Articles Archive
A is for Alligator
But the promise of the coming of the Messiah is that all these animals will be changed from enemies of the human race into its friends, or at least comfortable…
A Christian Critique and the Neoliberal Future: A Review of Naming Neoliberalism
Clapp’s ambitious study attempts a great deal within a comparatively brief compass. Unfortunately, some topics suffer as a result...How can one best understand the tension between individual moral responsibility (rooted…
Why I Wish I Didn’t Have a Smartphone and Computer (But Probably Won’t Give Them Up)
We can agree that many technological “advances” have objectively done more harm than good, in terms of the human condition as well as the Earth, and that we face a…
Snowflakes, Wallace Stegner, and Brokenism
“No Snowflakes are the Same. These Stunning Close-up Photos are Proof.” Amudalat Ajasa explains how Jason Persoff captures amazing images of snowflakes and showcases some of his photos. If you’re…
No Justice, No Peace? René Girard and Endless Rivalries
The rivalry we’re experiencing goes deeper than symptoms, political principles, and even the need for responsive, wise leaders. Indeed, it may bypass principles and wisdom altogether. But to explain it,…
The Census Taker in a Church Pew
It is a trouble that visits us all: our fate is to die and be forgotten. Tying ourselves to one another and to life can diminish that trouble’s force, but…
The Language of Numbers
Math is certainly not the best language for every situation, but it is essential for many situations. And once we understand this, and not merely acknowledge it but shift our…
Cormac McCarthy’s Sorrow of Creatures
Are dreams only dreams? Or are they God’s gifts of the unconscious which we still fail to know? McCarthy lets these questions remain, and no argument or worldview can answer…
Chickens, AI, and the Legal Conversation
“Daughter of Forgottonia.” Liz Schleicher describes a family rooted in a plot of land near where the Illinois River joins the Mississippi. Guided by a matriarch, they have lived well…
Paterson and Poetic Fidelity
Creative fidelity is attuned to, and draws out, the richness in people and things. It calls for awareness and attentive seeing. In the end, Paterson is a film about such…
Reclaiming our Private Economies
Hillsborough, NC. The term “care” is used in our times to signify tasks like feeding, changing diapers, bathing, and otherwise maintaining the well-being of those too young, old, or infirmed…
Selling 3301
Today, many in our society seem to want change for its own sake. I hope a different spirit continues among those neighbors and the street remains a neighborhood as it…
After Virtual: Education
The second episode from the FPR conference After Virtual: The Art of Recovering Lost Goods looks at education. Jeff Polet discusses walking away from Hope. Angel Adams Parham talks about…
Losing Elections and Telling Better Stories
As we enter this season of Advent, we would do well to share the skepticism of Mary and her misfit Son about the powers of this age to establish an…
Payne Hollow, Camels, and Distributism
“Who's Preserving Harlan Hubbard's Beloved Payne Hollow?” Bob Hill writes a lovely account of the Hubbards’ remarkable life and explains the hopes of the recently formed nonprofit organization Payne Hollow…
Sloe the Winter’s March
Society’s long move from the country to the city may have desacralized their meaning, but for so long has man’s festive calendar been defined by our ecological needs and vulnerabilities…
The Joyful Christian Nationalist: How Stephen Leacock Loved His Home by Resisting the World
Undergirding Leacock's work was not a desire to restore a previous version of Canada, but to preserve the gifts God had given: the best traditions of the past, the communities…
Stories of Healing and Wholeness: An Appreciative Engagement with Wendell Berry’s The Need to be Whole
Brecon, Wales. Stories are a necessary part of healing and wholeness. I don’t just mean a story we may like or we tell ourselves (though they include that), nor do…
Dorothy Day, Humility, and Ed McClanahan
“Will the Real Dorothy Day Please Stand Up?” In this review of D.L. Mayfield’s new biography of Dorothy Day, Myles Werntz offers a masterclass in how we ought to befriend…
An American Augustine
The various parts—historical and autobiographical, theological and literary—all contribute to the central thread: that we seek wholeness, and that wholeness depends on better understanding ourselves and our damaged, but not…
The Only Way is Up
It is a terrifying responsibility every single day, for a preschooler’s capacity to find ever creative ways to put herself in danger does not always match up with the parent’s…
Alan Jacobs on Ursula Le Guin and Anarchism
Alan Jacobs is not, to my knowledge, a Porcher, though he ought to be; his insightful reflections upon Christianity, literature, society, and the state are hugely relevant to all sorts…
Joining the Dance: Setting Aside Screens to Build the City
The young pagans band around the picnic table and scrawl inky runes into their hands with cheap pens. Around them, the world falls, and wonders if they will learn to…
After Virtual: The Church
For the first of our episodes from September’s FPR conference After Virtual: The Art of Recovering Lost Goods, we go to church. Carl Trueman, Gregory Hogg, and Charlie Cotherman share…