Sarah Irving-Stonebraker: re-enchanting the ahistorical age

In our age of self-invention, we are profoundly disconnected from the history that once gave us identity.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A woman sitting in an empty church talks to the camera and gestures with one hand.

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Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is an Australian historian whose new book Priests of History: stewarding the past in an ahistoric age, says that, in our age of self-invention, modern people are profoundly disconnected from the stories, practises and history that once gave them their identity.

Justin and Belle talk to Sarah about re-enchanting an ahistorical age and about her own journey from atheism to Christianity as a young academic at Cambridge and Oxford in the early 2000s.

Visit Sarah Irving-Stonebraker's web site. https://www.stonebraker.com.au/

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Podcast

Podcasts

Re-enchanting

6 August 2025

1 min read

Re-Enchanting Live: why the tide of faith is turning

Recorded at Wildfires

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A video caption card show a speaker holding a mike and the text 'Is this a revival?'

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About this episode

Co-hosts Belle Tindall and Justin Brierley are joined by Bishop Graham Tomlin in a live audience edition of the podcast - recorded at Wildfires festival. Together they’ll explore why a ’surprising rebirth’ of belief in God seems to be underway in the West and how the church can engage those coming through its doors once again. If you found this conversation interesting, Seen & Unseen, the creators of Re-Enchanting, offers thousands of articles exploring how the Christian faith helps us understand the modern world.