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

Seen & Unseen Aloud

6 October 2025

1 min read

The profound and profane at sporting events, plus cafe time

New episodes: listen to articles by Jonathan Rowlands, Graham Tomlin, and Joshua Nurcombe-Pike.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

An aerial view of a pub with a large mural of a footballer on it

Jota commemorated, Liverpool.

Liverpool FC.

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About this episode

In this week's episode, Jonathan Rowlands explores the relationship between trauma and sacraments as he visits Anfield; Graham Tomlin asks whether a loss of an "ultimate" is the reason behind the recent behaviour at the Ryder Cup and Joshua Nurcombe-Pike explores the big thinking that goes on in the midst of cafe culture.