Dear Friends of The Maurin Academy,We hope you and yours are having a wonderful holiday season as we approach the end of 2024! Thank you for your support of our efforts for the past two years! We are beyond grateful to have been teaching online classes, publishing podcasts, and hosting reading groups for over two years now, and we are looking forward to how we can learn better together in the years to come!
As we try to grow our educational outreach, we need your help! If you are able to support us financially, please consider visiting our “Support Us” tab on our website:
https://pmaurin.org/support-us/ or consider becoming a monthly (paid or free) subscriber to our Patreon at patreon.com/maurinacademy.
Truly, thank you for your ongoing support! Announcements
Here’s a link to our latest updates and announcements on our website. This page contains current and upcoming announcements, notes about previous speakers and guests we’ve hosted, podcast highlights, past course information, and more! We are trying out different ways to showcase our Regenerative Reader publication in one cohesive and simplified spot, so things might look a little different this time around!
Many thanks to Laurie Johnson, Jakob Hanschu, and especially Paul Nishikawa for working so hard on updating our website this year! If you haven’t already seen the changes, be sure to go and check out our website to see the latest and greatest updates!
Here’s a snapshot of what we have going on right now and what is quickly approaching
The Gap in God’s Country: Themes and Discussion With Laurie M. Johnson
Series Dates: November 18, December 2 and 9, January 6 and 20 at 7 p.m. US Central Time, live on Zoom
Laurie’s newly published book, The Gap in God’s Country: A Longer View on Our Culture Wars was recently published and sessions with the author are starting in November (Nov. 18, Dec. 2 & 9, Jan. 6 & 20). To attend, join the Maurin Academy Patreon at the $5 or $10 levels, or register on Eventbrite for $20 for all five sessions, or a donation of your choice.
From the author:
In these sessions, I want to let people know why my book is different from many others that claim to explain our difficult and often ugly moments in time. For one thing, I offer practical solutions—and that is something everyone always asks for in vain. I hope these sessions will shake you up, because we all are a bit set in our ways, whether we know it or not. Each 1.5 hour session will focus on one or two divergent themes in this book, and each will have a Q & A discussion at the end. We will record them all, and registrants will not only be able to attend live, but will receive all five recordings.
The Harry Murray Sessions
Monday, December 16 at 7 p.m. US Central Time, live on Zoom
We are thrilled to welcome guest lecturer Harry Murray who will be teaching four classes over the next year, once every three months. The second session will be held on Monday, December 16 at 7 p.m. US Central Time, live on Zoom. Harry will be discussing the philosopher and theologian, Nikolai Berdyaev.
Harry Murray is a professor emeritus of sociology at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York. He spent two years at Unity Kitchen in Syracuse in the late 1970s. He is the author of Do Not Neglect Hospitality, which recounts his experiences living and working at three different Catholic Worker houses. He ran the Saturday meal and St. Joseph House in Rochester for over thirty years and was incarcerated in the Salvation Army with Peter DeMott for three months for protesting the Gulf War.
Prof. Frederick Neuhauser: “Can Societies Fall Ill? Diagnosing Social Pathology”
Saturday, February 22 at 12 p.m. US Central Time, live on Zoom
Prof. Frederick Neuhauser will be our special guest on February 22, 2025, to discuss themes from his latest book, Diagnosing Social Pathology.
From the jacket: Can a human society suffer from illness like a living thing? And if so, how does such a malaise manifest itself? In this thought-provoking book, Fred Neuhouser explains and defends the idea of social pathology, demonstrating what it means to describe societies as ‘ill’, or ‘sick’, and why we are so often drawn to conceiving of social problems as ailments or maladies. He shows how Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim – four key philosophers who are seldom taken to constitute a ‘tradition’ – deploy the idea of social pathology in comparable ways, and then explores the connections between societal illnesses and the phenomena those thinkers made famous: alienation, anomie, ideology, and social dysfunction. His book is a rich and compelling illumination of both the idea of social disease and the importance it has had, and continues to have, for philosophical views of society.
The Gap in God’s Country: A Longer View on our Culture Wars, by Laurie M. Johnson
by Laurie M Johnson
My latest book has been published by Wipf & Stock. My hope is that this book will help readers gain perspective on the political/culture wars that hold our societies back. While the focus is on the US and the causes of its economic, cultural, political and religious divisions, the information and theories in it can be applied to many places in the world experiencing similar upheavals and discontents. My aim is not just to explain the longer view on our culture wars, but by doing so, to indicate possible solutions, and my concluding recommendations are fairly specific. If you are interested in interviewing me or having me speak on the themes in this book, e-mail me at maurinacademy@gmail.com.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: Theory Streams
Chapter 2: Unsettling I: Leaving the Farm
Chapter 3: Unsettling II: Acceleration
Chapter 4: Secular v. Sacred
Chapter 5: Ideological Strong-Arming: Free to Choose
Chapter 6: Religious Strong-Arming
Chapter 7: The Role of the Church and Christian Economies
Conclusion
You can find the book on Amazon, Kindle, and Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Wipf & Stock: https://wipfandstock.com/9781666737400/the-gap-in-gods-country/
Amazon Paperback: https://a.co/d/8CXI87u
Amazon Kindle: https://a.co/d/9fV1hpF
Reading Group Updates
The Marx Reading Group with Jakob Hanschu – 2025
https://pmaurin.org/reading-marx-with-jakob-hanschu/The Marx Reading Group plan for early 2025 (January and February) is to cover Marx’s late (after Capital) writings on non-capitalist societies. These sessions will include a discussion of peasants, Marx’s use of ethnological data, and how Marx’s evolved approach to non-capitalist societies impacts questions about politics and value in his broader works.
The plan for the rest of 2025 has yet to be determined. Jakob has considered the following options, though other options may also be considered:
- 1) discussion of anthropological accounts of non-capitalist societies through a Marxian lens
- 2) a more ‘reading group’ style format that would cover the relationship between neoliberalism, postmodernity, and fascism, initially through two books: a) Quinn Slobodian’s Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right; b) Alberto Toscano’s Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism, and the Politics of Crisis
- 3) a ‘reading group’ style discussion of Pierre Charbonnier’s Affluence and Freedom: An Environmental History of Political Ideas
Communio Study Circle – 2025 The Communio Study Circle still plans to meet every third Saturday of the month at 4 p.m. US Central Time in person at the John Paul II Catholic Worker Farm in Kansas City, Missouri and live on Zoom for long distance participants.Once a month, we will be reading a selected article or two from either a past or current issue of the Communio International Catholic Review and/or an article or excerpt from a book of or relating to the group’s interest of Ressourcement and Communio theology.
Saturday, December 21 at 4 p.m. US Central Time, in person and live on Zoom, we will be reading an essay from Stratford Caldecott from the Fall 1998 Issue, A Science of the Real: The Renewal of Christian Cosmology.
More updates to come from this reading group next year! For more information on joining the reading group, feel free to email us at maurinacademy@gmail.com or jpiicatholicworkerfarm@gmail.com
Great Books with Dr. Laurie M Johnson -2025
Laurie Johnson is changing up her monthly chats. The first Thursday of each month she’ll be online for the monthly announcements and then lead a discussion on a great book. Our first book is Carl Jung’s The Undiscovered Self. It’s a short work and we’ll take three monthly sessions to discuss this book. Reading is not required, as Laurie will outline the arguments in the book, but if you want to read along, it’s a short paperback and easy to order online!
Latest from our Podcasts
Dustbowl Diatribes
Our podcast, hosted by Spencer Hess and Laurie Johnson, features conversations and interviews regarding the relationship between economics, politics, religion and our environment. It promotes a more integrated and larger view of Christians should approach the care and use of our planet, informed by good information from a variety of disciplines and ideological perspectives. You can find Dustbowl Diatribes on iTunes, Google podcasts, Audible and many other platforms–or subscribe to our WordPress feed!
Season 3, Episode 26: Fruitfulness or Effectiveness, A Conversation with Harry Murray
Season 3, Episode 25: The Gap in God’s Country (On Laurie’s new book, ft. Caleb Owens)
Season 3, Episode 24: The Cutrone Zone is Back: Marxism & Politics (Cutrone’s New Book)
Political Philosophy with Laurie M. Johnson
Political Philosophy, the YouTube Channel and podcast by Dr. Laurie M Johnson, is placing itself under the wing of the Maurin Academy. The Maurin Academy wishes to promote public knowledge in political thought, ideology, political economy and political theology. Political Philosophy has focused quite a bit of effort on the classics of political thought and modern political thought, and will continue to do so. The Maurin Academy’s focus leans more environmental and promotes a particular vision of the relationship between human beings and their environment, one that is heterodox and informed by the type of broad understanding and openness promoted on Political Philosophy. It’s a marriage made just on this side of heaven!
The Political Philosophy podcast originates from the Political Philosophy website and can be found on iTunes, Google podcasts, Spotify, and other providers.
Hillbilly Elegy Bookclub Finale: How to Read Books Without Getting Angry
The Gap in God’s Country – Segments from Session 1
As always, feel free to reach out to us at maurinacademy@gmail.com if you have any questions, comments, feedback, etc.
Thank you for sticking with us this far!
Here’s to a Happy New Year!