Christian Smith

Guests on Volume 112: Christian Smith, on why "emerging adults" feel compelled to keep all their options open, in life and in thought; David L. Schindler, on how modern liberalism fails to acknowledge the reality of God's love in the order of Creation; Sara Anson Vaux, on the moral vision of director Clint Eastwood; Melvyn Bragg, on the origins and profound cultural influence of the King James Bible; Timothy Larsen, on how Victorians were united in their preoccupation with the Bible, whether or not they believed in God; and Ralph C. Wood, on the sacramental vision of G. K. Chesterton, and on the enigmatic message of The Man Who Was Thursday.

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 100: Jennifer Burns, on the life and legacy of Ayn Rand, "goddess of the market" and entrenched enemy of altruism; Christian Smith, on the aimless cultural world of "emerging adulthood" and on how it makes the idea of objective moral order implausible; and Dallas Willard, on why it's important to recover the conviction that religious beliefs involve real knowledge. In honor of the five score milestone, part two of the issue features a look back at the beginnings of the Journal and a few special excerpts of conversations with those early guests, including Peter Kreeft on Lewis, Huxley, and J.F.K. after death; P. D. James, on good and evil in fiction; James Davison Hunter, on culture wars; Paul McHugh, on when psychiatry loses its way; Ted Prescott, on nudity in art and advertising; Ed Knippers, on the powerful presence of the body; Martha Bayles, on pop and perverse modernism; Dominic Aquila, on Christopher Lasch; Gilbert Meilaender, on random kindness; Neil Postman, on technology and culture; and Alan Jacobs, on being maudlin in Madison County.

Guests on Volume 75: Mark Malvasi, on John Lukacs, the meaning of the modern, and how to think about history; John Lukacs, on the roles of curiosity and language in the vocation of historians; Steve Talbott, on how communications technologies divert language from its richest possibilities; Christian Smith, on the spiritual lives and theological assumptions of American teenagers; Eugene Peterson, on the essential relationship between theology and spirituality, and on the narrative life of congregations; and Rolland Hein, on the life and imagination of George MacDonald.