34: Classics, Race, and Religious Reconciliation

Peter and Susannah welcome Kim Comer, the editor of Plough’s European edition, and discuss the origins of the new Bruderhof communities in Austria. Welcomed by Cardinal Schönborn as part of the healing of the schisms of the Reformation, these communities are thriving. This leads them to the question of how past wrongs can be healed in general: how can we get past the “sins of the fathers?” Not by denying those fathers and not by wallowing in guilt, but by the deep forgiveness and transformation available in Christ. Then, Peter and Susannah speak with Anika Prather about her year of mourning with her children: many family members and friends died, of Covid, of murder, of suicide, of heart attacks. How can we parent our children through such incredibly trying times? How can we truly teach them to look to the hope of the resurrection of the dead? Then they discuss Dr. Prather’s life project: understanding and using the Classical tradition for racial reconciliation in America. This is another kind of “healing of history,” and Dr. Prather’s work in classical education is an ambitious attempt to tell the untold story of Black classicists and the influence of the great tradition on Black thinkers, writers, and activists.