For Your Consideration

On April 13th, the Christian Study Center was pleased to host a public lecture by Andy Crouch titled “Beyond Boring Robots: Find the Path to Flourishing in a Technological World.” The talk drew on and developed themes from Crouch’s most recent book, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World . Every new advance in technology — this spring the headlines are about C...

With ChatGPT, and AI more generally, very much in the news, our director Michael Sacasas talked with Dr. Scott Hawley about recent trends in generative AI and its possible consequences across a variety of domains. Dr. Scott Hawley is Professor of Physics at Belmont University and Technical Fellow at Harmonai . He has worked extensively on machine learning in the field of audio engineering, and als...

In this episode, our director, Michael Sacasas, talks with Dr. Benjamin Lipscomb about the work of the 20th-century philosopher and novelist, Iris Murdoch. During the Fall 2022 semester, the Study Center hosted a reading group on The Sovereignty of Good , a collection of three lectures by Murdoch. In this conversation, Sacasas and Lipscomb walk through the major themes of that work with a focus on...

Welcome to “For Your Consideration,” a podcast of the Christian Study Center. The podcast features audio from our events as well as occasional interviews with scholars and writers. This episode features a lecture delivered by Christine Emba at the Study Center on October 13th. Ms. Emba is a columnist for  The Washington Post  writing about ideas and society. Prior, she was the Hilton Kramer Fellow...

Welcome to “For Your Consideration,” a podcast of the Christian Study Center. The podcast features audio from our events as well as occasional interviews with scholars and writers. In this episode, you can listen to a talk by Dr. Michael Allen presented at the Study Center on September 19th. Dr. Allen is Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. He is presently writing a f...

Welcome to “For Your Consideration,” a podcast of the Christian Study Center. The podcast features audio from our events as well as occasional interviews with scholars and writers. For this episode, our director, Michael Sacasas, had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Stephanie Bennett . Dr. Bennett is Professor of Communication and Media Ecology at Palm Beach Atlantic University in South Florida, w...

In this episode of our podcast, we are pleased to bring you audio of a lecture delivered on Tuesday, April 12th by our director, Dr. Richard Horner. Here is how Dr. Horner described the talk: Perhaps no book in the Hebrew Bible has been more difficult to interpret and translate than the book of Ecclesiastes. To what reality does the famous opening phrase point? Exactly what question is the author...

In this episode of our podcast, we are pleased to bring you audio of a lecture delivered on Tuesday, March 29th by our director, Dr. Richard Horner. Here is how Dr. Horner described the talk: Why does Matthew tell the story of Jesus differently from Mark and Luke? Perhaps he is confused or mistaken, but if not, then what is he doing? Come join us for a brief exploration of this problem, for a glim...

On March 17th, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Scott Hawley of Belmont University at the Study Center for a second talk titled “Taming Chaos: Generative Modeling As a Foil to Human Creativity.” Dr. Hawley is a Professor of Physics at Belmont, and his research interests include machine learning, neural networks, and the ethics of A.I. Last week, we posted his talk on machine learning and classif...

On March 17th, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Scott Hawley of Belmont University at the Study Center for a talk titled “Curves and Categories: Machine Learning, AI, and the Nature of Classification.” Dr. Hawley is a Professor of Physics at Belmont, and his research interests include machine learning, neural networks, and the ethics of A.I. He joined us to explore the fascinating and complex na...

Dr. Benjamin Lipscomb is professor of philosophy specializing in contemporary ethical theory at Houghton College. He is the author of The Women Are Up To Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics , which was published in November 2021. Mike Sacasas had the pleasure of talking to Prof. Lipscomb about his book, these four remarkable philos...

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine dominating the headlines and the specter of nuclear conflict darkening our imagination, we’re glad to bring you a conversation with Dr. Jonathan Askonas , associate professor of politics at the Catholic University of America and an expert in Russian-American military affairs. The conversation covers a lot of ground, beginning with a discussion of the origins of...

It was my pleasure to speak with Dr. Alan Noble about his recently published book, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World . Dr. Noble is Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and the founder and former editor of Christ and Pop Culture . His writing has appeared in The Atlantic , Vox , Buzzfeed , First Things , Christianity Today , and The Gospel Coalitio...

The Christian Study Center hosted a kick-off event to launch the spring semester this week, and as part of the event Dr. Richard Horner, our executive director, presented a talk titled, “Why Pascal?—One More Time.” Audio of that talk and an engaging Q/A session that followed is included here. The talk explored the continuing relevance of the thought of Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth century French p...

In late October, the study center hosted an event for local clergy and ministry leaders. The theme of the event was Rest: What It Is and How to Find It. Even before the pandemic, it was clear that burnout was a widely distributed symptom of a restless culture. After the experience of the past year and a half, it was the all the more clear that we needed to rethink how we are ordering our lives. It...

On September, 14th, the Christian Study Center hosted a kick-off event to launch the fall semester. As part of the event, Dr. Richard Horner, our executive director, presented a talk titled, “What Frames What?—One More Time.” The talk revisits a critical diagnostic question, which Dr. Horner has been ask for nearly two decades. Through this question Dr. Horner explores the defining features of mod...

During the summer months the newsletter will be mostly on hiatus, but we will be posting a series of interviews with scholars and writers whose work we believe will be of interest to our listeners. In this installment, I’m delighted to share my conversation with Grace Olmstead. Grace is a journalist and writer whose work focusing on farming and localism has appeared in the New York Times , the Ame...

This semester, our associate director, Michael Sacasas, gave three lectures on the thought of the 20th-century Christian scholar and social critic, Ivan Illich. The third lecture, “Reclaiming the Senses: Ivan Illich and the History of Perception,” was delivered as a Zoom webinar on Wednesday, March 24th. The audio of that lecture is included here. This is a public episode. If you would like to dis...

In this installment, you can listen to the tenth and penultimate session of Dr. Horner’s director’s class for this semester, “Reading the Gospels: The Road to the Cross.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christianstudycenter.substack.com

[Programming note: Over the past week, we encountered technical difficulties uploading audio files. All seems to be in order now, and we are resuming our regular posting with last week’s classes.] This is the eighth and final session of Mike Sacasas’s director’s class on the life and work of Ivan Illich. The topic of this class is Illich’s interpretation of the relationship between Christianity an...

In this installment, you can listen to the ninth session of Dr. Horner’s director’s class for this semester, “Reading the Gospels: The Road to the Cross.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christianstudycenter.substack.com

This is the seventh session of Mike Sacasas’s director’s class on the life and work of Ivan Illich. The topic of this class is Illich’s last book, In the Vineyard of the Text . This week’s audio includes a time of Q&A. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christianstudycenter.substack.com

In this installment, you can listen to the eighth session of Dr. Horner’s director’s class for this semester, “Reading the Gospels: The Road to the Cross.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christianstudycenter.substack.com

This is the sixth session of Mike Sacasas’s director’s class on the life and work of Ivan Illich. The topic of this class is  Limits to Medicine and the art of suffering. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christianstudycenter.substack.com

This semester, our associate director, Michael Sacasas, is delivering three lectures on the thought of the 20th-century Christian scholar and social critic, Ivan Illich. The second lecture, “Conspiratorial Friendship: Ivan Illich and the Politics of Conviviality,” was delivered as a Zoom webinar on Wednesday, March 3rd. The audio of that lecture is included here. Introduction: 00:00 - 02:25Lecture...