Christians Reading Classics

A century after its publication, The Great Gatsby still demands more of readers than its first audience was prepared to give. This conversation explores why Fitzgerald's third novel flopped in 1925, how its three-act tragic structure works, and what it means to read its vices and virtues with Christian eyes. Along the way: Fitzgerald's complicated Catholic formation, the role of beauty in a moral imagination, the state of American Christian fiction since the mid-century, and the case for writing classics now. With Nadya Williams and novelist Katy Carl, editor of Word on Fire's literary imprint, Luminor. — Get the free ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership. Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships —

What does it mean for a nation to read its own sermons? This America 250 conversation takes up four of them — Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity, Edwards's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and King's Mountaintop Sermon — tracing covenant and city-on-a-hill exceptionalism, the personal terror of revival preaching, Lincoln's strange theological restraint amid civil war, and King's prescient final words. The episode closes on what it means to read the dead with charity, and on John Wilsey's new book, God and Country. With host Nadya Williams, John Wilsey (SBTS), and Daniel Williams (Ashland University). — Get the free ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership. Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship.: https://bit.ly/OurRisenLord — Chapters 00:00 - Reading Winthrop 02:12 - Welcome and Introductions 04:11 - Why Read Classic Sermons? 06:54 - Winthrop and the Puritan Errand 12:12 - City on a Hill: Promise and Warning 16:37 - Edwards and the Great Awakening 25:18 - Reading the Room in 1741 35:40 - Lincoln's Second Inaugural 43:31 - The Passive Voice and Providence 46:33 - King's Mountaintop Sermon 55:27 - Loving Our Historical Neighbors 1:03:06 - Why History Is Who We Are

Miles Smith, Hillsdale College historian who teaches Aquinas annually, discusses reading Thomas Aquinas as a Protestant. He tackles whether engaging the Summa requires conversion, the bigger question about using Aristotle, the Summa’s medieval context and reception, its Socratic method, and why some books break us while others do not.

Nadya Williams and Jeff Bilbro discuss Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter — its Puritan setting, Hawthorne's fraught ancestry, and the novel's three responses to sin: moralistic judgment, escapist relativism, and Hester's redemptive middle path. They also touch on Hawthorne's friendships with the Transcendentalists, the dangers of cancel culture, and Jeff's forthcoming book on AI and creaturely intelligence. —— Get the free ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership. Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship.: https://bit.ly/OurRisenLord — 00:00 - Introduction & What Is a Classic? 05:10 - American Classics & the Year 250 07:15 - Short Books vs. Long Books 09:33 - Hawthorne: Life & Context 14:11 - The Plot: Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, Pearl 17:23 - Three Responses to Sin 25:08 - Dimmesdale & Self-Deception 29:10 - Pearl & Spiritual Formation 33:43 - Chillingworth: Truth-Hunting for Power 36:17 - What Christians Should Notice 42:16 - Creaturely Intelligence (Jeff's Forthcoming Book) 47:31 - What Classic Would You Have Written?

div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> Nadya Williams, Ivana Greco, and Dixie Dillon Lane discuss Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer — 150 years old this year — as a window into antebellum American childhood, the timeless challenge of raising boys, and what it means to read classics across generations. Why does Twain's rapscallion hero outlast Sid in the cultural imagination? What does Aunt Polly's long-suffering love reveal about providence and parenting? And which American classics deserve a second look in the year of America 250? — Get the ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family for free at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership. Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonDivinityPhD — Chapter 00:00 - Introduction & what makes an American classic 03:00 - Favorite American classics for children 04:15 - Can you hate a classic? What parents look for 06:52 - Books build culture 08:45 - How parenting changes reading habits 11:58 - Entering Tom Sawyer: the world of the novel 13:51 - Tom's misadventures (and Ivana's canoe confession) 18:06 - The cast of characters: Tom, Huck, Becky, Aunt Polly 24:12 - Reading Tom Sawyer historically: slavery, race, and context 26:50 - Who is really raising Tom Sawyer? 31:16 - What would you do if you were raising Tom? 34:51 - Tom, women, and the civilizing impulse 38:44 - How a book about mischief became a great American novel 43:52 - Tom vs. Sid: not all children are the same 48:52 - The American spirit of adventure and its literary legacy 53:34 - Reading recommendations for America 250

Nadya Williams and Christina Bieber Lake discuss Moby Dick — why Americans should read it, what Melville understood about arrogance and the uncontrollable, and how the novel's humor, sprawling cetology chapters, and the famous doubloon scene all serve a single theme: the tragedy of trying to master what cannot be mastered. — Get the free ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family by going to http://mereorthodoxy.com/family. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership. Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship: https://bit.ly/OurRisenLord — 00:00 - Introduction & Opening Reading 01:58 - Christina Bieber Lake's Background 05:17 - What Makes a Classic? 10:01 - Why Americans Should Read Moby Dick 14:02 - Melville: Who He Was and What He Believed 18:08 - Approaching a 625-Page Novel 21:54 - Plot, Characters, and the Ship's Crew 25:51 - The Doubloon Chapter: Melville's Theme of Reading 28:39 - Humor in Moby Dick 31:50 - The Cetology Chapters and Language 34:43 - Ahab, Job, and the Desire for Control 36:00 - Ishmael as Survivor and Narrator 39:39 - The Masculinity of the Novel 49:01 - Reception and Why It Flopped 50:15 - Long Books and the Muscle of Attention 54:30 - Closing Question: A Classic You Wish You'd Written

David Key, a business professor and former entrepreneur, discusses Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. He traces Rand's life and objectivist aims. He talks about teaching the novel to business students. He explores individualism versus collectivism and the novel's portrait of entrepreneurs. He considers the book's relevance for American Christians and its warnings about political and economic trends.

Jane Austen's most underrated novel is also her most serious. In this conversation, books editor Nadya Williams and essayist Beatrice Scudeler explore what Mansfield Park has to say about virtue, vocation, wealth, and the formation of character -- and why Fanny Price, the novel's quiet, overlooked heroine, may be Austen's most carefully drawn moral portrait. — Get the ebook Spiritual Formation for the Family at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family. Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership. Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonDivinityPhD — Chapters 00:03 -- Opening: Austen reads the opening lines of Mansfield Park; Nadya introduces the episode and season premise 01:48 -- Defining a classic: what makes a work speak across centuries without losing its rootedness in its own time 05:29 -- Why Mansfield Park for America's 250th: Austen, evangelical Christianity, and the values that crossed the Atlantic 08:48 -- The plot: Fanny Price, the Bertrams, and what happens when the Crawfords arrive from London 13:35 -- The problem of Fanny Price: why modern readers resist her, and why Lionel Trilling diagnosed the real issue in the 1960s 19:57 -- Fanny as a sympathetic character: what it means to be 10 years old, sent away from your family, and expected to be grateful 25:09 -- The absent adults: Sir Thomas, Lady Bertram, and the novel's indictment of parenting by principle without presence 27:09 -- Was Fanny autobiographical? The case for Jane Austen as observer, introvert, and moral compass 33:15 -- What money buys: education, time, space for contemplation -- and what it cannot buy 39:07 -- Marriage as formation: why Austen's vision of marriage is still revolutionary, and what we've lost by privatizing it 41:16 -- Why Mansfield Park may be Austen's best: constancy, prudence, and the virtue of being the quiet center that holds everything together 48:45 -- Closing question: what classic would Beatrice have written? Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Sabrina Little, assistant professor and ultramarathoner who blends virtue ethics with athletic practice, joins to unpack Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. They explore virtue as habit, the teleological shape of a flourishing life, and the tensions between contemplative and practical living. Conversations link athletics, parenting, and Thomistic formation to how character is formed through daily practice.

Nadya Williams and Evie Solheim discuss Wuthering Heights, what makes it a gothic classic, why Emily Brontë's moral ambiguity still provokes, how the novel speaks to a generation starved for romance, and why the new film adaptation trades subtlety for TikTok-style spectacle. Also: Anna Karenina, Virginia Woolf, and Greta Gerwig's Narnia. — Get the Mere Orthodoxy ebook, Spiritual Formation for the Family, at http://mereorthodoxy.com/family Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership. Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, R30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity: Inspiring True Stories from the Early Church Around the World, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonPhD — Chapters 00:11 – Opening reading from Wuthering Heights and intro to the Brontë sisters 01:54 – Welcome to Season 2 of Christians Reading Classics; introducing Evie Solheim 03:25 – What makes a classic? Timelessness, breaking the mold, and the canon 06:35 – Plot summary: key characters, places, and the structure of the novel 08:43 – The gothic genre: origins, elements, and its American descendants 10:22 – Southern Gothic: Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, and True Detective 13:12 – How we first meet Cathy — and the unreliable narrators telling her story 16:28 – Advice for first-time readers: Emily Brontë's biography and creative world 19:43 – Virginia Woolf's essay on Wuthering Heights and what it means to write like that 22:56 – Why Wuthering Heights resonates with Americans today: romance, apps, and longing 27:21 – The new film adaptation: competing with TikTok, not other movies 31:43 – Comparing Wuthering Heights to Gone with the Wind: land, love, and star-crossed tropes 36:28 – Good cinematic adaptations: Greta Gerwig's Little Women vs. Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights 41:10 – Is Wuthering Heights amoral? Reading Heathcliff's fate through a biblical lens 47:29 – Closing question: the classic Evie wishes she had written — Anna Karenina