Addenda
A monthly e-mail newsletter from MARS HILL AUDIO
August 15, 2006 v Number 30
"Most of us do not see how our opinions are gradually changed
from what we think we believe, under the influence of ideas
elucidated by others incomparably deeper and
more consistent than ourselves."
-- George Parkin Grant, "In Defense of North America,"
in Technology and Empire (1969)
New on our desks
Food and the Modern World
On Volume 62 of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal, Corby Kummer discusses his book The Pleasures of Slow Food: Celebrating Authentic Traditions, Flavors, and Recipes and the movement that encourages the preservation of local varieties of foods and the crafts used for preparing them. In a recent article in the London Review of Books, Steven Shapin reviews a book written by a man who spent time learning some of those arts. [Read more on Food and the Modern World]
The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature
In a recent article in Books and Culture, David A. Skeel, Jr., reviews The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature. Several of the contributors to the anthology, along with one of its editors, John Witte, have been—or will be—published on the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal. [Read more on The Teachings of Modern Christianity]
The Necessity of Metaphor
On Volume 51 of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal, Mary Midgley discussed the connections between science and poetry. A recent article in The Toronto Star echoes Midgley's words, attending to the use of metaphor and analogy in science and mathematics. [Read more on Metaphor]
Back to School Sale
I recently interviewed sociologist Christian Smith about his book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Among his fascinating observations were his comments that Christian teenagers are remarkably unable to define and describe the meaning and significance of their religious beliefs. "There's a lot of talking about difference," Smith said, "but the strategy for dealing with moral disagreement was: you just don't go there, you just don't get into it. I have quite a concern from this project about . . . the lack of training in moral argumentation, about whatever subject. It really seems that teachers, principals, whoever, are not enabling young people to learn: What are your presuppositions? Where are you starting from? What are your commitments? How does that structure a debate? How do you engage someone who's quite different from you in a constructive way? Teens aren't learning that. What they're learning is: we don't want to have conflict here so we're not getting into that."
While the purpose of MARS HILL AUDIO isn't to teach people how to make better arguments, we are committed to helping them understand the consequences of their beliefs in light of the challenges of contemporary culture. College and university students need that help more than anyone. So we think that a subscription to the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal is a great way to help Christian students.
Last month, we offered a special subscription rate just for the matriculated, and we’re extending the offer this month and adding the option of sending an MP3 subscription to the student. It won’t take up much space on their iPods or their laptops, and it’s a great bargain for you. For just $25, a six-issue subscription to the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal will be delivered to students (the regular price for MP3 subscriptions is $30). If you prefer to buy students a CD edition, you may order a one-year subscription for just $35 (the regular price is $48). And if you buy a gift subscription, we'll give you a $6 discount on renewing your own subscription (on cassette, CD, or MP3) if you renew when placing the gift order. Please note that if you order an MP3 subscription, WE MUST HAVE A VALID E-MAIL ADDRESS FOR THE STUDENT.
If you want to take advantage of this student subscription rate, you may call our offices to make an order (1-800-331-6407) or place an order on-line (www.marshillaudio.org). You'll need to mention the promotional code ADST06 to receive this special rate.
Summer Inventory Sale
Our year end inventory is September 30. In order to ease the counting, we’d like to “move” overstocked issues on cassette. Until we run out, the price is $3 per cassette plus shipping and handling, $3 for the first item plus $1 per item up to $7 maximum. These prices are exclusively for Addenda customers; the web site won’t reflect sale prices, so mention “Summer Inventory Sale” in the Comments section of your on-line order form to receive the reduced rates (cost will be adjusted when we process your order). Sale applies to U. S. customers only and ends September 30. Items included in the sale are:
MHAJ 55, with Robert George and Mark Noll
MHAJ 57, with John Hare and Steve Bruce
MHAJ 58, with Francis Fukuyama and Ted Prescott
MHAJ 59, with Bernard Lewis and Alan Jacobs
MHAJ 60, with Russell Hittinger and Leon Kass
MHAJ 61, with Michael L. Peterson and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
MHAJ 62, with Alissa Quart and Lilian Calles Barger
MHAJ 64, with Ralph C. Wood and Jeremy Begbie
MHAJ 67, with R. R. Reno and J. A. C. Redford
MHAJ 68, with Robert Gagnon and Quentin Schultze
MHAJ 69, with John McWhorter and Barrett Fisher
MHAJ 70, with Christine Rosen and Dana Gioia
MHAJ 71, with Peter Augustine Lawler and Roger Lundin
MHAJ 73, with Richard John Neuhaus and Susan Srigley
MHAJ 74, with Brad Wilcox and Jeanne Murray Walker
MHAJ 75, with John Lukacs and Eugene Peterson
MHAJ 77, with Eric Miller and Lisa de Boer
MHAJ 78, with Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn and Thomas de Zengotita
MHA Con. 18, “Human Life, Human Dignity,” Leon Kass
MHA Con. 19, “The Crisis of Islam and the Crisis of the West,” Bernard Lewis
MHA Con. 20, “Texts, Sex, and Sanctity: Robert Gagnon on Homosexuality and the Bible,” Robert Gagnon, with an article by Philip Turner
MHA Con. 21, “Science and Theology from the Bottom Up: Sir John Polkinghorne on Enriching the Dialog,” John Polkinghorne
MHA Anth. 3, with essays by Gina Bria, Wendell Berry, and Gilbert Meilaender
A Note about New Media
I can remember the first time I saw an audiocassette. They were invented by Philips in 1963, and trademarked in the U. S. the next year as Compact Cassettes. Initially used principally for low-fidelity dictation recorders, by the late 1960s, 3M and BASF developed higher quality tape stock which (combined with improvements in recording electronics) permitted cassettes to be attractive for music recordings, thereby guaranteeing the doom of the 8-track tape.
My first encounter with a cassette was through the father of a high school friend who had done some professional recording work. He showed us a Compact Cassette while driving us to school (I can still remember him mentioning the fact that they were developed by Philips), and then told us that this little assembly of plastic had a big future (shades of The Graduate!). This was at least a decade before Sony invented the Walkman, by means of which this piece of plastic produced a minor cultural revolution, inaugurating a new way of relating to music (and to the people around the listener).
When MARS HILL AUDIO first began in 1992, our principal product was distributed exclusively on cassettes (and thus called the MARS HILL Tapes) since few cars had CD players and CD duplication was quite a bit more expensive than it is now. To speak then of "burning some CDs" may have conjured up images of angry fundamentalists rendering mute some of the devil's troubadours. But around the turn of the millennium, when we were certain there were enough listeners interested in CDs, we eventually began offering the Tapes on CDs, as the newly christened MARS HILL AUDIO Journal.
We're now commencing another big transition, which will no doubt be much more momentous than our change six years ago. Beginning with volume 81 of the Journal, listeners have the option of subscribing to a downloadable MP3 edition. We'll continue offering cassettes, as long as we can find suppliers with tapes of sufficient quality (which is getting a lot harder).
I have to confess that the technophiliac in me (I owned one of the first iPods) is delighted, but the more sober cultural critic, suspicious of gnosticizing tendencies, is more ambivalent. I think there is an advantage to having around us objects, like books, tapes, and CDs, which retain knowledge and are not re-programmable. We need the presence of substantial and fixed things in our lives, to testify against the suspicion of the unbearable lightness of being. That's why I still like hymnbooks. Their weight and texture bears existential witness to the Church's existence in space and time in ways a projected image does not.
So we're providing MP3 subscribers with instructions on how to burn CDs (the creative kind of burning), and with templates for labels and jewel case liners. We'd like these more accessible products not to be regarded as eminently disposable. Besides, we realize that most people are more likely to have CD players than MP3 hardware available while they drive. So you don’t have to have an iPod or listen at your computer if you subscribe to our download edition; if you’re a CD subscriber, listening will be pretty much the same, and you’ll have the option of storing MARS HILL AUDIO materials on a hard disk or (with a little work) on the shelf neatly stacked next to Volumes 1-80.
One of the greatest advantages for us in this new format is the ability to produce programs that may be of interest to a smaller audience. Right now, given the economies of scale, it doesn't make sense for us to offer Conversations or Anthologies that aren't of interest to most of our subscribers. But because we aren't paying a printer or media duplicator for set-up costs and a minimum run, we can make available interviews without the necessity to liquidate a large inventory of stuff. When I was starting MARS HILL AUDIO, I toyed (briefly) with calling the company HAND CRAFTED AUDIO, and this new technology makes certain ideals of craftsmanship available to us for the first time.
By this time next month, we will announce the availability of the first in a new series of products, MARS HILL AUDIO Reprints, which will consist of readings of individual articles from current (or not so current) magazines and journals. Some of these will be selected to complement interviews on the Journal. So if you were intrigued by some of our guests, and want to hear more of their ideas, there may be articles they’ve written available in an aural download, 30-40 more minutes of thoughtful audio to take in your car.
Finally, this technology is a great boon for overseas subscribers and would-be subscribers (not to mention the overland subscribers in Canada, eh?). By eliminating extraordinary shipping costs, customs forms, and (in some instances) repressive postal representatives, MARS HILL AUDIO can reach wider to extend the sort of conversation about Christian faithfulness in contemporary culture that will remain our deepest commitment.
The address for our new MP3 store is http://www.marshillaudio.org/mp3store/. If you would like to convert your current subscription to an MP3 download subscription, please e-mail us at tapes@marshillaudio.org (what a quaint and nostalgic e-mail address!), or call us at 1.800.331.6407.
From Narrowcasting to Podcasting
In July, we launched a 30-minute monthly podcast called Audition, which will offer information to subscribers and non-subscribers about upcoming features on the Journal, about newly available downloadable programs, and exclusive interviews on timely topics. If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you may click here [http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=174274214] and see our episode list at the iTunes Music Store (total of 1, but another will be out next week). We have a separate web site distributing our podcast, http://mhadigital.org. This site is set up to allow us to distribute RSS feeds with text messages as well, which we will exploit mainly for marketing purposes: letting people know about downloadable audio available only from MARS HILL AUDIO. If you have friends who you think might be interested in our work, forwarding them a link to this page is a simple way of providing them with information.
Ken Myers in New Jersey
On September 8 & 9, Ken Myers will be speaking at Rutgers Community Christian Church in Somerset, NJ. On Friday evening the 8th, he will present a talk of special interest to university students and young professionals called "Advocates of Deeper Diversity: What Differences Christian Belief Makes (and why many really "tolerant" people don't like us)." In this lecture, Ken will discuss how contemporary social institutions, including those in education, commercial life, and the professions, are increasingly governed by ideas that are post-Christian. These institutions are structured in accordance with assumptions about the nature of personal identity, of justice, of truth, of morality, of meaning, and of society itself that contradict what Christians have historically believed. In light of this condition, Ken will talk about why (and how) Christians need to resist the temptation to conform their beliefs to the "spirit of the age," and about why Christian beliefs matter in all of life.
On Saturday the 9th, Ken will present three talks under the title "The Challenge of Christian Faithfulness in a Post-Christian Age." The talks are entitled "The Comprehensive Scope of the Great Commission," "How Contemporary Culture Encourages a Constricted Faithfulness," and "Deep Discipleship and Everyday Life Together."
For more information about these talks, or for directions to the Church, please contact Cynthia Wong at cynthiawong@rccc.org.
Conference on Christianity and the Environment
The MacLaurin Institute at the University of Minnesota is sponsoring a conference on Christianity and the environment September 22-23, 2006. The conference will explore what it means for people to demonstrate a Christian perspective as they live their lives at the interfaces of three "worlds" (natural, engineered, and human). It will also study how Christian virtues ought to influence public and private policies regarding the interaction of these worlds. Plenary speakers are the Rev. Dr. Rolf Bouma, University of Michigan; Dr. Steven Bouma-Prediger, Hope College; Dr. Cal DeWitt, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Dr. Susan Emmerich, founder and CEO of Emmerich Environmental Consulting. For information about registration and submitting papers, please visit www.christianenvironmentconference.net.
The Church and Pop Culture
In October, Ken Myers will speak at the annual Ministerial Conference of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. The conference, titled "The Church and Pop Culture," runs Monday, October 23, through Wednesday, October 25, 2006, at the University Inn/Best Western Convention Center in Moscow. Christ Church invites pastors, elders, deacons (or those aspiring to these positions), their wives, and their teenage sons (14 and up) to attend the conference. The speakers this year include Douglas M. Jones, Peter Leithart, Douglas Wilson, and Nathan Wilson. For information about conference fees, lodging, and registration, call 202.882.2034 or see the conference website at www.christkirk.com.
Subscriber Update
Volume 81 (July/August 2006) of the MARS HILL AUDIO Journal is in production and is still a few weeks away from being mailed. This issue's guestlist comprises: Nigel Cameron discussing technology and public policy; Joel James Shuman on God, sickness, and medicine; Brian Volck on stories and medical practice; Russell Hittinger on Catholic social thought; Mark Noll on law, politics, and earlier Christians; and Stephen Miller on the (dying) art of conversation.
Various Details, Disclaimers, Etc.
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Copyright 2006 MARS HILL AUDIO, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Published by
MARS HILL AUDIO
P.O. Box 7826
Charlottesville, Virginia 22906
Call 1.800.331.6407
Fax 1.434.990.9090