Jeffrey Bilbro is an Associate Professor of English at Grove City College. He grew up in the mountainous state of Washington and earned his B.A. in Writing and Literature from George Fox University in Oregon and his Ph.D. in English from Baylor University. His books include Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies and Practices of Hope, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature, Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (written with Jack Baker), and Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms.
Jeffrey Bilbro
Articles by Jeffrey Bilbro
Conference Recap
Thanks to all those who joined us for a provocative and convivial gathering this past Saturday. Even though it wasn’t live-tweeted (or perhaps because it wasn’t live-tweeted), we had a…
Sabbath, Tyranny, and Democracy
“Evoking a Life of Shalom.” Allan F. Brooke II reviews FPR’s recent book Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William, concluding: Telling the Stories Right collects a…
Integrity, Cape Breton, and Nationalism
“Living with Integrity.” Comment Magazine has a new issue out that focuses on how liberal individualism has perhaps warped our understanding of integrity. Along with some excellent essays, it includes…
Messing About in Boats
In the nautical classic The Wind in the Willows, Ratty tells his new acquaintance Mole, “‘Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply…
Tangier Island, Anthems, and Wendell Berry’s Horses
“Restoring Appalachia.” McKay Jenkins writes about different ways that residents of coal-country are trying to grow food, make money, and restore the damaged ecosystem: “Making a living without coal means…
McCain’s Favorite Poem, Defending Chess Tables, and 1968
“How Civil Must America Be? Americans care about being nice. How do we disagree with our neighbors about guns?” Jacqui Shine visits Grinnell, Iowa, home to a liberal arts college,…
Learning to Distinguish between Demonic and Redemptive Technologies
In a recent essay for Christianity Today, “Do All Plants Go to Heaven?,” Abigail Murrish speculates that GMOs might be present in the New Jerusalem. It’s certainly an interesting question.…
Instagram, Silicon Valley, and Hunger Stones
“The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley—and Won.” Nicholas Confessore tells the story of how a real estate investor convinced California to pass a data privacy law despite the…
Conference Lodging
Those of you traveling from out of town to the FPR conference should be aware that the hotel will release any unbooked rooms on Friday, August 24th from the block they…
Monsanto, Walking, and Hardware Stores
“Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289m as Jury Rules Weedkiller Cause of Man’s Cancer.” Sam Levin reports on the remarkable finding of a San Francisco jury against Monsanto. Obviously this verdict…
Educating Humans to Subvert Technocracy
Alan Jacobs’s new book, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis, traces a fascinating intellectual debate that arose on the Western home front during…
The Humanities, Baseball, and Hunting
“Simone Weil’s Deeper Grace.” Scott Beauchamp explains why Simone Weil is such a necessary thinker for us to listen to. Keep an eye out for my review, coming Monday, of…
Localism, Trade Wars, and Teaching
“Restoring Localism.” Joel Kotkin claims that if there’s one thing both conservatives and progressives should be able to agree on, it is the need to devolve power to local governments:…
A Localist Revolution, Aldo Leopold’s Conservatism, and Public Intellectuals
“The Localist Revolution.” David Brooks writes in defense of localism: “We’ve tried liberalism and conservatism and now we’re trying populism. Maybe the next era of public life will be defined…
Baseball, Debt, and Postman
“Birds, Bricklayers, and Baseball.” Sam Edgin reviews Stanley Hauerwas’s new book, The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson, which is comprised of 16 letters, each written on subsequent anniversaries…
Register for our Fall Conference
Registration for our fall conference, 1968 Fifty Years Later: A Re-Evaluation, is now open. We hope you can join us. For more information on the location and lodging, go to…
The Contemplative Life, Southern Writers, and a Tech Backlash
“Review: A Trappist monk tells of a life worth living.” Gregory Hillis reviews a new book by Brother Paul Quenon, a monk who began his life at the Abbey of…
Agroecology, Eric Miller, and Manual Labor
“Bringing Farming Back to Nature.” Daniel Moss and Mark Bittman report on the encouraging growth of agroecology. (Recommended by Tom Bilbro.) “The Oak Tree Almanac.” This is a new podcast…
Gone Fishing (2)
Sometimes the deluge of content that pours from our 24/7 media threatens to drown us under its cacophony of disinformation. Periodically, then, it is necessary to turn off the spigot…
Anthony Bourdain, the Galloping Gourmet, and Reading Together
“Flourishing in a Digital World.” John Fea records a live episode of The Way of Improvement Leads Home podcast. Near the end, the conversation turns to FPR’s recent localist social…
Restoring Trust in the Aftermath of Anti-Social Media
We should all be grateful to Siva Vaidhyanathan. He has endured great pain and suffering to explore a dangerous new landscape, and he now offers to be our guide to…
R. S. Thomas, Paul Kingsnorth, and Monsanto’s “Demise”
“Poetic Orthodoxy.” Peter Leithart writes about the faith and the conflicted attachment to Wales that animate R. S. Thomas’s poems. “Why ‘Monsanto’ is No More.” Don’t get your hopes up.…
Habermas on the Public Square, Polarization, and Kernza
“Carmen.” Stromae has a music video that’s relevant to our recent conversation about localist social media. Here’s what I want to know: What might happen if the Big Blue Bird…
Disenchantment, Facebookistan, and John Ruskin
“Disenchantment, Actually.” Doug Sikkema reviews The Myth of Dis enchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences by Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm. He’s not entirely convinced: “Yes, religion and…