Christians Reading Classics

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

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

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

Nadya Williams and David Kee discuss Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged — its origins, philosophy, and enduring relevance for American Christians. Kee, a business professor at Harding University who teaches the novel, traces Rand's objectivism, the tension between individualism and collectivism, and what a Christian engagement with her work requires.
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Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonDivinityPhD
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Chapters
00:00 - Introduction and Reading from Atlas Shrugged
01:10 - Guest Introduction: David Key
02:00 - David's Background: From Geneva to Entrepreneurship to Academia
08:10 - Defining a Classic
10:56 - How David First Encountered Atlas Shrugged
13:04 - Who Was Ayn Rand?
25:03 - Teaching Atlas Shrugged to Business Students
32:27 - Individualism, Collectivism, and the Christian Worldview
39:11 - The Mystery of John Galt
44:10 - Elevating the Entrepreneur
52:35 - Why Christians in America Should Read This Book
53:25 - What Classic David Wishes He Had Written

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