Are We Only Formed When We Read Literature?

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We are only formed when we come into contact with another person and in some sense or r almost inhabit the thinking andn feeling of that other person. That's how each ange really, more than by just acquiring new facts. Riht: The essential nature of literature is that we are imaginatively entering somebody else's experience and feelings. We're actually being formed to not be informed before we share, or to read the words on social media. And that's what we neglect.

This week David and Curtis are joined by Karen Swallow Prior, writer, thinker, and research professor of English and Christianity and culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Karen talks to us about the current state of affairs in social media, particularly Twitter, and compares its impact on culture and the church to another critical technology, the printing press. She discusses how these modern technologies are impacting our brains, and how we can push back against this through the simple act of reading, especially the (necessarily slow and contemplative) reading of literature.

Show Notes:

-National Endowment of the Arts - “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America”

-Caleb Crain (The New Yorker) - “Why We Don’t Read, Revisited”

-Sign up for David’s French Press newsletter

-Follow Curtis’ work at RedeemingBabel.org