Old Books with Grace

Today, Grace chats with Dr. Lynn Cohick on that enigmatic, fascinating, challenging apostle: St. Paul.  Lynn H. Cohick (Ph. D., University of Pennsylvania) is Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Director of the Houston Theological Seminary at Houston Christian University. She was Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and taught at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology in...

Old Books with Grace is baaaaack for a fifth season! Grace welcomes Haley Stewart for the first episode of this season, on women novelists of the Catholic imagination--including Rumer Godden, Sigrid Undset, and Toni Morrison. If you're like Grace, get ready to dramatically expand your fiction TBR list. Haley Stewart is the Editor of Word on Fire Votive and the host of The Votive Podcast. She is th...

In this last episode of season four, Grace welcomes Dr. Lanta Davis to talk about spiritual formation in the beholding of the art of the past. Lanta Davis is Professor of Humanities and Literature for the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University. She’s written on literature, art, and history for Smithsonian Magazine, Christianity Today, Christian Century, Parabola, and Plough.   S...

Today Grace welcomes Laura Fabrycky to discuss the fascinating, stirring, challenging life and context of theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as Laura's own transformative experience as a guide at Bonhoeffer's Haus in Berlin.  Laura M. Fabrycky is a writer, poet, and mother of three. She wrote Keys to Bonhoeffer’s Haus: Exploring the World and Wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer . Laura i...

As a forever English major, Grace loves figurative language. So she was delighted to welcome Dr. Joy Clarkson for this episode on the power of metaphor and her recent book, You are a Tree. Joy Clarkson is the author of Aggressively Happy and host of popular podcast, Speaking with Joy. She is the books editor for Plough Quarterly and a research associate in theology and literature at King’s College...

This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this...

This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this...

This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this...

Welcome to this year's Old Books with Grace Lent Series. This year's series is on penitential poetry. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on need, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. Such poetry is part of an ancient tradition, dating back to the Psalms themselves. Today's poem is "Desire," by Thomas Traherne. You can read along below, or listen...

Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson joins Grace on this episode to discuss her new book, Why Do the Heathen Rage? A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress. How does O'Connor's last novel, left unfinished at her death, fit in with the rest of her work? How does one even begin to reconstruct a fragmented manuscript? Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine U...

Grace welcomes Nadya Williams, professor and author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church. What do the early Christians--and not just the martyrs and great leaders, but the ordinary folk--have to teach us today in their witness, writings, and historical record? Nadya Williams (PhD, Classics and Program in the Ancient World, Princeton University) is a military historian of the Greco-Roman worl...

This year’s Advent series is about the poetry of the Holy Family, the center of Advent and Christmas. Today, we arrive to worship at the manger, brother and sister to the ass and the ox looking lovingly and with great confusion into the unusual bundle resting in the hay. Welcome to the final episode of Advent 2023, on Baby Jesus and love, alongside Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Crashaw.

Welcome to the second episode in the 2023 Advent series of Old Books with Grace. Each Wednesday, this series will look at a member of the Holy Family--Mary, Joseph, and Jesus--and a theological virtue--hope, faith, and love. In this episode, Grace meditates upon Joseph, doubt, and faith alongside three greats: W.H. Auden, George MacDonald, and Madeleine L’Engle.

Welcome to the first episode in the Advent series for 2023. Each Wednesday, this series will look at a member of the Holy Family--Mary, Joseph, and Jesus--and a theological virtue--hope, faith, and love. Today, Grace Hamman meditates upon Mary and the stretching, longing virtue of hope alongside a fourteenth-century Middle English poem full of Marian imagery. Poems from this episode: Heyl, leuedy,...

Today, Burl Horniachek chats with Grace about pre-nineteenth-century Christian poetry from other parts of the world that he collected in a lovely volume from Cascade Books called To Heaven’s Rim . From early Syrian poets like Romanos the Melodist to seventeenth-century Chinese artist Wu Li, the selection of Christian poetry is wide and fascinating! Burl Horniachek is a Canadian high school teacher...

Calling all Louisa May Alcott fans! In this episode, Grace chats with Americanist scholar LuElla D’Amico about children’s literature and the work of Louisa May Alcott in particular... including hard-hitting questions like "Should Laurie have ended up with Jo?!" (there is disagreement on the answer).  Dr. LuElla D'Amico is an Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Women’s and Gender...

In this special episode about Grace's new book, Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages, Grace gets interviewed on medieval ideas about Jesus in art and literature by none other than the inestimable Scott Hamman, her wonderful non-medievalist structural engineering husband (or in his words, "Mr. Dr. Grace Hamman").  Preorder Jesus...

Grace welcomes Karen Swallow Prior to discuss her brand-new book, The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Brazos, 2023), and from that book, the power of imagination and our formation through literature and products of culture. Karen Swallow Prior (Ph. D., State University of New York, Buffalo) is a reader, writer, and professor. She is the auth...

Grace chats with Marianne Wright on the novels and sermons of the great Victorian writer and Presbyterian minister, George MacDonald. Why did this somewhat obscure (for us today, at least) novelist inspired some of the most well-beloved writers of the twentieth century, like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton?  Marianne Wright, a member of the Bruderhof , lives in southeastern New York with her husban...

In this first episode of season four, Grace chats with Reverend Elizabeth Felicetti, author of Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women Without Children, on the dignity and humanity of women without children and their gift to the church. The Rev. Elizabeth Felicetti is the rector of St. David's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia and the author of the new book Unexpected Abundance: The...

In the last episode of season three, Grace talks with Dr. Michael Lamb on the great African bishop and theologian, St. Augustine of Hippo, and the virtue of hope.  Michael Lamb is the F. M. Kirby Foundation Chair of Leadership and Character, Executive Director of the Program for Leadership and Character, and Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Wake Forest University. He is also...

It's a magical confluence of Mother's Day week, Grace's actual birthday, and the 650th anniversary of Julian's experience with God, so Grace had to mark it in a special way herself. Yes, that's right, Grace is her own guest this week, and she even answers her own get-to-know you literary questions. The main star of the show, however, is the wondrous fourteenth-century contemplative writer, Julian...

Normally, obviously, Grace talks about old books. But every now and then, OBWG presents an episode on old art. Because encountering old art is just as much about reading, interpretation, and attention as reading old books is! Today, Grace is delighted to welcome Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt as a guest. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt (Ph. D., Washington University in St. Louis) is an associate professor...

In this episode, Grace chats with Dr. Scott Newstok on William Shakespeare (whose birthday is this week!) and the principles of a renaissance education.  Scott Newstok  is Professor of English and founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College. A parent and an award-winning teacher, he is the author of How to Think Like Shakespeare, as well as Quoting Death in Early Modern...

This year’s Old Books with Grace Lent series, called “A Book that Changed Me,” offers four different conversations with guests on a book of their choice that changed them, made them think deeply about transformation, brought them closer to truth. Books can be mirrors—they can help us to consider ourselves in new light. Books invite us into conversation and reflection we would not have known to par...