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

20 January 2025

1 min read

New episode: Seen & Unseen Aloud

Gangsters old and new, Russian reformers, and accepting the grey in life.

Natalie Garrett

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

Jacob and Esau.

Matthias Stom, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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As 2025 gets going, Katherine Amphlett encourages us to travel back in time with Lady Mary to get to know some of the bad guys of the Old Testament to find how little has changed; Simon Burton-Jones reminds us that there is a great deal more to Russia that Putin and Lauren Westwood paints a colourful picture of life in the grey areas.

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