Articles 356

In “American Divine,” it would seem that the pursuit is not so much a pursuit of divinity but rather the experience of it—the awe, which in this instance is private…

Those of us committed to the Midwest and its literature can and should mourn the damages done to our region by our habits of transience. But we must also recognize,…

The IE is essentially the 1662 BCP of old, but unlike the Cambridge edition it is not just that and nothing more—it is the 1662 judiciously tweaked and supplemented in…

Tributary streams remind us that every attitude flows to the sea. Our reactions to the streams of today’s circumstances feed the rivers of our everyday attitudes.

Our disagreements are about real things, but people are real too.

Prolific author and social critic Os Guinness discusses the current challenges for liberty and his hopes for the future. The Chinese-born, English-educated, Irish-rooted scholar who lives in America also shares…

The main posture of a liberal arts education is slowing down, rest, seeing. But if we just train students to only strive, reach, stretch for something more, then suffering will…

"After all, if you are too small to do anything, what need is there to stir!”

Then I read a book like Raft of Stars, and I am again filled with wonder. Not just at nature–at rivers, forests, and fields–but at my children themselves.

When our own churches are divided and bubbled up in their own media worlds, unable to agree on basic “facts” related to current events, you know its time to take…

One answer from Kingsnorth’s fiction lies in limits. No human, nor all of us put together, is sovereign over the fate of the world, despite the unprecedented power we enjoy…

A short review cannot do justice to the range of reasons visitors to the Porch should read Kingsnorth’s three novels, so I’ll begin simply by saying: Read them. These are…

Time and time again, in both mythic and recorded history, humans have celebrated the passing of a hardship by gathering together in merriment with good food and drink and song.

I’m not canceling Whitman. But my own enthusiasm for his poetry is waning. The poet whose daring versification and daring lifestyle were once seen as the epitome of counter-culture has…

Daniel Elazar was emphatic that a “renewed sense of localism” was essential to America’s future. For Americans, this means renewed intentionality about our local communities, not merely living in one…

How do you measure the beauty, fittingness, and purposefulness of Hewitt, his family, farm, and community? I hope no one tries to innovate an inventory to do it.

The new things we learn about Ernest Hemingway in this documentary not only make him more interesting; they make his writing more remarkable.

Rugged individualists need not be atomists; and there are compelling reasons why even Enlightenment liberals should be front porch republicans.

For the sake of human formation and flourishing, it is essential to carve out sanctified spaces of peace and refuge away from the mesmerizing pull of screens.

Canadian author and broadcaster, David Cayley, who conducted two lengthy radio interviews-turned-books with Illich (in 1988 and 2000) and had a decades-long friendship with him, has written a gripping and…

Whether he takes us to the Texas frontier or to 1970s Houston, his prose never gets in the way of his story. He moves ahead with the precision and simplicity…

The censorship of slavery no longer dictates Huck’s morality. Unlike Tom, Huck has begun to question his society’s standards, to weigh and consider what is just and right, and I…

The conservationist recognizes that the society we live in, as much as the natural world we live in, was given to us as a gift with the demand that we…

McMurtry couldn’t quite set the Bowie knife to the scalp of the Western like Cormac McCarthy did the same year, maybe because he knew those people weren’t grotesque caricatures; they…