Articles 356
The Storyteller and the Cop
It’s time to walk out of our artificially-lit caves and get as close as we possibly can to real presence and real powerlessness, wherever and however these things come into…
Thinking Like a Lamb
Today I make a COVID resolution: I will learn to be more lamby-like, as Carl would say: to think like a lamb.
Localism and the Church
As a student of Christian history and an off-and-on conservative, I continue to be confused by the combination of Roman Catholic identity and Front Porch location. The idea of localism…
Hillbilly Grace on a Five-Acre Farm in Lincoln, Arkansas: A Review of Minari
Minari is haunted by O’Connor, as Chung explores the theme of misfits and “hard to find” good men (and women) that jolt our senses toward who we truly are, including…
Bridging the Gap Between Narrative and Reality: Guido Preparata
Modest and hopeful, but backed up by a lot of thought and research, Guido Preparata's work is at least a beginning. Surrounded by lies, it’s high-time we started telling another…
Christian Platonism and the Eternal Good
Christian Platonism’s affirmation that we are spiritual beings who will outlive this current life, in one manner or another, lends us powerful impetus to reconsider what it means to spend…
Homecoming in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman
The Church provides a sacramental and moral framework as well as an ultimate sense of hope in The Irishman, and it is this sense of hope that is so desperately…
The Roots of America’s Falling Fertility
Human fertility is not the root of our problems. It is but one symptom of a deeper, more elemental problem.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: A Review
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self draws on a deep reservoir of erudition rather than the shallow puddle of populism.
From God’s Dark Materials, Comes Jack’s Dark Arts
The longing created in the reader to want to know Jack is not easily articulated. It is difficult to admit that though we love happy endings, we are inexplicably drawn…
Men in the Field: The Farming Stories of Leo L. Ward, C.S.C.
The best stories in the volume offer Cather-esque explorations of the links between place and people. The stories are remarkable for their dense layers, for their social, psychological, and emotional…
Reading Petrarch’s Secretum with College Sophomores
When Petrarch uses Augustine to call himself out for being bound and dragged down by the “chains of love and glory,” students are forced to consider what it is they…
Live Not by Lies from Neither the Left nor Right
Who wins in a contest between Woke Soft Totalitarians and Fringe Right Conspiracists? Nobody. But there will be many losers, not least among them Christians who fail to stand for…
Education and Democracy in Disembodied Times: Emerson and Dewey on Humane Technology
In an age of knee-jerk innovation, the warnings articulated by Emerson and Dewey are more needed than ever. They advocated for applied knowledge, but they also insisted such technology must…
The Front Porch and the American Dream
Perhaps, just perhaps, COVID has restored some of the beauty and desirability of the front porch.
A Pastoral Inheritance: James Rebanks and a Tribute to Our Late Cathedral Sacristan
There is much wisdom contained in English Pastoral for suffering churches. If the last fifty years have shown that innovation and modernization aren’t the solution to our ill-health, they have…
Ted Lasso as Parish Priest
Ted Lasso offers a compelling model of a good parish priest: this fictional football coach exemplifies how to lead others with care.
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…
Prospects for Localism (and a New Podcast)
This recording also serves as the inaugural episode of the Brass Spittoon, a new podcast from the Front Porch Republic. We’ll chew on issues timeless and timely, with a focus…
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.
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…