The Editors
Articles by The Editors
Grandmother’s Wisdom
When I hear some folk wisdom that I would have previously dismissed as backwards or ridiculous, I now look for the guardrails it establishes and what they might be protecting.
Celebrity, Success, and the Kingdom of Heaven
Atlanta, GA. It’s been a rough few years for celebrity evangelicals. In the summer of 2019, Joshua Harris—the Calvinist pastor who became a national sensation in the late ‘90s with…
Remembered Relationships: A Review of John Berryman and Robert Giroux: A Publishing Friendship
As the late historian John Lukacs would insist, all stories as we know them and retell them are remembered. This means they are, inherently, personal. John Berryman and Robert Giroux:…
Limits, Risk Aversion, and Technocracy
What about Lasch’s analysis of limits? I have in mind two contemporary cultural developments, the rise of technocracy and our extreme aversion to risk, that seem to challenge certain aspects…
Finding Rest in the Immanent Frame: a Review of Tish Harrison Warren’s Prayer in the Night
This prayer, which enumerates what Warren calls “a taxonomy of vulnerability,” epitomizes how, far from being irrelevant or obscure, the mysteries of God fill the hardest parts of life.
Books, Bibles, & Murder with J. Mark Bertrand
J. Mark Bertrand is the author of the Roland March mystery trilogy and the purveyor of the aforementioned Bible Design Blog. But Mark has seemingly been lying low the past…
Playing the Long Game: A Review of Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship
The Lincoln that Schaff puts forth cultivated liberal democracy by placing limits and crafting public consensus. In order to see Lincoln in a new light, Schaff applies Aristotle’s ideas of…
A Conservative for Our Time
In a letter he wrote to his grandchildren, Udall challenged them to "Support all endeavors that promise a better life for the inhabitants of our planet. Cherish sunsets, wild creations…
Ravining
I have spent considerable time in ravines, drawn to them by an appetite for domestic exploration: though they worry me, I have also been drawn to them; I traverse the…
Sacred Reality: The Augustinian Vision of Goodness in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
Robinson presents us with an encounter: a participatory, embodied experience; a blessed and broken reality; the sacraments. And from this encounter, we receive courageous eyes to see the precious things…
The End of Childhood Play
Too many children grow up learning no lessons, organising no peers, and exploring no territory, unless it be shifting electrons around a screen, and the screen becomes their world.
A Time for Local Democracy
In these days of Twitter democracy, when platforms for political expression are so accessible, it sometimes seems, paradoxically, that citizens have little actual say in decision making about our country’s…
A Jane Austen January
The enduring value of adding Jane Austen to my disciplines was not beholden to my expectation of enjoyment from a happy wedding nor was it dependent on my recognition that…
The Worst?
2020 has certainly had real trials and tribulations, but our approach to it is also reflective of a culture in which everything disliked has long been “the worst.”
Institutions Rescue George Bailey
George offers his joyful holiday greetings to these institutions as if they were persons, bodies that saw his town through good and bad, through war and peace.
Some Possibly Helpful Thoughts on Localism, Populism, and Proximity During a Pandemic
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The departure of Donald Trump from the White House [crosses fingers] will assuredly not mean the departure of Trumpism from American life. The collection of…
Ministry in a Place of Poverty
There is nothing morally wrong with being poor, and the stigmatization that affects the poor probably only adds more to their burden.
Beauty and Imagination in Christian Witness
When we see that beauty and imagination, rightly understood, are intellectual as well as affective, we no longer have to try to bridge some gap between imagination and reality.
Why The Cult of Smart is a Book for Every Parent in 2020 (Whether Anarcho-Socialist or Not)
The Cult of Smart is deeply entrenched in most modern systems of public education around the world, and the increasingly clear reality of cognitive and genetic differences between different human…
The Battle Rages On: Eric Adler’s Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today
We all want students to think critically and to reflect on what they have encountered in the course of their education. In order to do that, however, they must have…
William Newton On Enjoying & Living With Art
Art critic William Newton joins me in this episode to discuss how to approach art. How to learn about it, appreciate it, and also acquire it. William is an attorney,…
Mr. Munson’s Mustang: A Fable
"In order to implement vital system updates, you must install the Trans-Mog-Z Facilitator, available at any Big Horizon Automotive Intervention Center. This has been your first notice.”
The Promise and Forgiveness of Hillbilly Elegy
Hillbilly Elegy is indeed political, but in a deeper sense, entangled as it is in the webs of broken promises and repeated forgiveness.
Saving String, Kicking Leaves: Donald Hall’s Elegies
Hall’s elegiac poetry and prose teach grim lessons that are worth heeding, but there is also a sort of unsentimental, necessary hope—a hope for continuity and unexpected rebirth, a hope…
