“One of the most striking and disturbing aspects of public life in the past year has been the increasingly irrational character of public speech. Many commentators have been wringing their hands while urging for a recovery of the Enlightenment’s noble respect for reason. But what if the real goal of the various intellectual and political movements we call ‘the Enlightenment’ was to amplify the significance of the human will, not of the human mind? What if the growing, power-hungry irrationality evident in today’s public life is actually the fulfillment of the modern view of reason as simply an instrument that enables us to get what we want? (If you question this description, compare the masses of mental energy devoted to devising new technologies — digital genies awaiting our commands — with the amount of thought dedicated to theological and philosophical reflection.)”

— Ken Myers, on the consequences of separating reason and freedom from the guidance of faith. Click here to read the entire letter.

“This constrictive concept of ‘religion’ means that social and political problems such as racism — and even the question of how to define and recognize racism — cannot be examined in public in an explicitly Christian framework. The rules of liberal society mean that human suffering and social injustices may only be addressed with the vocabulary of “public reason,” which is regarded as real reason. Real reason, we are told, excludes references to transcendent realities. We can’t refer to the Logos who is the origin of reason or the Triune God who is the source of love and sociality — the very realities that in truth provide adequate grounds for pursuing justice and confronting racism.”

— Ken Myers, on why we cannot adequately address racism without thinking more systemically about liberal notions of freedom and religion. Click here to read the entire letter.

“Good treatments require good diagnoses. . . . If we recognize the fact of some social sickness or malignancy, but misdiagnose its causes, efforts to respond wisely may well be misdirected; they may even unwittingly reinforce the conditions that gave rise to the problem in the first place.

“This precarious state won’t be repaired with appeals to civility, the common good, or the wisdom of the Founders, as long as such appeals adhere to the conventional limits of modern thought, which bracket off the transcendent. The growing civic friction we witness — racial tensions, violence by and against law enforcement officials, venomous public speech, battles over the meaning of the human body — requires a critical mass of citizens and neighbors whose thinking is not hemmed in by those secularizing limits.”

— Ken Myers, on why Christians should think more deliberately beyond the confines of a liberal imagination. Click here to read the entire letter.

Ken has often been told that he has “gift of bibliography.” Now, thanks to the library staff at Patrick Henry College, we can offer you that gift as a download. Below is a link to a master bibliography in spreadsheet format of all the books that have been featured in interviews on the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal. We will continue to update this as we go forward. Please let us know if any corrections need to be made by emailing us at soundthinking@marshillaudio.org.

https://marshillaudio.org/downloads/MHA_Bibliography.xlsx