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The Editors

Articles by The Editors

Else Lasker-Schüler’s Grief

Her work is certainly redolent of sorrow and, as she describes it, the eternity that dwells within her. But her words also carry hope and surprising faith that she will…

Nadya Williams and The Good News

Williams reminds us of a lesson that we should have already learned good and hard, namely that rejection of Christianity does not result in blissful liberation and self-expression.
November 5, 2024

On Abortion, Uncompromising Values, and the Value of Compromise

Perhaps one day moral clarity on this issue will be found or the values of the American people will align more neatly. Until that day arrives, if ever it does,…
November 1, 2024

Figures of Death and Deathlessness  

But our culture’s celebration of Halloween suggests that we know yet more. We sense not only that we are dust and will return to it; we also sense that life…
October 31, 2024

Falling is Not Failure, and Getting up is Not the Point

Life knocks us down. It is the price of this world, however much we may kid ourselves otherwise. Our falls become part of us.

Jeff Bilbro’s Convivial Quest

The editor-in-chief of the FPR website discusses the recent conference in Grand Rapids and his latest book, Words for Conviviality.  Highlights Resources Jeff's bio and buy the book (and some…

Wheeler Catlett’s Love Beyond Organization in Wendell Berry’s “Fidelity”

Organized community events bring people together and are an integral part of forging strong communal bonds in a place. Like the law, they serve a purpose in a community’s ecosystem…
October 17, 2024

Gendered Worlds: Our Need for Belonging and Usefulness

If we choose to befriend our many obligations—to connect with other people, to love, to serve, to create, to borrow, to lend, to repair, to celebrate, to support—instead of buying…
October 11, 2024

Unpacking My Library (Again)

Maybe, in the end, a home library does what a long-inhabited home does: charts a middle ground between the chaos of the world and the hyper-rationality of modernity.
October 10, 2024

Home Libraries Will Save Civilization

It is a reality not frequently enough acknowledged: like so many other things in life, the love of reading is caught, not taught.
October 9, 2024

The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite: A Review of Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke

So the core of We Have Never Been Woke is persuasive, and it's hard not to see his thesis in operation in all kinds of fields, once you look at…

Eduard Habsburg On Building Families

My guest once again is His Imperial and Royal Highness, His Excellency Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and Ambassador of Hungary to The Holy See and the Sovereign Order of…
Alan Cornett
October 7, 2024

Blue Walls Falling Down: A Novel

Joshua Hren’s new novel, Blue Walls Falling Down, releases today. We’re happy to share the following excerpt with FPR readers.
October 7, 2024

Living in Language (a Reply)

I heard it then, followed by a man’s agonizing cry. I hear it now in every Franco-Norman word we unknowingly pronounce: that arrow piercing King Harold’s eye.

Modern Architecture Erodes Community: What We Can Do About It

The future of our built environment is in our hands. We can reject the alienation of modernism and instead foster spaces that cultivate connection, celebrate history, and create a sense…
October 3, 2024

Large Language Models and the Final Paragraph

Like the sonnet, the five-paragraph essay traps investment in truth felt in the heart and forged in the mind by means of its life-respecting limitations.

An Invitation to a Different Story: A Review of Letters to a Future Saint

Christianity is not merely a doctrine to believe but a life to live and embody. East understands this and invites Future Saints into a different imagination and way of life.
October 1, 2024

Real Communities and Democratic Theory

If we don’t experience full, unqualified “concrete, historical community,” then we won’t experience full, unqualified “genuine deliberation.”
September 27, 2024

Hunting Silence

To find these deeper wells of silence, however, we must seek them out, whether in the woods or the deserts of our own shut doors.
September 26, 2024

Southern Appalachia is a Place

These questions would cause little debate or consternation without the importance of place tethering them. And, despite the erasure of communitarian mindsets and regional identity, place still matters.
September 25, 2024

Matt Walsh’s Racial Reckoning

While it is impossible to be sure what the ultimate cultural importance of this movie will be, I do think Walsh has hit a nerve.
Katherine Dalton
September 23, 2024

Steel-Manning the Amish: The Wisdom of Communal Discernment

What the Amish understand perhaps more than we do is the necessity of maintaining and protecting domains of embodied human agency in our lives.
September 20, 2024

The New Alignment

Contemplating this turn of events in our politics reminds me that we human beings have a strong desire for tidy coherence. Sometimes this desire can be a kind of sickness.
September 19, 2024

Pastoring while Living in the Trenches of Prison

Pastoral ministry in prison can change lives, but it doesn’t magically erase the pain of incarceration.