texts, Sex, and Sanctity: Robert Gagnon on Homosexuality and the Bible,” Gagnon discusses why the biblical text is opposed to same-sex intercourse, what marriage is, and how the Church should be imitating Jesus by reaching out to those who are violating God’s commands while also upholding the commands.

Gagnon’s discussion is augmented with a reading of an article by theologian Philip Turner called “The Episcopalian Preference,” in which he examines the role of individual preferences in the Episcopal Church’s stance on homosexual practices. Turner, vice president of the Anglican Communion Institute, writes about “the subversion of Christian belief and practice by the logic of autonomous individualism” that threatens the Anglican communion as well as all American denominations.

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Science and Theology from the Bottom Up: Sir John Polkinghorne on Enriching the Dialogue
In 1979, a much-respected physicist named John Polkinghorne resigned from his position at Cambridge. Just five years earlier he had been honored for his remarkable achievements in mathematical physics (he had been part of the team that discovered the quark) by being appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society. Polkinghorne was departing the environs of this profound and mysterious reflection on the nature of reality for a vocation no less intellectually and personally challenging: the study of theology and service as an Anglican priest.

One of the benefits to the public of Polkinghorne’s twin interests in science and theology has been the remarkable series of books he has written since 1983, beginning with The Way the World Is, continuing with the publication of his 1993 Gifford Lectures (published as The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker) and most recently Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality (Yale). Sir John Polkinghorne talks about the main themes of this book in Science and Theology from the Bottom Up.

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Hillbilly Thomist: Flannery O'Connor & the Truth of Things
Flannery O’Connor strongly disliked fiction that attempted to be uplifting or improving. She complained in one of her essays about fellow Catholics who wanted “positive literature,” a desire that she felt was rooted in “weak faith and possibly also from this general inability to read.” O’Connor was always nervous about fiction that was concerned about right belief but indifferent to the actual shape of lives being lived. She lamented that “When the Catholic novelist closes his own eyes and tries to see with the eyes of the Church, the result is another addition to that large body of pious trash for which we have so long been famous.”

But Flannery O’Connor held herself and other writers to a high standard rooted in her religious convictions; she once wrote that for novelists, “Our final standard will have to be the demands of art, which are a good deal more exacting than the demands of the Church. There are novels a writer might write, and remain a good Catholic, which his conscience as an artist would not allow him to perpetuate.” Art, in O’Connor’s view, is rooted in the stuff of reality, and thus being a bad artist while trying to be a good Christian is no more excusable than being a bad plumber or a bad accountant or a bad driver while trying to be a good Christian. In all of these vocations, one can only be ethically responsible before God and toward one’s neighbors if one is properly engaged with reality as it is, whether it be leaky pipes, arithmetic, traffic patterns, or story telling.

In this Conversation, Ken Myers talks with Susan Srigley about how O’Connor’s perception of reality suffuses her fiction in ways that fit the views of how art works developed by Thomas Aquinas, views often summarized as “sacramental” or “incarnational.” And Ralph Wood discusses O’Connor’s acceptance of the limits placed in our lives by Providence, how limits may be a source of wisdom rather than frustration. Wood also talks about the place of Southern culture and history in O’Connor’s work.

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Church, State, and Society in Catholic Social Teaching
In 1987, prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously denied the existence of society. "I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. . . . They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. . . ."

When these comments were published, there was a huge outcry from liberals at Mrs. Thatcher's attack on social solidarity. Conservatives meanwhile defended her rejection of the assumption of the nanny state. But both liberals and conservatives seemed to have missed the opportunity to question one key assumption in Mrs. Thatcher's formulation of this problem. Why assume that "society" must be understood as something coordinated and given authority by the state?

Margaret Thatcher's rejection of the existence of society is ironic in light of the fact that in the 19th century, the idea of society was used to confront the growing claims of the power and authority of the state. It was precisely because something called society did exist that the state could not be regarded as omnicompetent.

The history of the development in 19th century Catholic social thought of the idea of society as a spiritual and cultural reality is one of the themes in this MARS HILL AUDIO Conversation with Dr. Russell Hittinger. Hittinger is Research Professor of Law and Warren Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, and the author of The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World. In addition to the contribution of Pope Leo XIII and the revival of Thomistic thought to Catholic social thought, Hittinger also discusses with host Ken Myers the centrality of our ideas about marriage to our thinking about society, the limits of the idea of social contract, the effect of an increasing proportion of Muslims on European social thought, and how modern democracies have abandoned the project of understanding public life in moral terms. 60 minutes.

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Alan Jacobs on The Narnian
In this Conversation with Ken Myers, Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, discusses a number of Lewis's writings, including The Great Divorce, The Abolition of Man, The Magician's Nephew, That Hideous Strength, and The Pilgrim's Regress. The theme that dominates the discussion is Lewis's view of the imagination, and his deep conviction that the shaping of the conscience requires the training of the imagination. 53 minutes.
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The Heav'ns and All the Powers Therein: The Medieval Cosmos and the World of Narnia
For decades, readers and scholars have wondered whether there was a Master Plan for the structure of the seven books in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. In his book Planet Narnia, Michael Ward makes a compelling case that the qualities attributed to the seven planets in the cosmology of antiquity and the Middle Ages are embodied in the seven books about Narnia. In this Conversation with Ken Myers, Ward explains why Lewis thought the pre-Copernican view of the cosmos can still be of spiritual benefit; that view may not be true (in the sense of factual), but its beauty reveals deeper truths. 67 minutes.
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