Another Life with Joy Marie Clarkson

Jenn Frey discusses the value of a liberal arts education. What’s the purpose of this kind of study? For what does it liberate you, and who ought to be engaged in it?She and the hosts talk about the Canon Wars and the debates about what is to be included in the list of texts to be studied, and reflect on the proper skills and methods of having conversations about these works.Then, they discuss the recent controversy about Christopher Rufo’s appointment to the board of a small liberal arts college in Florida. What is lost when liberal arts education is politicized?Finally, they discuss Jenn’s new job: she’s the inaugural dean of a new “Great books” focused honors college at the University of Tulsa.

In Forgottonia, a left-behind corner of Illinois, Edna Eberlin made her farm a home for a sprawling multigenerational family. It was never easy.

Springs Toledo writes about his uncle, Albert Burns, and his family’s story of crime and forgiveness.

We talk with Alexander Raikin & Leah Libresco Sargeant on MAID, and take your questions. Raikin discloses his recent reporting on Canada’s massive ramp-up in medically assisted death.How can this cultural disaster have happened, and what can we do to prevent this approach to life and death from taking hold in our own families and churches?Then we answer your questions: what are the implications of the fact that marriage is becoming the province of the upper middle and upper classes, while increasingly out of reach for the working class and the poor? Are plunging birthrates such a bad thing? Plus, responses to Matthew Lee Anderson on IVF, and more.

The hosts talk with Matthew Lee Anderson about his piece on whether there is a right to have children. How does your relationship to your children change if you regard them as products rather than gifts?Then they discuss the specific ethical issues of in vitro fertilization, and reflect on the technologization of fertility through the lens of C. S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength.Then, Susannah speaks with Pater Edmund Waldstein about the role of monasteries in Christendom, and how their witness to the supernatural life of the church complements the life of the natural family.They go on to discuss questions of political order: since grace perfects but does not destroy nature, how should we think about polity? Is an ethnostate the only “natural” polity? Should we be trying to restore the Holy Roman Empire? Pater and Susannah solve all these problems definitively.

Peter and Susannah speak with Tara Isabella Burton and Tim Shriver about their manifesto calling for a new “spiritual realism.” Should questions of the Good and of human purpose be off the table in serious political discussion, either because they’re subjective and not real, or because they’re too divisive and dangerous? No, argue Burton and Shriver – and the current state of the polity in fact demands that we take these questions seriously.They argue that Enlightenment liberalism has proven insufficient to provide either a metaphysical or a political framework for human life, and call for citizens and leaders to build institutions that will support a more robustly moral realist vision of politics and community.Then, Peter and Susannah talk with Boze Herrington and Hannah Long about Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne. Hannah, Boze and Susannah make the case that the genre of the traditional Western is not something which must only be deconstructed and criticized, but which in fact offers occasions to reflect on the deepest questions of human moral and political life: what is the role of force in an unjust world, what is the good of civilization, and what is the code that one ought to live by? Du Mez’s recent book, they argue, does not understand or do justice to the genre.

Peter Mommsen talks with Phil Christman and Joey Keegin about effective altruism.Then, Peter and Susannah welcome Dhananjay Jagannathan to discuss his piece “What Is Our Scholarly Inheritance?” Both past and future, Dhananjay argues, make us who we are, and in scholarship as in other human cultural pursuits, we step into a world, receiving an inheritance and becoming responsible for enriching and passing on that inheritance. Though this kind of generational relationship is not biological, it is very deeply human, and the chosen and unchosen aspects of non-biological generational obligations are what make up a civilization.His uncle Mark’s scholarship was an inspiration to him, and on his uncle’s death, he felt the obligation to take up aspects of his work. The project of humanism is a multigenerational one, and not one that we do alone.

Peter and Susannah speak with Carl Trueman about communicating the gospel to the current generation, and the distinct challenges that that can bring.Then, they talk with theologian Alastair Roberts, Susannah’s husband, about the genealogy in Matthew and the way that looking at its details can call up Old Testament parallels and associations that give us clues about what God is doing in the birth of Christ.They discuss the way that God works not just with individuals but with whole families through the generations, and talk about how we can be blessings to both our descendants and parents.They also talk about Alastair’s experience of joining Susannah’s large family through their marriage. There are anecdotes about lobsters.

Why have an issue on “Generations?” Peter and Susannah discuss the genesis of the current issue, and then go into the issues covered in Pete’s lead editorial.Why do we feel the need for roots? Is this something that should be purely met within the church? How does God renew our natural ties, and our ability to love intergenerationally? What are the promises and perils of the rooted life? And how can the wisdom of Christ help us avoid deracination on one hand and the worship of blood and soil on the other?Then, they discuss with Prince Michael zu Salm-Salm his piece containing the distilled wisdom of a thousand years of his ancestors living in one spot, working the forests and vineyards of southern Germany. What does that kind of perspective give? They also talk about the Prince’s ecumenical work, in which he aims to mend the rifts of the Wars of Religion, through repentance under the Lordship of Christ. Plus, winemaking!

Matthew Lee Anderson writes that the fertility industry pushes childless couples toward IVF as an answer to the pain of childlessness. But at what cost?