You might wonder how opera diva Kathleen Battle, the best-selling computer game MYST, and TV shopping networks all work into a conversation about Christianity.
Through the delicious intimacy of radio, Ken Myers, host of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, gently steers his listeners through these conversations, as well as hundreds of others that touch on nearly every aspect of God's creation: Leonard Bernstein's views of religion and music; the culture of therapy; technology and community; mystery writer P.D. James on why evil characters are easier to depict than good ones; "attitude" and violence in pop culture; the Christian conviction of poet Christina Rossetti; the deeper meaning of eating; how valuing choice hurts community; Brahms's German Requiem; a biblical view of language and literature; the theological depth of the civil rights movement; the nature of cities and urban experience; and nudity in art and advertising.
Myers, a former editor for National Public Radio, launched the Audio Journal—"a bimonthly audio magazine of contemporary culture and Christian conviction"—eight years ago to encourage greater reflection on culture, how it's formed, and how it shapes our belief. Each 90-minute tape or CD contains six to nine interviews with critics, professors, authors, and cultural observers on a particular topic and comes with a listener's guide for more information. Yearly subscriptions are $36.
"The gospel is not a message about escaping from our humanity or from culture," Myers writes in an introduction to the Journal, "but of recovering our humanity and reconsecrating culture, of ordering our embodied experience in forms that are worthy and delightful offerings in which we participate fully and heartily, body and spirit."
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