Christians Reading Classics is a podcast about classic books being read through a distinctly Christian lens. Hosted by author and classicist, Nadya Williams, Christians Reading Classics introduces—or should we say—re-introduces listeners to classic works that have inspired generations. Interviewing experts who know these books well, the hope is to inspire listeners and awaken their imagination to God's world through literary, theological, and even children's works that have stood the test of time.
Christians Reading Classics is a Mere Orthodoxy podcast.
Find out more at mereorthodoxy.com
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The Journals of Lewis and Clark with Craig Fehrman
Season 2 · Episode 18
Thursday, June 4, 2026 • Duration 55:22
We treat the Lewis and Clark journals as a true American classic, reading them for voice, humour, and human detail rather than just as a schoolbook summary. With historian Craig Furman, we follow the expedition through science, hardship, Native diplomacy, and the moral complexity that the journals preserve in plain sight.
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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.
Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
Augustine's Confessions with Joey Sherrard
Season 2 · Episode 17
Thursday, May 28, 2026 • Duration 45:51
We sit with Augustine’s Confessions and feel how a 1,600-year-old prayer still names our restlessness with uncomfortable accuracy. We talk with pastor and author Joey Sherrard about reading Confessions as praise and truth-telling, and about remembering Augustine as a working pastor rather than a distant genius.
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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 fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand with David Kee
Season 2 · Episode 8
Thursday, March 26, 2026 • Duration 59:14
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.
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
Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship.
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen with Beatrice Scudeler
Season 2 · Episode 7
Wednesday, March 18, 2026 • Duration 51:55
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.
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.
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
The Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle with Sabrina Little | America 250
Season 2 · Episode 6
Thursday, March 12, 2026 • Duration 38:24
Nadya Williams and Sabrina Little explore Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics — its account of virtue as habit, the teleological shape of a good life, and how athletics and daily practice form character. Little connects Aristotle to Aquinas, parenting, and her own work as an elite ultramarathoner and philosopher.
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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 fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship.: https://bit.ly/OurRisenLord — Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
02:35 - What is a classic?
03:51 - Why the Nicomachean Ethics for American Christians?
07:19 - Aristotle's aims: eudaimonia and virtue
10:24 - The contemplative life vs. the practical life
13:38 - How college life trains students in virtue
18:13 - Advice for first-time readers of Aristotle
22:27 - The Examined Run: athletics and moral formation
28:29 - Teaching virtue to young children
32:03 - Would Aristotle recognize our struggles today?
34:57 - Aristotle and women
36:07 - What classic do you wish you had written?
Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
Wuthering Heights with Evie Solheim
Season 2 · Episode 5
Thursday, March 5, 2026 • Duration 51:54
Nadya Williams and Evie Solheim discuss Wuthering Heights, what makes it a gothic classic, why Emily Brontë's moral ambiguity still provokes, how the novel speaks to a generation starved for romance, and why the new film adaptation trades subtlety for TikTok-style spectacle. Also: Anna Karenina, Virginia Woolf, and Greta Gerwig's Narnia.
Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, R30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity: Inspiring True Stories from the Early Church Around the World, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Apply for Beeson Divinity School's Ph.D program by April 1 for Fall 2026 admission here: https://bit.ly/BeesonPhD
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Chapters
00:11 – Opening reading from Wuthering Heights and intro to the Brontë sisters
01:54 – Welcome to Season 2 of Christians Reading Classics; introducing Evie Solheim
03:25 – What makes a classic? Timelessness, breaking the mold, and the canon
06:35 – Plot summary: key characters, places, and the structure of the novel
08:43 – The gothic genre: origins, elements, and its American descendants
10:22 – Southern Gothic: Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, and True Detective
Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe with Obbie Tyler Todd | America 250
Season 2 · Episode 4
Thursday, February 26, 2026 • Duration 01:00:08
Nadya Williams and Obbie Tyler Todd explore Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as part of season two's focus on classics American Christians should read for America's 250th. They discuss the Beecher family's influence, the Fugitive Slave Law as the book's impetus, Stowe's deeply scriptural approach to critiquing slavery, the Christ-likeness of Uncle Tom, and why the novel's theological vision — not merely its abolitionism — gave it such enduring power.
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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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Uncle Tom's Cabin 02:21 Defining a Classic 06:57 The Importance of Uncle Tom's Cabin for Christians 12:06 The Beecher Family Legacy 20:45 Harriet Beecher Stowe's Impact on American Sentiment 27:43 Introducing Uncle Tom's Cabin to New Readers 29:59 Moral Complexity of Slavery 32:17 The Christian Perspective on Slavery 35:32 Character Development and Redemption 38:50 Contrasting Narratives of Slavery 46:01 Evangelical Reception of Uncle Tom's Cabin 50:45 International Reception and Impact
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.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley with Katelyn Walls Shelton | America 250
Season 2 · Episode 3
Thursday, February 19, 2026 • Duration 51:33
Nadya Williams and Katelyn Walls Shelton discuss Aldous Huxley's Brave New World — its haunting parallels to embryo selection, reproductive biotechnology, and pleasure-maximizing culture — and what Christians should make of a novel that reads less like dystopian fiction and more like this morning's news.
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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 a full-tuition scholarship for Beeson Divinity School's M.Div program that begins Fall 2026 here: https://bit.ly/OurRisenLord
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Chapters
00:00 — Introduction & what makes a classic
05:00 — Brave New World mirrors our world: embryo selection, Orchid, Gattaca
07:16 — Why Christians in America should read this book
14:19 — Plot overview: hatcheries, Bernard, Lenina, John the Savage
23:40 — Life in the World State: conditioning, sexuality, soma, death
35:40 — Huxley's own contradictions: Doors of Perception and his LSD death
49:43 — Closing: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin
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.
The Education of Henry Adams with Leah Libresco Sargeant | America 250
Season 2 · Episode 3
Thursday, February 12, 2026 • Duration 38:54
Nadya Williams, Books Editor for Mere Orthodoxy, talks with Leah Libresco Sargeant, author of The Dignity of Dependence, about Henry Adams's The Education of Henry Adams—specifically the chapter "The Dynamo and the Virgin." They explore Adams's experience of the sublime at the 1900 Paris World Fair, his unresolved spiritual longings, what his Unitarian background reveals about American Christianity, and how Leah's work on embodiment and dependence offers a striking counterpoint to Adams's life of the mind. Plus: Leah's classic pick, Flatland.
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Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, 30 Key Moments In Church History: Inspiring True Stories from the Early Church Around the World by Mark W. Graham, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity
Apply for a full-tuition scholarship for Beeson Divinity School's M.Div program that begins Fall 2026 here: https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction & Background on Henry Adams
03:44 – Memoir as a Genre
06:27 – Why Read Adams for America's 250th
09:21 – The Dynamo and the Virgin Explained
13:18 – Adams's Faith and Spiritual Longings
20:34 – Technology, Awe, and False Worship
26:45 – Tips for First-Time Readers
28:24 – The Dignity of Dependence
37:31 – Classic You Wish You'd Written
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 .
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass with Shilo Brooks | America 250
Season 2 · Episode 2
Thursday, February 5, 2026 • Duration 51:55
Dr. Shilo Brooks joins Nadia Williams to explore Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), examining how this 60-page masterwork remains profoundly relevant for understanding liberty, education, and authentic Christianity. Brooks illuminates how Douglass's self-taught literacy became an act of spiritual and intellectual liberation—proving that "education and slavery are incompatible." The conversation traces Douglass's journey from Maryland plantation to becoming America's greatest orator, while addressing his critique of slaveholding Christianity versus genuine faith and the enduring lessons on what liberal education requires for sustaining free citizenship.
Chapters:
00:05 Opening: Douglass's Unknown Birthday
04:14 Why This Book Is a Classic
09:49 Target Audiences: Then and Now
13:47 Adjusting to Freedom
16:32 Teaching Himself to Read (Illegally)
19:51 Education and Slavery Are Incompatible
23:04 Convincing Students That Reading Changes Lives
27:36 The Cast of Characters: Slaveholders and Fellow Slaves
33:11 The Wrestling Match with Covey
37:15 Teaching Bible School to Fellow Slaves
40:18 How Did He Become Such a Beautiful Writer?
42:21 Douglass's Theology and Providence
45:48 Noble Ambition: Brooks's Forthcoming Book
50:25 Classic Books I Wish I'd Written
Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
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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
Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
13:12 – How we first meet Cathy — and the unreliable narrators telling her story
16:28 – Advice for first-time readers: Emily Brontë's biography and creative world
19:43 – Virginia Woolf's essay on Wuthering Heights and what it means to write like that
22:56 – Why Wuthering Heights resonates with Americans today: romance, apps, and longing
27:21 – The new film adaptation: competing with TikTok, not other movies
31:43 – Comparing Wuthering Heights to Gone with the Wind: land, love, and star-crossed tropes
36:28 – Good cinematic adaptations: Greta Gerwig's Little Women vs. Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights
41:10 – Is Wuthering Heights amoral? Reading Heathcliff's fate through a biblical lens
47:29 – Closing question: the classic Evie wishes she had written — Anna Karenina
Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship. https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships
