The Editors
Articles by The Editors
Avoiding “A World Without Women,” or Porches
A common and often valid critique of many families in the homeschooling movement is that, because of a lingering obsession on, and invisible competition with, the thing they are leaving…
Instability and the Noonday Devil
In a lecture on monastic stability delivered at the 2015 Front Porch Republic conference, Benedictine monk Gerard D’Souza noted that the idea of staying in one place for the rest of…
On the Costs and Rewards of Planting Trees
I have just planted two apple trees from what my local nursery calls their “Posterity Collection,” heritage varieties grafted onto a slower-growing but durable and long-lived rootstock so that the trees…
Local Identity and Cities In-Between
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 2018 has been a busy year for those of us who aspire to--or are at least somewhat animated by--localism here in Wichita, KS, the 50th-most…
Can Beauty Bring Us Together?
First, a confession: with the exception, at the age of 18, of a brief flirtation with Barry Goldwater’s presidential candidacy, my politics have leaned decidedly Left. My father, on the other…
When In Gotham . . .
“How does one critique globalism without succumbing to would-be nationalist despots like Bolsonaro or Trump?” This was the earnest and sensible question a friend put to me by email the…
In Pursuit of Jimmie Ricker’s Farm
It was hard to resist. John Harrigan’s portrait of Great North Woods stump farmer Jimmie Ricker in our local newspaper compelled me to drive two hundred miles north from Manchester,…
Losing (Some of) the Local Commons
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The annual Prairie Festival at The Land Institute just outside Salina, KS, was held two months ago, but it's been much on my mind for…
Cultivating the Candy Roaster: An Extensive Pleasure
In the spring of this year, some students and I created a modest Heritage Garden—420 square feet of raised beds built from two-by-twelves and filled with a topsoil and compost…
What Kind of Democracy Do Localists Want?
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Last week the United States went through another one of our regular, mostly ritualized exercises in mass democracy. What did (or should) localists think of…
We Need a lot More than Romance
When I came across John Hockenberry’s essay, “Exile,” in the October edition of Harper’s Magazine, I had never heard of him. I still know little about him, though a simple Wikipedia glance…
Live like a Tree
I am an unlikely localist. My life is a product of globalization. My mother’s side of the family is from Singapore, China, and India, linked to each other through the…
Dear Eugene
One of my heroes of the faith is dead. Eugene Peterson experienced death, but certainly not its sting, as he uttered his final words, “Let’s go,” on Monday, October 22.…
Food and “the job of getting it there”
In Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel Cold Mountain, a minister’s daughter decides after her father’s death to remain on their western North Carolina farm, rather than return to the genteel life…
The Cornhusker Berryian: Ben Sasse’s Argument for Rootedness
It was said of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) that he had written more books than most senators had read. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) seems to aspire to…
To Make Housing Affordable, Act Locally
Even if you spend only a fraction of your day monitoring the news, you’ve probably caught wind of the nation’s affordable housing crisis. Disproportionately affecting both the poor and young…
Absurd Wisdom: An Apology for Euthyphro
“Not many of you are wise, as men account wisdom…God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise.” (1 Cor. 1:26-27) The Philosopher and the Theologian The…
Liberated for What
This piece is adapted slightly from a speech given at Spring Arbor University in Michigan at September's FPR Conference. The sexual revolution as we understand it today was not originally…
On Pigeons
Two autumns ago you couldn’t take a dozen steps without tripping over the decapitated corpse of a pigeon. There’d be one lying on the hard packed gravel of the driveway…
The Local Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands at the fore of figures of the Christian past who loom large over political theology and religious activism today. The German pastor and theologian’s life elevates his…
On the Beat in the City of Hospitality
On my way to work at the local weekly newspaper, driving down East Mansion Street and then West Michigan Avenue in downtown Marshall, I pass three people I know. One…
Can You (or anyone) Put Wendell Berry’s Lightning in the Bottle of U.S. Higher Education?
Below is the text of a review for Orthodox Presbyterians -- of all people -- of Jack Baker and Jeff Bilbro's new book on Wendell Berry (some words have been…
America’s Regional Fences
Robert Frost begins one of his best known poems by stating, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” The New England poet is appropriately vague: he does not know…
Love in the Place of Almost Death
At the height of the political tension in King Lear, the corrupt usurpers of Lear’s throne are at the helm of Britain’s defense against French invaders. Cordelia, Lear’s truly beloved…
