Christians Reading Classics

Christine Norvell, a classical Christian educator and author, explores Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. They discuss classics that deepen with rereading, the soul-forming power of education, and Melville’s maritime world. The conversation centers on Billy’s innocence, Claggart’s hostility, Captain Vere’s duty, the court-martial, and the tragedy’s biblical resonance. Norvell also discusses reading slowly, her book on the sycamore fig, and Jane Eyre.

Philip Freeman, classicist and biographer of Aristotle, Alexander the Great, and Hannibal, brings Aristotle to life beyond the textbook. He traces Aristotle’s journey from Stagira to Plato’s Academy and the Lyceum, exploring his respectful disagreements with Plato, experimental approach to learning, education of Alexander, turbulent final years, and enduring influence. Freeman also recommends overlooked works and discusses how biography illuminates the classics.

Myles Werntz, a theology professor and scholar of Christian ethics and nonviolence, explores Howard Thurman’s journey from the segregated South to an interracial church shaped by contemplative faith. They discuss Thurman’s encounter with Gandhi, his distinction between Jesus and institutional Christianity, prayer’s relationship to nonviolence, suffering and human dignity, and why his writings still challenge the church today.

Daniel McInerny, philosopher, novelist, and Christendom College professor, revisits Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. They explore what makes a classic, Charles Ryder’s moral transformation, Sebastian and Julia’s search for love, and the novel’s enduring portrayal of faith amid cultural decline. McInerny also discusses Christian fiction, grace, and writing hopeful endings in The Good Death of Kate Montclair.

Eric Hutchinson, a Hillsdale College classics professor, poet, and translator, explores Marcus Aurelius’s private notebook, written amid war and plague. They discuss Stoicism as a practical way of life, the emperor’s pursuit of virtue, daily exercises in self-control and human kinship, and why the work still resonates. The conversation also considers Stoic and Christian views of providence, suffering, death, and divine reason.

Daniel K. Williams, an Ashland University historian of American Christianity and apologetics, explores why C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity has endured. They trace its origins in wartime radio broadcasts, Lewis’s moral argument, the role of imagination, and the evolution of apologetics from courtroom-style defenses to cultural and historical approaches. The conversation also considers Lewis’s reception across Christian traditions and why lasting apologetic classics are so rare.

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 Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.Listen and read The Daily Liturgy by going to http://mereorthodoxy.com/daily-liturgy

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 this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.Listen and read The Daily Liturgy by going to http://mereorthodoxy.com/daily-liturgy

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?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://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.Listen and read The Daily Liturgy by going to http://mereorthodoxy.com/daily-liturgy

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 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://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.Listen and read The Daily Liturgy by going to http://mereorthodoxy.com/daily-liturgy