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 t...

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...

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, Susan...

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 de...

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...

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...

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...

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?

J. L. Wall writes that the ancient skill of chanting the Torah joins past generations to generations yet unborn.

Terence Sweeney asks what kind of inheritance an illegitimate son can expect.

Helmuth Eiwen writes that our ancestors guilt can carry over onto the present generation. The Hebrew prophets show a way out.

Wendy Kiyomi adopted children with trauma in their past. It didn’t go as she expected.

In this story by Óscar Esquivias the young folk moved away, and it seemed like the Three Kings stopped visiting the empty village in Asturias, Spain. But did they?

Alastair Roberts writes that genealogy and hereditary lines matter a great deal in scripture.

Peter Mommsen writes that we’re born with a need for connection with our ancestors – both biological and spiritual.

Mary Townsend finds that relativism is alive and well on college campuses.

Eve Tushnet writes about AA, alcoholism, and broken promises.

Phil Christman explores the courtship of three monogamous animal couples.

Norann Voll, a Bruderhof member in Australia, took a vow of obedience that included the promise to go anywhere the church needed her.

Sister Carino Hodder says the call to chastity applies just as much to spouses and to single people looking for romance as it does to consecrated religious.

Andreas Knapp, a member of the Little Brothers of the Gospel says wealth is not only an unwieldy burden, but is incompatible with love of neighbor.

Dori Moody relates the story of her grandparents marriage. Even though they separated, they remained faithful to one another.

Randall Gauger, a Bruderhof pastor, discusses how lifelong vows make mutual faithfulness possible.