Christians Reading Classics

Епизоде

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  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, with Daniel McInerny 17.09.2026 58мин

  The complicated struggle of faith is no new phenomenon. Philosopher and novelist Daniel McInerny joins today to revisit Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and ask why this Catholic classic still feels like it is describing our own age, our own friendships, and our own hunger for beauty. Along the way, we tackle a surprisingly practical question for readers and writers alike: what is a classic, really? Not just a book that tells timeless truths, but a work that pushes a tradition forward and ...
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  Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, with Eric Hutchinson 10.09.2026 57мин

  Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor known for his philosophical insights, penned his thoughts in a private notebook that became one of the most enduring classics of Western literature. In this episode, Nadya Williams speaks with Eric Hutchinson, Associate Professor of Classics at Hillsdale College, to delve into the essence of Aurelius's Meditations and the Stoic principles that shaped his life. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you woul...
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  Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, with Daniel K. Williams 03.09.2026 56мин

  In this episode, we explore the enduring power of C.S. Lewis's 'Mere Christianity' and its place in the broader history of Christian apologetics. Daniel K. Williams, a historian and expert in apologetics, shares insights into what makes a work of apologetics a classic, how Lewis's work has influenced generations, and the evolving landscape of Christian defense strategies. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support thi...
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  Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, with Matt Stewart 27.08.2026 53мин

  Wallace Stegner scholar Matt Stewart talks with Nadya Williams about why quiet novels can hit harder than flashy ones and how Crossing to Safety turns friendship, academia, and marriage into real drama. We also ask what makes a classic, how books survive by luck as much as merit, and why long obedience in relationships might be the rarest plot of all. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere O...
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  A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter Miller with Brad Birzer 20.08.2026 1ч

  A monastery in the desert preserves the shattered remnants of civilisation after nuclear fire, and the relics include something chilling: the technical knowledge that could destroy the world all over again. That is the dark engine driving Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, and it is why this 1959 post-apocalyptic science fiction classic still refuses to go stale. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support ...
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  Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, with Cara Rogers Stevens 13.08.2026 47мин

  Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia is one of those rare books that can feel like a museum archive, a political manifesto, and a personal notebook all at once, and it still shapes how Americans argue about freedom. We sit down with historian Cara Rogers Stevens (Ashland University), author of the award-winning Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery, to ask a basic but uncomfortable question: what do we do with a “classic” that is brilliant, influential, and morally fraught? Chr...
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  Nolan's Odyssey and Epics with Jonathan Geltner, Eric Hutchinson, and Rob Wyllie 06.08.2026 1ч 15мин

  A Hollywood blockbuster can make “The Odyssey” feel like a parade of monsters and set pieces but Homer’s epic is stranger, quieter, and more demanding than that. We sit down with poets and scholars Jonathan Geltner, Eric Hutchinson, and Rob Wyllie to ask a deceptively basic question: what is an epic, really? The answer takes us from dactylic hexameter and oral performance to the way epic poetry can build a culture’s imagination of gods, duty, and the shape of reality itself. Christians Readin...
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  Augustine - Enchiridion and Morals of the Catholic Church with Joseph Lanier and Travis Montgomery 29.07.2026 57мин

  A pastor asks Augustine for a short summary of the Christian life, and Augustine delivers a compact handbook that is so honest it practically stops mid-sprint when it reaches love. That tension, between real-life limits and real spiritual depth, is where our conversation lives today. We are joined by Joseph Lanier and Travis Montgomery, co-authors of *Every Perfect Gift: Classical Virtues for Christian Formation*, to explore why Augustine still trains our instincts for discipleship, moral the...
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  The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky with Maria Baer 23.07.2026 1ч

  A foggy train pulls into St Petersburg and two young men face each other across a third-class carriage. That opening scene from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is our doorway into a novel that refuses to let anyone stay comfortable, especially when a pure-hearted man starts telling the truth in rooms built on performance. Nadia Williams talks with writer and reporter Maria Baer to talk about why 21st-century American Christians should still read this translated Russian classic. We dig into what makes...
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  Jack London: An American Classic with Elizabeth Stice 16.07.2026 36мин

  Elizabeth Stice, professor of history at Palm Beach Atlantic University, joins to discuss Jack London as an American classic. They explore London's wild life — oyster pirate, hobo, Klondike adventurer — and how it shaped works like Call of the Wild, White Fang, John Barleycorn, and Martin Eden. Stice unpacks the tension between London's socialist sympathies and social Darwinist streak, and why Christians can find genuine value in a writer so openly skeptical of faith. Christians Reading Class...
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  The Declaration of Independence and the Classics with Brad Birzer 09.07.2026 1ч 1мин

  A single sentence can reorder a civilization, and “we hold these truths to be self-evident” is one of those sentences. Nadya Williams sits down with historian Dr Brad Birzer to read the Declaration of Independence closely and ask why it still sends a jolt through American politics, moral imagination, and public life 250 years later. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member tod...
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  The Declaration of Independence with Matthew Spalding and Jake Meador 02.07.2026 1ч 5мин

  The Declaration of Independence is only a few paragraphs long, but it tries to do something enormous: justify a political break while teaching a moral vision of human equality, liberty, and rightful government. Nadya Williams and Jake Meador sit down with Dr Matthew Spaulding of Hillsdale College, a leading scholar of the Declaration and author of The Making of the American Mind, to read the document as an American classic that still forms our public arguments and our private conscience. — Ch...
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  Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis with Oliver Traldi 25.06.2026 1ч 6мин

  What does it mean to love someone well — and what does it cost when that love curls inward? Nadya Williams and Oliver Traldi discuss C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, tracing how Lewis reframes the myth of Cupid and Psyche to expose the jealousy beneath even the most devoted love, the limits of philosophy before the divine, and what it means to render an account of your own life. — Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to supp...
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  East of Eden with Philip Bunn & Matthew H. Young 18.06.2026 55мин

  Steinbeck's East of Eden returns the Cain and Abel story twice over, tracing original sin, mimetic desire, and the fragile hope encoded in timshel across the arc of early American history. Philip Bunn and Matthew H. Young join host Nadya Williams to read Steinbeck as political theorist, moral cartographer, and reluctant humanist. — Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member toda...
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  James Fenimore Cooper with Dr. Wayne Franklin 11.06.2026 1ч 4мин

  James Fenimore Cooper gets filed away as “important” long before many of us actually read him, and that gap is the problem we wanted to solve. I’m joined by Dr. Wayne Franklin, one of the leading Cooper scholars and the author of major biographies of Cooper, to talk about what makes a classic live past its own pages. His definition sticks with me: a classic is a book that, once you start it, you realize you already know, because it has permeated the culture and taught later writers what stori...
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  The Journals of Lewis and Clark with Craig Fehrman 04.06.2026 55мин

  We treat the Lewis and Clark journals as a true American classic, reading them for voice, humour, and human detail rather than just as a schoolbook summary. With historian Craig Furman, we follow the expedition through science, hardship, Native diplomacy, and the moral complexity that the journals preserve in plain sight. — Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at htt...
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  Augustine's Confessions with Joey Sherrard 28.05.2026 45мин

  We sit with Augustine’s Confessions and feel how a 1,600-year-old prayer still names our restlessness with uncomfortable accuracy. We talk with pastor and author Joey Sherrard about reading Confessions as praise and truth-telling, and about remembering Augustine as a working pastor rather than a distant genius. — Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereort...
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  Cassiodorus and Classical Education with Joseph Griffith and Joshua Kinlaw 21.05.2026 56мин

  Cassiodorus is the kind of historical figure who should be famous and somehow isn’t: a high-level Roman statesman who walks away from power and spends his later life trying to save Christian learning from collapse. That turn gives us one of the most unusual education texts in the Western tradition, Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning, a “book about books” written to stand in for teachers when war makes schools impossible. Nadya Williams talks with Joshua Kinlaw and Joe Griffith...
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  Petrarch's Canzoniere with A. M. Juster 14.05.2026 56мин

  Petrarch's Canzoniere — 366 poems written over 40 years in pursuit of a woman named Laura — introduced the sonnet to European literature and helped move poetry from Latin into the vernacular. It is also, as A.M. Juster's new translation makes plain, a deeply Augustinian collection: raw, confessional, and unresolved. Nadya Williams talks with Juster about the art of poetic translation, the discipline it demands, and why Petrarch still matters. — Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from ...
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  The Great Gatsby with Katy Carl 07.05.2026 50мин

  A century after its publication, The Great Gatsby still demands more of readers than its first audience was prepared to give. This conversation explores why Fitzgerald's third novel flopped in 1925, how its three-act tragic structure works, and what it means to read its vices and virtues with Christian eyes. Along the way: Fitzgerald's complicated Catholic formation, the role of beauty in a moral imagination, the state of American Christian fiction since the mid-century, and the case for wri...