Gerald R. McDermott

Guests on Volume 141: Grant Wythoff, on the technophiliac obsessions of Hugo Gernsback, the geeky midwife of modern science fiction; Susanna Lee, on how the hard-boiled protagonists of crime fiction in the 1930s and 40s were replaced by more nihilistic tough guys in the 1950s and 60s; Gerald R. McDermott, on how the work of theologian E. L. Mascall can expose blind spots in contemporary Christian thought; Carlos Eire, on how and why religion became “interiorized” in the wake of the reformations of the sixteenth century; Kelly Kapic, on theology’s use of experience and why the Incarnation is the ground of Christian hope; and James Matthew Wilson, on the beauty of truth and goodness, and on the necessity of cultivating “intellectual vision.”

Guests on Volume 114: Susan Cain, on how the 20th-century displacement of character by "personality" encouraged Americans to sell themselves (and marginalize introverts); Brad S. Gregory, on the danger of assuming that previous epochs of history have no lasting influence, and how unintended consequences of the Reformation shrunk Christian cultural influence; David Sehat, on why the story of religious liberty in America is more complicated than is often acknowledged; Augustine Thompson, O.P., on the myths and realities of St. Francis of Assisi; Gerald R. McDermott, on how love and beauty are more fundamental in the thought of Jonathan Edwards than the image of an angry God; and Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, on lessons in The Scarlet Letter about wise ways of reading complex texts.