Acton Line

On today’s episode, Acton librarian and research associate Dan Hugger sits down with Acton research director John Pinheiro to talk about the state of higher education in America and contrast it with the philosophy of liberal learning advanced by the late Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. 

Has philosophy fled the academy? How does the crisis in higher education compromise the teaching and learning of the liberal arts? What are the perils and promises of liberal learning outside the university? Are the “Great Books” the solution to the crisis? What role should the Christian faith play in higher education? What practical steps can students and teachers take to advance liberal learning in institutions uncongenial to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue?

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Education for a Free Society | Acton Line Podcast

Rumble in the Christian College Jungle | Acton Unwind Podcast

On Christians and Prosperity | James V. Schall

The Great Books: Enemies of Wisdom? | Frederick Wilhelmsen

A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning | James V. Schall, S.J.

Another Sort of Learning | James V. Schall, S.J.

The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking | James V. Schall

On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing | James V. Schall

Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir | Louis L'Amour

Philosophy as a Way of Life | Pierre Hadot

The Book of Chuang Tzu | Martin Palmer, Elizabeth Breuilly (translators)

In 2022, the Acton Institute launched The Collins Center for Abrahamic Heritage to advance research and education from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic perspectives on economics, liberty, and human flourishing.

As part of its mission, the Collins Center earlier this year launched a debate series on the relationship between government and religion, featuring robust dialogue between scholars and leaders of different faiths. 

On today’s episode, we present the first of these debates: dean of the Islamic Seminary of America Yasir Qadhi and Cato senior fellow Mustafa Akyol exchange a wide range of ideas on Islam and the state. The dialogue is moderated by Collins Center manager Nathan Mech.

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The Collins Center for Abrahamic Heritage

DEBATE: Yasir Qadhi vs. Mustafa Akyol | Islam and the State

The modern world is a busy and complicated place for Christians. Obligations to jobs, friends, and family, along with personal interests, frequently overshadow our relationship with Christ. 

In spite of all this, John Michael Talbot shows there are many ways to deepen a connection to Christ with a busy life. He's written 28 books, produced 59 music albums, and still maintains an active ministry from Little Portion Hermitage in Arkansas, where he teaches the importance of community living and finding inspiration in the Scriptures.

In this episode, Acton's director of research, John Pinheiro, speaks to John Michael about converting to Christianity, the choice to live the monastic life, and the challenges of following Christ in today’s world.

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John Michael Talbot

Late Have I Loved You | Troubadour

When celebrated American novelist and short story writer Flannery O’Connor died at the age of 39 in 1964, she left behind an unfinished third novel titled, “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” Scholarly experts uncovered and studied the material, deeming it unpublishable. It stayed that way for 40 years. Until now.

For the past 10-plus years, award-winning author Jessica Hooten Wilson has explored the 378 pages of typed and handwritten material of the novel—transcribing pages, organizing them into scenes, and collating everything to provide a glimpse into what O’Connor might have planned to publish. “Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress” is the result.  

In this episode, Acton alumni and student programs manager Noah Gould speaks to Jessica Hooten Wilson about introducing O’Connor’s unfinished novel to the public for the first time.

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Why Do the Heathen Rage | Jessica Hooten Wilson

How Racist Was Flannery O'Connor? | The New Yorker

There the Story Stops: Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage? | Sally Thomas, RLO

There is no question today that new technology is changing the way we think about and experience work. Speculation abounds about how the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies will affect the workplace. Worries about machines replacing humans on the job are common. Others, however, are optimistic about the way AI is changing how we work—they see AI as an important tool to promote better efficiency and productivity in the workplace. How will AI change the way work is done? How will it affect the workforce? How will it affect the economy? 

To answer some of these questions and more, we bring you a panel discussion from our February Business Matters Conference. Acton’s director of programs and education, Dan Churchwell, leads Brent Orrell, Mark Johnson, and Máté Csak in a conversation looking to the future of work and the role disruptive technology will play in it.

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Business Matters 2024: Hope for Work and Enterprise | Acton On-Demand

Gertrude Himmelfarb was one of the foremost historians of Victorian life. She produced page-turning biographies of some of the age’s most intriguing and influential figures, including Lord Acton, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot. She also produced social histories of the period and brought a Victorian sensibility to American politics as a leading conservative public intellectual.

In this episode, Acton librarian and research associate Dan Hugger speaks with Nicole Penn, author of an essay just published in National Affairs entitled “The Historian’s Craft,” which deftly explores the life and legacy of one of the conservative movement’s most accomplished women.

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The Historian's Craft | National Affairs

Middlemarch | George Eliot

The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments | Gertrude Himmelfarb

The Moral Imagination: From Adam Smith to Lionel Trilling: Gertrude Himmelfarb

Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals: Ronnie Grinberg

Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics | Gertrude Himmelfarb

The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age | Gertrude Himmelfarb

The New History and the Old: Critical Essays and Reappraisals, Rev. Ed. | Gertrude Himmelfarb

Glad to the Brink of Fear | Nicole Penn

A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 | Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

The Forgotten Greatness of PV Narasimha Rao | The Seen and the Unseen

Historian of the Liberal Paradox | Gertrude Himmelfarb

Remembering Gertrude Himmelfarb with Yuval Levin | Acton Line

Learning from Victorian Virtues | Interview with Gertrude Himmelfarb

Many Christian congregations now offer hybrid worship services: you can worship in person or online. While these options have become increasingly popular, our understanding of them has not kept pace. Furthermore, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence will only complicate matters further. The contemporary church needs a way to make sense of the dizzying influx of emerging technologies, practices, and possibilities.

In this episode, Acton director of programs and education Dan Churchwell talks to Rev. A Trevor Sutton, senior pastor of St. Luke Lutheran Church in Lansing, Michigan, and coauthor of “Redeeming Technology,” about hybrid worship, the effect AI will have on the church, and how to respond to concerns from laity and clergy alike.

AI and the Discipline of Human Flourishing | Religion & Liberty Online

Church in a Digital Age: Must We Worship Bodily to Worship at All?

‘Redeeming Technology’ | Concordia Publishing House 

Acton Lecture Series

In this episode, Noah Gould, Acton’s alumni and student programs manager, speaks to Jane Clark Scharl about her verse play, Sonnez Les Matines, which asks, What if John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, and Francois Rabelais had their convictions put to the test while navigating their involvement in a brutal crime?

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Sonnez Les Matines | Wiseblood Books 

Calvin, Loyola, Rabelais: A Murder Mystery | Religion & Liberty

The Violent Faith of Cormac McCarthy | Acton Unwind

Our culture tells parents there’s one best way to raise kids: enroll them in a dozen activities, protect them from trauma, and get them into the most expensive college possible. If you can’t do all that, don’t even bother. How’s that strategy going? Record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness, and more.

In his new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, bestselling author and father of six Timothy P. Carney says it’s time to end this failed experiment.

In this episode, Acton director of marketing and communications Eric Kohn speaks to Carney about why he wrote his new book, why we should have more kids, and how to give kids deeper meaning for their lives than material success.

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Family Unfriendly | HarperCollins

In this episode, we bring you a conversation from our recent Business Matters virtual conference between Acton’s director of marketing and communications, Eric Kohn, and David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group.

They discuss Bahnsen’s new book, Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, in which he makes the case that our understanding of work and its role in our lives is deeply flawed—we are unmoored from what he calls “created purpose.” He argues that the time has come to stop tiptoeing around the issues that matter, that separating our identity from what we do is deeply damaging, and that this era of alienation is for many a direct result of a low view of work. It is in work of every kind—effort, service, striving—that we discover our meaning and purpose, and a significant and successful life is one rooted in full-time productivity and the cultivation of God’s created world.

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Acton On-Demand

 Business Matters 2024

“Full-Time: Working and the Meaning of Life” | David Bahnsen