“Our universe is filled with so many species of animals, birds, fish, flowers, fruits and plants; each one is the work of God’s hands. It is the same with families, tribes, clans and communities of people. Each one is the work of his love. There is no one family that has all the truth. They are all called to live together in harmony, to share their beautiful gifts and to receive the gifts of others; to discover the height and the depth, the width and the breadth of the wisdom, the beauty and the love of our God. So often, alas, groupings do not work together for the glory of God. They close themselves off one from another, each one certain that they are the chosen people, the beloved of God, the special community that will renew the face of the earth; that they are the best and they alone have the truth. They do not realise that everyone is special; everyone is called to manifest a particle of the glory of God — in communion with others. When they do not work together, groups create apartheid. Walls are built up between them, rivalry and competition set in. This leads to jealousy which, in turn, leads to hatred and warfare. Thus what began so beautifully ends up so horribly. Religious and political groupings (just as clubs and other groups) become filled with the desire ‘to win’, to beat others, to prove they are right through powerful means. They become blinded by their own concerns and desire for power (or fear of death); they are unable to see and appreciate the beauty of others.
“Communities are truly communities when they are open to others, when they remain vulnerable and humble; when the members are growing in love, in compassion and in humility. Communities cease to be such when members close in upon themselves with the certitude that they alone have wisdom and truth and expect everyone to be like them and learn from them.
“The fundamental attitudes of true community, where there is true belonging, are openness, welcome, and listening to God, to the universe, to each other and to other communities. Community life is inspired by the universal and is open to the universal. It is based on forgiveness and openness to those who are different, to the poor and the weak. Sects put up walls and barriers out of fear, out of a need to prove themselves and to create a false security. Community is the breaking down of barriers to welcome difference.”
— from Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (Paulist Press, 1989)
How common loves shape communities — Oliver O’Donovan discusses how communities mediate love and knowledge to their members and what challenges arise as a community’s traditions are confronted by sin, error, and plurality. (Lecture 2 of 3; 49 minutes)
Gayle Brandow Samuels examines the ways in which trees have served as anchor-points for memory and identity in American culture. (9 minutes)
Thinking Together — Alan Jacobs discusses some principles he’s compiled to help us think well (and charitably) in our cultural context, and he warns us to be attentive to the ways technology displaces previously fixed communities. (53 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 165 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jeffrey Bilbro, Daniel McInerny, Joseph Minich, Carl Elliott, Nadya Williams, and Don W. King
Drawing from Wendell Berry’s works, Jack Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro discuss a vision of higher education that respects a multidimensional notion of place. (23 minutes)
Real Food, Real Communities — Corby Kummer extols the virtues of the Slow Food movement, which seeks to honor, protect, and sustain traditional foods and ingredients from specific cultures and regions. (48 minutes)
Clips from five extended interviews — We are pleased to share clips from five interviews that we’ve recently produced as full-length Conversations. (30 minutes)
Shared Practices, Strong Communities — Christine Pohl reflects on why a deliberate commitment to certain shared practices is necessary for the sustaining of community. (57 minutes)
“The search for shared ends” — Oliver O’Donovan examines whether and to what extent there might be the possibility of a unifying Christian perspective on political doctrine or policy. (59 minutes)
D. C. Schindler explains how liberalism sought to make way for individuals to function together without any orientation to an explicit common good. (37 minutes)
The personal element in all knowing — Mark Mitchell connects key aspects of Michael Polanyi’s conception of knowledge with Matthew Crawford’s insistence that real knowing involves more than technique. (34 minutes)
Impact of “infotainment” on community — Neil Gabler and C. John Sommerville discuss how the mentalities conveyed by our experience with communications media work against the nurturing of community. (36 minutes)
Ken Myers talks with Jane Metcalfe, the founder of WIRED Magazine, about technology and community. (8 minutes)
Education that counters alienation — In this lecture, Jeanne Schindler explores how digital technologies warp not only education but our experience of being human. (30 minutes)
Historian Christopher Shannon discusses how American academic historical writing presents a grand narrative of progressivism, which it defends by subscribing to an orthodoxy of objective Reason. (21 minutes)
Friendship and life together — In a lecture at Providence College, Ken Myers explores how the concept of friendship, which used to be central to political philosophy, was banished from considerations of public life as the state was exalted over society. (53 minutes)
Community, the giver of freedom — Thomas H. Naylor and William H. Willimon on why suspicion about big government shouldn’t take the form of autonomous individualism
Welcoming one another — Christine Pohl describes the practice of hospitality in Church history and the particular challenges to hospitality we face in our era. (30 minutes)
Loving relationships in community — In conversation with moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan, and with readings from his book, Entering into Rest, Ken Myers explores a central theme in O’Donovan’s work: that we are created to enjoy loving relationships in community. (27 minutes)
Freed from the burden of choice — Writing in the mid-1990s, Alan Ehrenhalt reflects on the relationship between authority and community
Why communities need authority — Alan Ehrenhalt argues that real community can only be sustained when three things are assumed: the goodness of limits, the necessity of authority, and the reality of personal sin. (13 minutes)
The Bruderhof’s Christ-centered community — Clare Stober discusses the book she edited of stories of the Bruderhof, a network of 26 community settlements around the world. (30 minutes)
Lessons from quarantine: Making do with tinned fruit — In this audio reprint of “Wendell Berry and Zoom,” Front Porch Republic editor Jeffrey Bilbro reflects on two metaphors that can help put our new-found “dependency” on web-based video conferencing into perspective: tinned fruit and a prosthetic limb. (17 minutes)
The Good City: Community and Urban Order — Architects, historians, activists, and clergy discuss how loving our neighbors can and must take shape in how we order the material aspects of shared life. (100 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 113 — FEATURED GUESTS: Steven Shapin, Arthur Boers, Christine Pohl, Norman Wirzba, Craig Bartholomew, and David I. Smith
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 108 — FEATURED GUESTS: Thomas Albert Howard, Jean Porter, Peter Augustine Lawler, Hans Boersma, Felicia Wu Song, and Elias Aboujaoude
Joshua P. Hochschild: “Globalization: Ancient and Modern” — Joshua P. Hochschild examines the effects of globalization on local communities and argues for the need for reflection on the ends of politics given the ends of human beings. (36 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 80 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stephen A. McKnight, Tim Morris, Don Petcher, Vigen Guroian, Paul Valliere, and Calvin Stapert
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 68 — FEATURED GUESTS: Murray Milner, Jr., Steven C. Vryhof, Douglas J. Schuurman, Robert Gagnon, Richard Stivers, and Quentin Schultze
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 67 — FEATURED GUESTS: Eric O. Jacobsen, Allan C. Carlson, Terence L. Nichols, R. R. Reno, David Bentley Hart, J. A. C. Redford, and Scott Cairns
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 62 — FEATURED GUESTS: Craig A. Bernthal, James Turner Johnson, Alissa Quart, Stephen M. Barr, Lilian Calles Barger, and Corby Kummer
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 59 — FEATURED GUESTS: Ron Hansen, Bernard Lewis, Alan Jacobs, Adrienne Chaplin, Todd Gitlin, and Quentin Schultze
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 45 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jeff Speck, Victor Davis Hanson, Allan C. Carlson, Paulina Borsook, John F. Kilner, Robert E. Webber, and Christoph Wolff
Place, Community, and Memory — Several essayists and a novelist explore the important ways in which we (and the communities we inhabit) are shaped and sustained by the particular places in which we live. (100 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 41 — FEATURED GUESTS: Harry Blamires, David Healy, Paul Gutjahr, Christine Pohl, Francis Fukuyama, Paul Corby Finney, and J. A. C. Redford
Church, Community, and History — Sociologist Robert Wuthnow discusses the assets and liabilities of the small-group movement. Theologian Richard Lints explains why theological reflection is essential in Christian community. (84 minutes)
