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

Atheism

Belief

Creed

Podcasts

2 October 2024

1 min read

Alex O'Connor: re-enchanting... atheism

Belle and Justin talk to Alex about atheism, culture's tides and what it would take for him to believe.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A podcast guest speaks in front of a mic and raises their hand to gesture.

About this episode

Alex O'Connor is a well known atheist YouTube and podcast host with over 800,000 subscribers to his channel. Unlike many online new atheists he has sought to genuinely understand his Christian and religious counterparts. This included studying theology at Oxford University, helping to re-establish a Socratic debating society in the mould of the one created by CS Lewis, and counting many Christians as his friends and acquaintances. Belle and Justin talk to Alex about atheism, the changing tides of culture and what it would take for Alex to believe…