The PloughCast: Recent Episodes
Plough
How can we live well together? What gives life purpose? What about technology, education, faith, capitalism, work, family? Is another life possible? Plough editor Peter Mommsen and senior editor Susannah Black Roberts dig deeper into perspectives from a wide variety of writers and thinkers appearing in the pages of Plough.
Leah and Susannah grill Fredrik deBoer on the state of leftist politics. What happened in 2020 and why have things not changed more? How does a self-described leftist perceive the stakes and priorities of America’s political divide? What happens when labor power is no longer at the center of leftist politics? They then discuss his 2020 book The Cult of Smart, and Leah presses him on where he derives his sense of the existential worth of each human being.
As the Industrial Revolution took off, writes Jack Bell, William Cobbett rose in defense of the cottage economy.
Hannah Long, Leah Libresco Sargeant, Alastair Roberts, and Susannah Black Roberts discuss the Barbie Movie. Does it have a moral? What is Gerwig trying to say about feminism, men and women, capitalism, and so on? Is it a confused mess or deeply insightful? The primary problem that the movie is designed to critique is the deeply unsatisfying nature of contemporary masculinity and femininity, and the poverty of the “Girlboss” as a model for female adulthood. But what does it offer as an alternative? Is there a vision for a way forward for Ken as well as Barbie? And what does it imply about the disembodiment of contemporary life?
Clare Coffey says that in multilevel marketing, friendship is not the means to the sell – it is the thing being sold.
The PloughCast team talks with a philosopher and cultural commentator about money. David Bentley Hart reflects on how his experience translating the New Testament impacted his understanding of Jesus’ teaching on mammon. How are we supposed to live out these extreme and demanding teachings? What is the role of Proverbs-style Old Testament prudence in the life of a New Testament disciple? They also discuss why joining a community like the Bruderhof is not enough, and why the separation between private piety and political economy makes no sense. In a world where we are still waiting for the kingdom to finally come, how can we pursue living in that kingdom?
The first chapter of Eugene Vodolazkin’s new novel, A History of the Island, the chronicle of an island from medieval to modern times.
The PloughCast team talk with Paul Kingsnorth about artificial intelligence and demons. Kingsnorth, an environmental activist, novelist, former Wiccan priest, and recent Christian convert, joins Susannah, Madoc, and Alan to talk about the eternal temptations represented by technological society. How has his recent conversion changed the way he experiences the world? What insights from his earlier life and work have persisted, which ones have been transformed, and what is the relationship between the worship of Mammon and the dangers posed by AI? They also discuss how to live well in the coming age, and the lessons to be drawn from the Desert Fathers.
In this excerpt from his book Salt and Light, Eberhard Arnold writes that God and money are enemies. We must choose one or the other.
Clare Coffey and Dan Walden discuss influencer culture, MLMs, and the monetization of friendship. They also go entirely off script and end up in so many different rabbit trails that it is frankly difficult to write a podcast description that even begins to reflect the reality here. Among the topics covered: Whether Blackwater is kind of a MLM for guys, whether Clare is willing to take CIA money to write mean essays about Mary McCarthy for The Partisan Review (she is), the plight of the lumpen bohemian, and what it would take to make a really good American Iberico cured ham.
Clare Coffey and Dan Walden discuss influencer culture, MLMs, and the monetization of friendship. They also go entirely off script and end up in so many different rabbit trails that it is frankly difficult to write a podcast description that even begins to reflect the reality here. Among the topics covered: Whether Blackwater is kind of a MLM for guys, whether Clare is willing to take CIA money to write mean essays about Mary McCarthy for The Partisan Review (she is), the plight of the lumpen bohemian, and what it would take to make a really good American Iberico cured ham.
Sharon Rose Christner speaks with Anna, a woman who lives in a former Roman palazzo that has been converted into a homeless shelter.
Alastair, a biblical theologian and Susannah’s husband, examines the story of Mary of Bethany’s anointing of Jesus’ feet before Holy Week as a powerful image of what our relationship with money in the Kingdom ought to be. It’s not that prudence and careful management are bad things. They are very good. But overflowing generosity, the Christian version of the Classical virtue of magnificence, is the most proper response to Christ’s own overflowing generosity. They then discuss the life of the late Tim Keller as an example of this generous investment of time, talent and treasure in the kingdom.
The Good Samaritan and the effective Altruist meet in the retelling of Luke 10:30–37. The movement that most recently hit the headlines with the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried deserves a more sympathetic treatment than it had on the last PloughCast we covered it on. What are its tenets, and how does it work as an ethical system? Leah, who considers herself an effective altruist, leads Phil, Susannah, and Pete on a tour of Effective Altruism and its affiliated movements, including extreme long-termism and the mysterious world of the “postrats.”
Peter Mommsen tells the story of Pinianus and Melania, a wealthy fifth-century couple who gave it all away.
Alastair Roberts discusses the virtue of magnificence, the relationship between money and love, and what we can learn from Mary of Bethany’s gift.
Eugene McCarraher and Peter Mommsen speak about why Modern capitalism is anything but secular. They discuss Christianity’s compromise with mammon – and the visionaries who have resisted it. Then they talk about the power of Mammon, whether it’s enchanted, and the reason we venerate it.
Phil Christman explores the courtship of three monogamous animal couples. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Norann Voll, a Bruderhof member in Australia, took a vow of obedience that included the promise to go anywhere the church needed her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sister Carino Hodder says the call to chastity applies just as much to spouses and to single people looking for romance as it does to consecrated religious. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Andreas Knapp, a member of the Little Brothers of the Gospel says wealth is not only an unwieldy burden, but is incompatible with love of neighbor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dori Moody relates the story of her grandparents marriage. Even though they separated, they remained faithful to one another. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Randall Gauger, a Bruderhof pastor, discusses how lifelong vows make mutual faithfulness possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Caitrin Keiper writes of the vows in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables that brokenness does not erase the hope in any person when the cycle of retribution breaks for grace. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kelsey Osgood, an Orthodox Jew, writes that we live in an age that glorifies self-care, but any attempt to deny oneself something pleasurable is suspect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Susannah talks with Zohar Atkins, a rabbi and philosopher, about vows in Nietzsche, in other philosophers, and in the Jewish theological tradition. Are vows the origin of private conscience and thus the origin of secularism? Can human vows provide the kind of transcendence and eternity that even existentialists seek? Is it presumptuous to take a vow? Then, Susannah and Peter discuss what they’ve learned from editing the Vows issue of the magazine and doing the Vows season of the podcast. After that, they take listener questions – is it wrong to vow at all? How can we ensure that vows are made in love? And what are the hosts’ favorite cooking spices? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah have a long conversation with Professor Robert P. George of Princeton University. A veteran of the pro-life movement, Robert P. George reflects on the opportunity that we now have to build just laws that support the wellbeing of mothers and their children, and, echoing Lincoln, of the need to heal the division between pro-life and pro-choice Americans as much as possible, without compromising on what we believe to be right. He discusses his thoughts about the non-libertarian future of pro-life politics, and the need for supporting both private and public aid to mothers and families. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah talk to Justin Giboney of The AND Campaign about polarization in American political life. They discuss practical matters: How can we seek common ground without wimping out? How can we work across the aisle? They also talk about the role of the Black church. What is the unique contribution that that tradition can make to our ongoing discussions of the proper interaction between faith and politics? Then, Peter and Susannah speak with Lydia S. Dugdale. There are now no doctors in America who are required to take the Hippocratic Oath; generally, if doctors take an oath at all, it is one of their own devising, which changes from year to year. In a medical culture like this, what is lost? What is the purpose of medicine, anyway? Is there a purpose to it beyond treating patients as customers and giving them what they want? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Susannah and Peter speak with Kelsey Osgood about her piece “The Dance of Devotion.” What’s the difference between a figure skater whose sport requires a strict regimen of training and eating, and an observant Jew whose life is also constrained by specific rules? Why is our society more friendly to the one than to the other? Why are we uncomfortable with the concept of a discipline that’s a matter of obedience to God rather than to a trainer or to one’s own choice of lifestyle fad? Then, they talk with King-Ho Leung about his piece “The One Who Promises.” What’s the difference between a vow and an oath? How have vows been seen in Jewish and Christian thought? He examines the teachings of Philo of Alexandria, of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of Martin Luther in his attempt to understand how our ability to make vows is rooted in God’s own faithfulness, in the nature of language, and in His identification with the Logos, the Word. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah speak with John Milbank about his reservations about National Conservatism, and the possibilities of Christian internationalism. Christianity makes universal claims, and all our national loyalties and other lesser loyalties are relativized by our loyalty to the Kingdom of God. In light of that, how can we best live out our local and universal commitments in friendship with each other? Then, they speak with Tom and Sue Quinta, a couple who joined the Bruderhof after a long journey through the counterculture of the 1960s. What did it take for a young hippy couple to make lifetime vows to a Christian community, and in what of the non-Christian spirituality they explored did they see the work of the Holy Spirit? How does a vow shape the experience of a life, and how can we understand the uniqueness of Christ in light of the spiritual hungers of the whole of the non-Christian world? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah discuss Peter’s lead editorial, “Word Is Bond.” In a culture where keeping our options open is the categorical imperative, how can we become ourselves? Peter argues that the voluntary self-limitation of vows allows men and women to live their lives thoroughly, rather than skimming along the edge of reality. Monasticism, marriage, and the military are forms of commitment that commonly allow people to dig in to their own lives; all three are on the wane. How can we embrace commitment and push back against the ephemerality and weightlessness of the uncommitted life? Then, they welcome their colleague Caitrin Keiper to discuss vows in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. Both Valjean and Javert, in their different ways, live their lives according to a vow. How do these different commitments lead to each of their ends? And how does grace shape the outcome of each of their vows? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lydia S. Dugdale on the loss of the Hippocratic Oath and the lack of an ethic to explain medicine’s telos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter Mommsen, editor of Plough, writes that in a culture addicted to endless choice, vows offer a higher freedom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
David Bentley Hart writes that apocalypse, not dogma or tradition, is what gives Christianity grounds for hope in his book Tradition and Apocalypse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cardinal Peter Turkson speaks about ecological challenges and how more community may be an answer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz writes on John’s Revelation, apocalypse, fear, and why there is still hope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The artwork of Wassily Kandinsky reveals his apocalyptic visions. Shira Telushkin reviews the Around the Circle exhibit of Kandinsky’s art at the Guggenheim. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Eberhard Arnold tells how the first Christians viewed the end of the age. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Susannah, Peter, Shadi and Damir talk about Yoram Hazony’s National Conservative Statement of Principles, John Milbank’s Open Letter, and what postliberalism means. They talk about what the NatCon statement implies about what state power should be used for, and then find themselves discussing abortion, and the future of the country given the profound differences that exist. They talk about whether slavery and abortion are fundamentally different kinds of questions, about the nature of law, about assisted dying in Canada, whether and how progress happens. The conversation then turns to the nature of religious truth, and on what politics is based on – sociability, justice, or love? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio shares an interview from 1972, in which Johnny Cash talks about faith and music – and then breaks into song. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah discuss with LM Sacasas the perils and promise of technology: how it shapes our lives, how it changes how we think about ourselves. Will Artificial Intelligencess become sentient? How will we understand ourselves if we believe they are sentient? What are the limits of technique, and how can we live in a more human and embodied world? Then, Peter and Susannah take listener questions. How can we go about living in a society which feels as though it’s falling apart? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah talk with Christopher Tollefsen about his piece on the history and ethics of nuclear deterrence, and the prospect of an antinuclear movement post-Ukraine. They discuss Tollefsen’s conviction that nuclear war is a life issue. Then, they speak with Samuel Moyn about his new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Is making war more “humane” actually removing the urgency of actual pacifism? What if we simply aimed to have fewer wars? Have we given up on that? The gang get into it about Just War Theory, pacifism, the Peace and Truce of God movement, and many other things. Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah welcome Kim Comer, the editor of Plough’s European edition, and discuss the origins of the new Bruderhof communities in Austria. Welcomed by Cardinal Schönborn as part of the healing of the schisms of the Reformation, these communities are thriving. This leads them to the question of how past wrongs can be healed in general: how can we get past the “sins of the fathers?” Not by denying those fathers and not by wallowing in guilt, but by the deep forgiveness and transformation available in Christ. Then, Peter and Susannah speak with Anika Prather about her year of mourning with her children: many family members and friends died, of Covid, of murder, of suicide, of heart attacks. How can we parent our children through such incredibly trying times? How can we truly teach them to look to the hope of the resurrection of the dead? Then they discuss Dr. Prather’s life project: understanding and using the Classical tradition for racial reconciliation in America. This is another kind of “healing of history,” and Dr. Prather’s work in classical education is an ambitious attempt to tell the untold story of Black classicists and the influence of the great tradition on Black thinkers, writers, and activists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hope in Apocalypse, Part 3: Peter and Susannah talk with demographer Lyman Stone about falling birthrates and what humans need to thrive enough to have children. They discuss Thomas Malthus and the origin of the European demographic transition, as well as the origin of overpopulation fears, and about how those fears misunderstand the nature of human ingenuity. They cover the essential racism of so much “overpopulation” discourse, which even now is focused on “the wrong kind of people” having too many children. They discuss the issue of hard limits- surely there must be some point past which human population can’t grow, some actual environmental catastrophe? What then are we aiming for? How long should we plan for? Then they talk about whether the need for limits and the need for ambitious vision in human endeavor are in conflict with each other. Then they discuss what it takes, spiritually and culturally, for a society, for individuals, to believe that the world they are in, the family they are in, is one worth preserving. Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hope in Apocalypse, Part 2: Peter and Susannah speak with Eleanor Parker about Archbishop Wulfstan and his sermon in 1014 calling the English to return to fidelity with God and each other, in the face of the apocalyptic Viking invasions. They also discuss what happened after those invasions succeeded: Wulfstan worked with the new king, Cnut, to draft just laws for this new Viking-Anglo Saxon polity. Then, Peter and Susannah talk with extremely online illustrator and self-described mystical idiot Owen Cyclops about his journey from general weirdness to Christian weirdness. They get into his cartoon for Plough, and his interest in the specific American temper of Christianity, and how universal principles and teachings get refracted by different cultures. Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Susannah and Peter discuss Peter’s lead editorial, “Hoping for Doomsday,” and cover some of the mysteries at the heart of Apocalypse: is it the end of the world? Why is it hopeful? What does it mean? What does it take to allow the supernatural hope of the New Heavens and the New Earth give your life meaning now, and what’s going on with Christians’ addiction to apocalyptic date-setting? Then they have a conversation with Ivan Rusyn, the president of the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kyiv, whose wartime experience has included sneaking back to his home in occupied Bucha to bring help to his neighbors. He describes the current state of the conflict and calls on Christians to help with pressing needs; he also describes the incredibly powerful experience of Christian and civic unity that the war has led to in Kyiv and across Ukraine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Joseph Julián González and Monique González write that for the ancient Nahua and Aztec poets, the way to the holy runs through beauty. Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dhananjay Jagannathan writes on good and bad music, morals, and why the sheer vitality of music can seem to spell danger. Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Composer Steven Michael Newby says African American spirituals aren’t just for Black churches. They are for everybody. Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Joseph M. Keegin explores Christian Hardcore music and its undoing. Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this article drawn from her memoir With or Without Me, Esther Maria Magnis tells how her prayers were not answered when her father got cancer. Or were they? Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Benjamin Crosby on how hymn singing can help revive a culture of communal music. Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Phil Christman finds community and catharsis in the YouTube comments to Joy Division and other post punk and new wave music. Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter Mommsen on how singing and making (not just listening to) music shapes the soul. Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mary Townsend on how the excellence of Dolly Parton helps her students understand Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics. Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this excerpt from his novel Brisbane, Eugene Vodolazkin’s character Gleb Yanovsky quits music school because “we’re all going to die.” Read the article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When our amateur choir sings Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, the music’s power overwhelms our mistakes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah talk with friend of the pod Zena Hitz, author of Lost in Thought, about the state of the liberal arts, how those not in academia can continue their humanist education, and the Catherine Project, her new organization dedicated to helping people do this. What is the value of the “great books?” Why these books and not others? How do we read closely, and why is it important to do that in community? Zena, Peter and Susannah address all of these questions. Then Peter and Susannah tackle listener questions, facing #Imaginegate head-on. Other listener questions include the question of bad music: can music make you worse? Also, the importance of silence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah talk with Joey Keegin and Phil Christman about their pieces on Christian hardcore and ’80s, ’90s post-punk respectively. The blend of nostalgia and genuine appreciation makes for a powerful and enthusiastic back and forth between the two guests, with Pete chiming in and Susannah remaining respectfully silent. They discuss what makes derivative Christian music bad, and how some Christian hardcore escaped the fate of imitative mediocrity. They also discuss the way that YouTube comments provide a strange Covid-era community of nostalgia for the children of the ’80s and ’90s. Then, Pete and Susannah talk with Plough’s own Joy Clarkson about her newly-published title Aggressively Happy, a how-to guide to finding joy. Unlike many such guides which focus on one’s internal state, this book encourages readers to find joy in the actual goodness of the world: it is an anti-stoic text. Most controversially, Joy makes the case that Pride and Prejudice’s sycophantic vicar, Mr. Collins, is unfairly maligned and is a model of appropriate ambition, resilience, and contentment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah have a long, polyphonic conversation with Rowan Williams about his new collection of plays, Shakeshafte and Other Plays; about a Christianity that can accommodate the whole of the world; about the poet David Jones, the artist Eric Gill, and the destructiveness of aesthetic fundamentalism. Then they turn to a discussion of the war, and of the role of art in a time of war. The archbishop closes in a prayer for peace and justice. Peter and Susannah then speak with their colleague Maureen Swinger about her piece “Doing Bach Badly,” about the history of the Saint Matthew Passion and of its role in the liturgical life of the Bruderhof. They reflect on the way that singing can put you in a position to experience grace, and Maureen recalls a very specific experience of singing as conversion from her teenage years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah speak with Esther Maria Magnis about her recent Plough release With or Without Me, a memoir of her father’s death from cancer and her own loss and gain of Christian faith. How can a shattered faith be rebuilt after tragedy? Then, they have a wide-ranging conversation with Sperello di Serego Alighieri, Dante’s descendant, about his book on his ancestor’s cosmology, The Sun and the Other Stars of Dante Alighieri: A Cosmographic Journey through the Divina Commedia. They also discuss the various dramas of Dr. Alighieri’s Dantean year, the 700th anniversary of his ancestor’s death, including a playful relitigation of his ancestor’s banishment trial. Then, they go full galaxy brain: How did Dante’s ideas look forward to contemporary post-Einsteinian concepts about the shape of the universe? Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah chat with Brittany Petruzzi about her interview with Susannah in the current issue of the magazine, Chanting Psalms In the Dark. During the past year, Brittany went permanently blind as the result of a brain tumor, and in the midst of that diagnosis, she started a psalm-chanting YouTube channel. Inspired by her love of and need for God’s word as well as her musical theater background, she discusses this project’s origins and future. The three of them also talk with Paul Buckley about the challenge of incorporating psalm chanting into Protestant worship, and how ingraining psalms into your life can allow them to show up for you when you need them. Then, Pete and Susannah speak with Stephen Michael Newby about the tradition of Black spirituals, about the absolute necessity of racial reconciliation, and about the role of music in that reconciliation. They discuss how spirituals work: their theology and their practice of bringing the events of Scripture into the immediate lives of those who are singing them. Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Edwidge Danticat on the way mass shootings have made violent death seem normal, and how to resist it.
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Peter and Susannah open the Music issue podcast series with a discussion of Anabaptist music: the beautiful and occasionally grim songs of the Radical Reformation. But what is music for anyway? They talk about music as a crucial aspect of the human Telos, and the need for the body of Christ to worship Him in song. The sheer power of music has been recognized in all the philosophical traditions of the world as well: music can call out the best in you, and can make you worse. It is not something to be taken lightly. Then they bring on Mary Townsend to talk about Dolly Parton and her exhibition of the Aristotelian virtues of magnificence and magnanimity: the way in which she spends money out of thoughtful love for the public good, and the way that her generosity in song reflects a fundamentally Christian experience of having been given a gift of song. In this way, Dolly may serve as a truly Christian corrective of Aristotle’s more masculine and humorless magnanimous man. The petite blonde woman from Tennessee may be the closest thing we have to a living example of public and thoughtful greatness that is also good and beautiful. Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Russian novelist Eugene Vodolazkin finds the ludicrous and the heartening even in the funeral of his own father. Read the article here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kelsey Osgood on looking for Jewish community, still finding that her family is set apart, and wondering how much to let the world in.
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What’s it like to raise a child with profound physical disabilities? Six mothers around the world talk about the hard days... and the amazing ones.
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At twenty weeks there were only two things I knew about my daughter, both of them scientifically derived facts: her physical abnormality and her biological sex.
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Victoria Reynolds Farmer on the Magnificat and how her disability taught her to trust a God who raises up the weak and brings down the mighty.
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Faced with a frightening diagnosis, a couple was hours away from an abortion when one conversation made them reconsider. Their daughter owes her life to a young man with Down syndrome.
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Peter and Susannah answer listener questions: How should we think about the so-called “social model” of disability? Why shouldn’t we abort children who may not live long? How can we talk about human worth with those who don’t share our Christian convictions? And are there any downsides to designing for disability? They also reflect on what they’ve learned in doing this issue. As it turns out, disability is not a “niche” topic: it cuts to the heart of what it means to be human, and to the heart of Christian hope. Thinking well about disability also challenges us in our times of ability to realize that making the most of our talents, developing our strengths, in order to be able to help others, is an obligation: we need to be needed, and we need to give, in order to be fully human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah discuss Kelsey Osgood’s piece “Stranger in a Strange Land” with her, about her adult conversion to Orthodox Judaism and her family’s attempt to find a place where, practicing that faith, they can feel at home. Then, they speak with Leah Libresco Sargeant about her three most recent pieces for Plough: on dependence and illiberalism, on the question of whose bodies matter in our public discussions, and on how design for those with and without disabilities can make a welcoming world. How do we raise our children in a faith without driving them away from it? How can we make a world that is welcoming to all human people, not just those who match the pattern of the adult male liberal subject? Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pete and Susannah speak with Emory bioethicist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson about her ongoing philosophical journey into bioethical questions, and her critique of market-and-autonomy based ideas about human worth. Might an ethic of caution, care, and doing no harm provide a path forward for disagreement about personhood in the case of abortion? They also discuss Denmark’s famed “eradication” of Down syndrome, and its cost: the eradication of people with Down syndrome. Then, they speak with J. D. Flynn about a recent Times piece exposing the extreme unreliability of prenatal genetic testing, and the assumptions that the piece makes (by implication) about the value of human selves. Flynn also describes his and his wife’s own experiences as parents of two adopted children with Down syndrome and one biological child without it: how can we receive all children, adopted and not, of all “kinds,” as gifts? Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Susannah and Peter talk with O. Carter Snead about his book What it Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics. They examine the question of the anthropology of expressive individualism as the framework for our current legal bioethical regime, and look at hot-button cultural issues including abortion, assisted reproduction, assisted suicide, and end-of-life care. How should we die? How can we value and care for those who no longer have the same abilities they had when they were younger, but who are still vital members of the human family? How should we make babies? How can we guard the mystery and gift of children from a false sense of our own mastery over their creation? How should we live? How can we become the people we are meant to be by exercising care towards those who need our help, and by receiving care from those who love us? Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah discuss Aimee Murphy’s Rehumanize, an organization dedicated to a consistent life ethic, and the intersection between the pro-life movement and the disability rights movement. How does the utilitarian obsession with quality of life and rejection of those who suffer attack the dignity of all of us? And how can an awareness of the existence of sufferers pull us out of our own meritocratic prisons? Then, the hosts talk with Ross Douthat about his chronic Lyme disease and the way that official science can be limited. What does the experience of suffering teach us about the reality of the divine, and how do these liminal states open us up to transcendent reality? Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah discuss Peter’s lead editorial, describing his friendship with and care for a profoundly disabled young man. They consider the simultaneous truths of the good of health, the resurrection of the body, and the full image of God in the bodies and lives of disabled people. They discuss the phenomenon of the “Ugly laws” of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Nazi eugenics program, the limitations of communitarianism, and the way that questions of disability touch on everybody, because they are about what it means to be a human in a body. Then they welcome Plough contributor Victoria Reynolds Farmer, a writer with cerebral palsy who discusses her Marian devotion, her recent Catholic conversion, and what that has meant for her marriage and the prospect of motherhood. Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Three boys play the Three Kings who deliver gifts on the eve of Epiphany. But what will they give the poor children they pass on the street? A delightful story of strong tradition broken by the power of love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This story is one of several Swedish legends explaining why the Christmas Rose blooms in winter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Santiago Ramos on his outsiderness, the double homelessness immigrants live with that points to the eternal home.
Read it here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/immigration/the-quest-for-home Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Simeon Wiehler, university dean in Rwanda, reflects on cruelty and healing in a land scarred by genocide, drawing on philosopher Immanuel Kant; Richard Kandt, a German colonialist obsessed with craniometry; and a young student, also named Kant.
Read it here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/politics/human-rights/three-kants-and-a-thousand-skulls Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Far from home, one father transplants fig trees. Another crafts chocolates. A third creates places of welcome. Stephanie Saldaña, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Nour Al Ghraowi: three daughters give voice to each man's story, as their lives interweave.
Read it here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/reconciliation/in-search-of-lost-fig-trees Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ashley Lucas on the story of Russell Maroon Shoatz, a former Black Panther who spent three decades in solitary confinement, and the reckoning with violence past and present.
Read it here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/criminal-justice/the-end-of-rage Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Edwidge Danticat on the stories that anchor us, the homes we build with words that no separation can take away.
Read it here: http://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/immigration/home-is-not-just-a-place Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Russell Moore discusses the future of Christianity and the church in a rapidly secularizing society. He explores why young people in particular are “losing their religion.” The reasons, he argues, are not just the cultural hedonism that Christians usually blame, but lie closer to home: young people realize that too often the church itself doesn’t really believe what it claims to believe.
Read it here: http://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/witness/integrity-and-the-future-of-the-church Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah tackle our hardest listener questions: What are your hesitations about Christendom? Do you think that all national borders are unchristian? What IS the Bruderhof doing about Afghan refugees? Is it OK for a community to have insiders and outsiders? Is Plough just a bunch of SJWs?
Then, they revisit the question of the reality of nations - What’s important about national identity? Is it always dangerous? How is it related to family identity? How can we love, be rooted in, and derive some of our identity from imperfect - profoundly imperfect - countries?
Then we move into speculation. Do nations have specific angels looking out for them? Is there such a thing as a national calling in history? If so, what is America’s?
Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/politics/ploughcast-episode-18-are-national-borders-unchristian-and-other-imponderables Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah discuss Christian nationalism, and whether there might be a good version of this thing which so many books have recently been at pains to dismiss. They also talk about the reality of the bad version: Christianity which is nothing more than a tribal signifier. Then they talk about Oscar Romero as a potential model for an “integralism” which would be attractive to both Anabaptists and Roman Catholics. Russell Moore comes on to discuss the church’s own infidelity as a cause of plummeting enrollment, and Susannah presses him on what the relationship of church and state ought to be. Transcript: www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/politics/ploughcast-episode-17-christian-nationalism-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 1972, Russell Maroon Shoatz went to prison for the murder of a police officer. He spent 29 years in solitary confinement. Ashley Lucas, whose own father was imprisoned when she was growing up, reported and wrote a deep-dive piece on Shoatz’s life, his ongoing activism on behalf of Black liberation, and his relationship with his family. Pete and Susannah speak with Ashley about the process of writing the piece, and about the various issues that Shoatz’s life and story bring up. Can we acknowledge the wrongness of the murder, the pain of the murdered man’s family, and at the same time see the man behind the convict? The episode also features Russell’s son, Russell III. He tells the story of the two fathers in his life: the imprisoned former Black Panther, and the police officer/minister who adopted him. Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/criminal-justice/ploughcast-episode-16-the-end-of-rage-prison-and-radicalism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah welcome Tara Isabella Burton and Dhananjay Jagannathan to discuss the intersections of their recent pieces. Tara’s cosmopolitan upbringing led her to yearn for the connectedness of place, and yet she’s cautious about the potential dark side of that chthonic urge. Meanwhile, Dhananjay’s immigrant story and thoughtful loyalty to the America of the American idea will not let him dismiss patriotism. Then, John Milbank brings us to the deepest of deep roots, with a full-throated defense of a nation that is linked to a place, and which is not based on an idea. His piece is a hymn to the mythic geography of England. Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/immigration/ploughcast-episode-15-on-rooted-cosmopolitanism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah speak with novelist, journalist, and Iraq vet Phil Klay about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the folly of nation-building, and the promise of soft power. Then they welcome historian Tom Holland, author of Dominion, to discuss the difference Christianity made to the mind of the West and the idea of Empire. What is the unique capacity Christianity has for appealing to both fighters and pacifists? How have those two strands in its history woven together, and what can we make of the profound subversion of Roman ideals of power represented by the Cross? And in what sense can virtually every person in what was once Christendom call him or herself a Christian? Wokeness, Holland claims, can best be understood as a Christian heresy; Hitler, the head of the first movement to thoroughly repudiate Christianity not just institutionally but in principle, becomes a substitute for Satan. And we begin to look to the most marginalized, the most powerless, as Christ figures. Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/nonviolence/ploughcast-episode-14-empire-and-its-discontents Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Are national cultures something God values? What do we owe the sojourner? And is there something to this idea of Christendom? In this episode of The PloughCast, Peter and Susannah talk about Peter’s lead editorial’s controversial anti-Esperanto take, the perils and joys of Christian nationalism, and whether it’s coherent for an Anabaptist to be in favor of the idea of Christendom. Then, they welcome Plough’s favorite integralist, Pater Edmund Waldstein, to discuss his piece on the natural law case for welcoming refugees, what relationship that has to the Gospel imperative to do so, and how to think about those obligations in relationship to the integrity of the cultures and places and people who receive those sojourners. Also covered: Gustav Landauer’s surprising atheist Jewish anarchist pro-Christendom position, the relationship between the nation and the political state, and how to think about national borders. Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/immigration/ploughcast-episode-13-one-cheer-for-the-nation-state Recommended Reading:
Peter Mommsen, “On Not Learning Esperanto”
Pater Edmund Waldstein, “When Migrants Come Knocking: What Natural Law Demands”
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Father–son relationships in The Mandalorian and Return of the Jedi sagas illustrate meekness as a healthy model for manhood. Manly Virtues by Noah Van Niel: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/community/leadership/manly-virtues Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Beneath Panama City’s gleaming skyscrapers, traditional fishermen still venture out to sea for a hard-won catch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“When I went back to Idaho, I connected with more than just the land.” An excerpt from Gracy Olmstead’s Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Christian Wiman reads the parable of Jesus writing in the sand as poetry, and unpacks poetry of doubt and faith by Yehuda Amichai, Kay Ryan, and Les Murray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mary Harrington on what’s for sale on online dating sites. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker says it’s in our nature to fear death – and to transcend that fear of death through faith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter and Susannah address listener questions. First, what do we make of natural evil? Things like parasites seem to call into question the idea of nature as designed by a loving God. What’s the relationship of the fall of man to the theodicy of cicada-killing wasps? Then they turn to the question of the nature of online worlds. Can we talk coherently about the nature of Twitter, say? What does the way we behave online say about us? Is online a “place” with its own identity? Next: Why not let children be feral? What’s the point of school, and doesn’t it just ruin our ability to be naturally and fully human? Related to that, why read anything but scripture? Then, they return to the question of UFOs: if they were proved to exist, would their existence affect Peter and Susannah’s faith? Finally, they turn to the big questions: what is nature anyway? And what have they learned from doing this podcast series? What are their takeaways? Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/ploughcast-episode-12-can-nature-be-evil-and-other-listener-questions Recommended Reading:
Rutger Bregman, “The Real Life Lord of the Flies,” The Guardian
C. S. Lewis, The Space Trilogy
The PloughCast #7: Dogs, Ross Douthat, and UFOs, Plough
“The Glory of the Creatures,” Plough
The PloughCast #8: Animal Slaughter, Online Dating, and Embodiment, Plough
The PloughCast #9: Sohrab Ahmari, Ernest Becker, and the Meaning of Tradition, Plough
The PloughCast #10: Amish Regenerative Agriculture and Transhumanist Medicine, Plough
The PloughCast #11: Putting Down Roots in Idaho and Australia, Plough
Ian Marcus Corbin, “The Abyss of Beauty,” Plough
Gracy Olmstead, “Return to Idaho,” Plough
Gracy Olmstead, Uprooted
Edmund Waldstein, “The Lords of Nature,” Plough
Peter Mommsen, “The Book of the Creatures,” Plough
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Pete and Susannah speak with Gracy Olmstead about her new book Uprooted. In this age of unrootedness, what does it mean to have a home – to be from somewhere? Gracy’s book talks about her own story: her family’s farm in Idaho, and what it means to have that be an important part of her life, even though she’s moved away. Can she go back to the land her ancestors farmed? Gracy’s work has been fundamentally shaped by her friendship with Wendell Berry, and by Berry’s own work. Is his agrarianism mere romanticism? Can there be a kind of love of the local that is not agrarian? Then, the hosts speak with Norann Voll about her move from Upstate New York to rural Australia. How can we learn to love a new place? What does it look like to put down roots when you’re ambivalent about where you are? Norann also discusses the process by which the Danthonia Bruderhof has learned how to manage their land: to regenerate the soil and to create a fertile homeplace in the midst of the badlands. Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/ploughcast-episode-11-putting-down-roots-in-idaho-and-australia Recommended Reading
Gracy Olmstead, Uprooted
Gracy Olmstead, “Return to Idaho,” Plough
Gracy Olmstead and Joy Clarkson, “Return to Idaho Live Forum,” Plough
Wendell Berry, “It All Turns on Affection,” 2012 Jefferson Lecture
Robert Macfarlane, Landscapes
Wendell Berry, Remembering
Peter Mommsen, Susannah Black, John Kempf, “Amish Regenerative Agriculture and Transhumanist Medicine,” Ploughcast
John Kempf, “Regenerative Agriculture,” Plough
Norann Voll, “Shutdown Hospitality,” Plough
Norann Voll, “Gratitude in a Time of Drought,” Plough
Johannes Meier, “Beating the Big Dry,” Plough
Adam Nicholson, “Into the Sussex Weald,” Plough
Norann Voll, “Return to Vienna,” Plough
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Pete and Susannah discuss Pater Edmund Waldstein’s piece “Lords of Nature.” What does it mean to respect the nature of human beings, including the integrity of their bodies? If we can reshape our own bodies and customize our children using new genetic technologies – should we? What does it look like to honor human nature rather than seek to dominate it? Then, the hosts speak with John Kempf about his piece “Regenerative Agriculture: An Amish Farmer’s Quest to Heal the Land.” What is regenerative agriculture? How is it distinguished from organic farming? Isn’t it more labor intensive, and doesn’t that mean that it will require some unrealistic percentage of people to return to farming? Above all, can it feed the world? Don’t we depend on high-input farming, complete with fertilizers and pesticides, to be able to produce as much as we do? Kempf makes a strong case that not only is regenerative agriculture – which seeks to rebuild soil health and plants’ own immune systems, as opposed to depending on chemical fertilizers and pesticides – the only kind of agriculture that will enable our farmland to feed many generations in the future, it’s also more productive now. And it honors the intricate interdependency of plant, animal, human, and microbial life that reflects the wisdom of the Creator. Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/ploughcast-episode-10-amish-regenerative-agriculture-and-transhumanist-medicine Recommended Reading
John Kempf, “Regenerative Agriculture,” Plough
Edmund Waldstein, “The Lords of Nature,” Plough
Nicanor Austriaco, “Begotten Not Made,” Plough
Pope Francis, Laudato si’
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Joel Salatin, “Behold the Glory of Pigs,” Plough
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Maureen Swinger, “My Forest Education,” Plough
Claudio Oliver, “Becoming a Rooted Church,” Plough
Claudio Oliver, “The Unplanned Church,” Plough
Claudio Oliver, “Letter from Brazil: Mutation Time,” Plough
Tobias Jones, “Captivated by the First Church,” Plough
Jane Jacobs, “Sidewalk Ballet,” Plough
Leah Libresco, “Let the Body Testify,” Plough
Leah Libresco, “Dependence,” Plough
John Kempf, The Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
Joel Salatin, Fields of Farmers
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Pete and Susannah discuss Kelsey Osgood’s piece on Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death. How did Becker, as a Jew struggling through secularism, face the fact of our slavery to the fear of death - and how did his refusal of the cold comforts of distraction open the way for real meaning to emerge? Then, the hosts speak with friend of the pod Sohrab Ahmari, about his recent book The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos. The traditions we are raised to respect shape us. How did the birth of Ahmari’s son encourage him to write a book wrestling with the ways that traditions can help answer some of the basic questions of human life? What does it mean to be rooted in tradition, and why would one want to be? What happens when traditions are bad? And how can we understand “traditionalism” not as a good in itself, not as a bespoke lifestyle choice, but as the guiderails of a community in which we, and our children, can flourish? Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/ploughcast-episode-9-sohrab-ahmari-ernest-becker-and-the-meaning-of-tradition Recommended Reading
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
Kelsey Osgood, “Ernest Becker and our Fear of Death”
Martin Hägglund, This Life
Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread
Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas
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Peter and Susannah talk about Mary Harrington’s piece on the business of online dating. What happens when butchering is removed from the marketplace? And what are we doing when we swipe right on someone, treating him or her as a commodity which might or might not pass muster? Then they talk with Plough contributing editor Leah Libresco Sargeant about her piece “Let the Body Testify.” Are we disembodied wills unrelated to our bodies, using them as meat robots? Or are we embodied souls whose selfhood persists even if we are unable to advocate for ourselves? Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/ploughcast-episode-8-animal-slaughter-online-dating-and-embodiment Recommended Reading
Mary Harrington, Love in the Marketplace, Plough
Leah Libresco, “Dependence: Towards an Illiberalism of the Weak,” Plough
Leah Libresco, Atar Hadari, Peter Mommsen, Noah Van Niel: Dependence (recorded discussion)
Leah Libresco and Jennifer Frey: Illiberal Feminism (recorded discussion)
Leah Libresco, “Let the Body Testify,” Plough
Leah Libresco, “Let the Body Testify” live forum (upcoming discussion)
Emma Hartley, Why Do So Many Teenage Girls Want to Change Gender?, Prospect
Gracy Olmstead, “The Risk of Gentleness,” Plough
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Can nature teach us how to live, or is the universe random and meaningless? In the first episode of The PloughCast’s new 6-part series about nature and creatures, Susannah quizzes Peter about his dog Hektor, who plays a starring role in Peter’s Plough editorial “The Book of Creatures.” They discuss the evolution of dogs, especially the way dogs’ faces have evolved to hack into human emotions of tenderness – and ask whether this should make us more cynical about nature, or more open to the possibility that it is freighted with meaning and purpose. The imprisoned Czech dissident Vaclav Havel, not a religious believer, nevertheless had a mystical experience of nature that changed his life. The Boston writer Ian Marcus Corbin tells Havel’s story in an ambitious Plough essay “The Abyss of Beauty,” which the hosts discuss, prompting Susannah to describe her own, distinctly urban, version Havel’s conversion experience. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat then joins The PloughCast for a wide-ranging discussion of nature-related topics. First up is a debate whether there is such a thing as natural law, and if there is, why it fails to move public opinion on controversial questions such as bioethics. Ross then recounts his personal story of the dark side of nature: a harrowing experience of long-term Lyme disease which led him to write his forthcoming book The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery (October 2021). On a lighter note, Ross agrees to talk about the paranormal: UFOs (now also known as UAPs or “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), space aliens, and alien abductions. What are we to make of the US military’s recent official confirmation of UFO sightings? Are aliens part of the natural world, or are they supernatural – perhaps the same beings formerly called fairies and elves? Finally, an important warning: Don’t anger the Good People. Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/ploughcast-episode-7-dogs-ross-douthat-and-ufos Recommendations
Peter Mommsen, editorial essay, “The Book of the Creatures”
Fr. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, “The Book of Nature: Origin and Development of the Metaphor”
Ian Marcus Corbin, “The Abyss of Beauty”
O. Carter Snead, What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics
Ross Douthat, “Flying Saucers and Other Fairy Tales”
Ross Douthat, May 2019 Twitter thread on UFOs
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Leah Libresco Sargeant offers a feminist critique of how modern society pushes women to change their bodies, in an essay that also covers anorexia, surrogacy, gender bias in medicine, and gender dysmorphia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Springs Toledo on his defeat to and friendship with the boxer Stonewall Strickland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Eighteen years among Somali Muslims in the Horn of Africa have taught an American Christian that Islam’s five pillars apply to Christianity as well. In this excerpt from a new Plough book, Pillars, she describes what she has learned about one of these five pillars, prayer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Can it ever be a Christian’s duty to kill? For Plough’s founding editor Eberhard Arnold, this question goes to the core of the meaning of Christianity, and of human life. His seven theses on the Biblical basis of pacifism were written in Germany, during dangerous years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“The love of the peacemaker is a love that has force, that will not accept the injustices of the status quo.” Anthony Barr on love and justice through the lens of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Gracy Olmstead on welcoming the baby she did not want. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Patrick Tomassi discusses the definition of violence with Portland’s Antifa movement, the local Proud Boys, and some of the people caught in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This episode included an Anabaptist and an Anglican in conversation as they attempted to address listener questions include the following: I'm convinced that Christians should not use lethal violence. Does scripture outline what those who don't follow Jesus, acting on behalf of the state, should or shouldn't do with regard to levels of violence to restrain evil? How do we read the violence in the Old Testament? What about Just War Theory? Does the state have a moral obligation to use violence, to prevent or reduce the possibility of greater violence? Was the Second World War justified? Plus: Striped bass fishing, the Lambs Club, creative minorities, beer-making, and why Susannah can’t be shunned.
Question 1: Can agents of the state legitimately use violence? What if they’re Christians? (0:45)
Question 2: How should we read violence in the Old Testament? (8:58)
Question 3: What about Just War theory? Should Christians fight just wars? (19:36)
Digression: We argue about the principle of double effect. (37:02)
Question 4: Should people of faith live as a creative minority?
Can you talk about constructive resilience? (41:40)
Intermezzo: The Plough Social World (48:21)
Takeaways: What did we learn over the past six episodes of this podcast? (53:12)
Recommendations (01:05:50)
Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/articles/ploughcast-episode-6-listener-questions Recommendations:
Apostolic Constitution, possibly from Syria [Hippolytus of Rome, Apostolic Tradition, section 16] .
STET podcast by Barbara McClay and Clare Coffey
“On Creative Minorities.”
Dorothy Dunnett, House of Niccolo series
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Felix Manz was the first martyr of the Radical Reformation, drowned by his fellow Christians for performing adult baptisms. His story is a story of a world on fire with commitment to Christ, with friends who became enemies wrestling over nonviolence, justice for the poor, and the meaning of the gospel. Pete and Susannah discuss what his time has to say to ours. Then, they catch up with Rachel Pieh Jones, whose eighteen years living among Somali Muslims has taught her more than she could have imagined about her own Christian faith. Her book, Pillars, released recently with Plough Books, describes this journey of friendship and discovery. Pete and Susannah also talk about Bruderhof Easter Gardens, and almost-post-vaccination life in New York City.
I. Pioneer of the Radical Reformation: Why the story of 16th century martyr Felix Manz still has resonance today (1:19)
II. Intermezzo: The Plough social world (25:00)
III. Learning from Muslims to be Christian: We talk with Plough author Rachel Pieh Jones about her new book Pillars (28:50)
IV. Recommendations (49:10)
Recommendations
Rachel Pieh Jones, Pillars
Rachel Pieh Jones, Stronger Than Death
Rachel Pieh Jones, Call to Prayer, Call to Bread
Susannah Black & Jason Landsel, Felix Manz
Samuel Kimbriel and Osita Nwanevu, The Democracy Essays
Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, The Gospels, translated by Sarah Ruden for Modern Library
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This time last year, Plough contributing editor Gracy Olmstead, unexpectedly, found that she was pregnant. With two toddler daughters and the Covid pandemic picking up steam, what does it take to welcome a child you did not plan for – or even want? What does radical hospitality look like, and how do the demands of carrying a child open our hearts? Pete and Susannah discuss Gracy’s piece exploring a different way of being pro-life, as well as her new book, Uprooted. Then they have a conversation with Plough regular contributor Zito Madu about the violence that poverty visits on the marginalized. Zito discusses his piece focusing on rap as a survivor’s art form, focusing on Styles P, whose songs give voice to the difficulty of simple survival in a culture of poverty. The essay discusses the ways in which poverty itself is a kind of violence – and how this violence is both similar and dissimilar to the kind familiar to Greek legendary hero Oedipus as imagined by André Gide.
I. Welcoming an Unplanned Baby: Gracy Olmstead’s gentle way of being pro-life (00:39)
II. Intermezzo: The Plough social world (20:59)
III. Rap and Oedipus: An interview with Zito Madu (25:24)
IV. Recommendations (40:20)
Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/articles/ploughcast-episode-4-unplanned-pregnancy-and-escapist-rap Recommendations
Zito Madu, The Great Escape
Styles P, Good Times
André Gide, The Legend of Oedipus, in Two Legends
Gracy Olmstead, The Risk of Gentleness
Philip Britts, Water at the Roots
Gracy Olmstead, Uprooted
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An excerpt from Scott Beauchamp’s memoir of his time in the military, Did You Kill Anyone? highlights what it was that he found in his service: meaning, the sense of a non-trivial life, a life that was not just about his own curated experience. Meanwhile, Scott Button’s account of his own grandfather’s commitment to pacifism, and the adventures on which his conscientious objection sent him reminds us of the risk and demanding commitment to be found in the service of Christ, as our commanding officer. Peter and Susannah discuss the nature of the Christian life as a kind of military service, and the need that we have to live a life of commitment to something beyond ourselves. Then they welcome Rhina Espaillat, Dominican-American poet, in whose name the annual Plough poetry contest has been founded; she reads several of her poems and talks about the nature of poetry and her inspirations; Rhina and Susannah get into a debate about martyrdom.
I. The ScottCast: War, conscientious objection, and the quest for meaning. (00:39)
II. The Plough social world (20:00)
III. A Conversation with Rhina Espaillat: Fathers and daughters, devotional poetry, and the problem of martyrdom. (23:27)
IV. Recommendations (48:34)
Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/articles/ploughcast-episode-3-the-scottcast-and-rhina-espaillat Recommendations
Scott Button, A Life That Answers War
Scott Beauchamp, Did You Kill Anyone?
A. M. Juster’s interview with Rhina P. Espaillat
Poetry by Rhina P. Espaillat: Annuals, The Widow Offers Herself to Life, Mary Magdalen Responds to the Harsh Judge, In Retrospect, A Backward Look and Where Nectar Was
Stanley Donen, Charade
Daniel Larison’s Substack
Prudentius, Psychomachia
Richard Adams, Watership Down
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In 1920, Eberhard Arnold founded both the Bruderhof and the magazine and publishing house that are now called Plough. From the beginning, Christian nonviolence was a core part of his understanding of what it was to be a Christian and a witness to the Gospel. But this peaceful living was in no way passive, safe, or milquetoast. Learn more about Eberhard Arnold’s understanding of what he was up to. Is there such a thing as Nietzschean Anabaptism? Probably not, but this was nonviolence with a backbone – and he practiced it, and led others, in what was surely one of the most dangerous places and times to insist on that way of life in the past several hundred years. And what does it mean to oppose, or practice, political violence today? Should one punch Nazis? And if so, who is a Nazi? What is Antifa, what are the Proud Boys, and how and why did they make Portland their battleground this summer? Patrick Tomassi, a native Portlander, did the unthinkable: he actually talked with all of those involved. Hear about his interviews with Antifa, with Proud Boys, with BLM activists and with local business owners and police. Learn about the way that these groups use each other, and the media, to create narratives, which reinforce their own understanding of the conflict, and learn about how they understand what they are aiming at.
I. Beyond Pacifism: What can we make of the tradition of Christian nonviolence? (1:25)
II. Intermezzo: We share news from the Plough network. (24:59)
III. Beyond the Black Umbrellas: Patrick Tomassi reports on his reporting about Portland’s Antifa. (27:45)
IV. Recommendations: Joseph Margulies “Who Deserves to Be Forgiven,” Alfred Hitchcock “To Catch a Thief,” and Daryl Davis “TED Talk: Why I As A Black Man Attend KKK Rallies.” (37:55)
Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/nonviolence/ploughcast-episode-2-beyond-pacifism-and-debating-antifa Recommendations
Eberhard Arnold Beyond Pacifism
Eberhard Arnold Inner Land: A Guide into the Heart of the Gospel
Patrick Tomassi Behind the Black Umbrellas
Joseph Margulies Who Deserves to Be Forgiven
Alfred Hitchcock To Catch a Thief
Daryl Davis TED Talk: Why I As A Black Man Attend KKK Rallies
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This time last year, almost everyone was convinced that, here in the USA, we don’t do political violence: we solve our political problems without blood in the street. But since then, on both left and right, “it’s not real violence if the good guys are doing it” has become a common argument. How did this happen, is it wrong to see parallels between the BLM-related riots and the Capitol riot on January 6th, and how can we come back from that? Is it naive to seek to maintain Martin Luther King's nonviolence? Has his stance been overtaken by the seriousness of current problems? And what about other kinds of political violence? Can we condemn riots and still, in principle, be open to the idea of a just war? Can a Christian ever kill? Peter and Susannah get into these questions, and then turn to discussing the White Rose, a student movement of German Christians whose leaders were executed in 1943. The White Rose was a nonviolent movement passionately opposed to the Nazi regime, arguably the ancestor of today's antifa movements. But their philosophy and approach were very different. Drawing from the heights of German culture and the political philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas, these young people articulated a vision of opposition to the Nazis based on an embrace of the best of traditional Western, and human, thought. They accused Hitler of being a tyrant, by which they meant something very specific: that he had rejected the values they argued for, which had characterized Germany and the West – learning, discourse, indeed Christianity and “traditional values” – and embraced pure power and barbarism. To be a humanist, for these young people, and to be a Christian, and to be an antifascist: these were all different aspects of the same calling. And they ultimately gave their lives to answer that call. What would it look like to pattern our activism on their lives?
I. Political violence: Can violence be good? (1:04)
II. Intermezzo: We share news from the Plough network. (17:14)
III. The White Rose: Were they the original antifa? (21:42)
IV. Recommendations: We offer an antifascist reading, and Lenten Dvořák. (29:50)
Episode Transcript: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/nonviolence/ploughcast-episode-1-political-violence-and-the-white-rose Recommended Reading
Plough Quarterly No. 27: The Violence of Love
Peter Mommsen, The Case for Meekness
Jon Baskin, The Unbearable: Toward an Antifascist Aesthetic
Antonín Dvořák, Stabat Mater (Op. 58)
Andrea Grosso Ciponte, Freiheit!: The White Rose Graphic Novel
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