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How to Buy a Dumb Phone (and How Not to Use It): A Reflection on FPR 2023

I did some research with the help of a “dumb phone finder” which told me the functions, network compatibilities, and reviews of the available flip phones and other simplicity-oriented devices.…

Off the Beaten Path with County Highway

County Highway is not county-specific. It’s for all of America outside major cities. Well, outside of New York and Los Angeles, for sure. In the second issue, there’s a piece…
November 17, 2023

Gatsby: Grasping for Transcendence

Gatsby’s character yearns for the infinite; he sparkles with something unusual in the midst of the lavish wealth and chaotic parties of Long Island’s frivolities. Gatsby has “one of those…
November 15, 2023

No Pawn in the Game: Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi, and the Struggle for Human Rights

Like Bob Dylan, Hamer’s life was marked by protest and songs of protest. Her protests, however, grew from her personal experience on the ground in Mississippi. Kate Clifford Larson’s Walk…

Only Men

The children’s pastor made his point about who was serious or not when it came to serving God. He could have closed the service, and I would have been out…

A Right to Imperfection

Lauck is unambiguous that he is engaged in a project of “civic retrieval,” to “remind us of our ideals and how many battles we have already won” and promote the…
Matthew Miller
November 10, 2023

Visiting the Mysterious Island of Homeschooling

The overall message is: here, readers, we have discovered a whole new mysterious island filled with these strange savages, previously unexplored. You wouldn’t believe what they’re doing out there! So…
November 9, 2023

Modernity is a Dirty Diaper

Modernity has become permanently liquid; it no longer seeks solid replacements to the pre-modern world but finds greater value in transience, not just of institutions and things, but of human…
November 1, 2023

Fly Fishing and Henry Bugbee

We can never ossify the world because it is always moving and changing like the river. Yet we can open ourselves to this ever fluctuating movement. This is manifested in…
October 30, 2023

The Smallest of Seeds: A Review of Fragile Neighborhoods

For Kaplan, when comparing two countries and asking why one has succeeded where the other has failed, what matters most is not national policies but “societal dynamics—the strength of the…

Democracies Need Shared Literature

Before we totally condemn the Athenians as selfish, entertainment-addicted bad citizens—which, to be fair, they sometimes (or often?) were, just like us—it is worth considering what such shared democratic spaces…
October 26, 2023

Stop, in the Name of Subsidiarity: Putting a Halt to Corporate Leeches

I’ve been told that workers have had to step away from the register while checking out paying customers to chase away repeat shoplifters as they hurled all kinds of epithets…

Against the Ministry-Industrial Complex, For the Local Membership

Criticizing the ministry-industrial complex does not mean professional resources have no place in ministry. It is not so much their use as their guiding role in congregational life that prevents…

Fear and Hope in the Hay Field

We need to love smaller, more energy-efficient houses and cars in order to love people more. We need to give up much of our casual oil consumption for leisure. We…
October 20, 2023

The Cozy Loneliness of Owl at Home

children are inchoately aware of the sadness of the world; it’s another of the human mysteries that they already have access to. Lobel’s genius is in choosing for his subject…
October 18, 2023

Map-Burning

My point is not to get lost in conventional debate here. But seeking to heal from the culture war, I want to uncover the bodies of my neighbors, which industrial…

A Humanist Manifesto of Our Times: A Review of The Soul of Civility

In her introduction, Hudson calls The Soul of Civility “a humanistic manifesto.” And she’s right: the book is steeped in humanism, in more ways than one. First, Hudson underscores the…
October 11, 2023

The Art(s) of Liberation

None of us gets to choose where we land. But if we cannot choose the times in which we live, we can choose how we live in the time we…

Conservatives Should Take Another Look at Cohousing

Maybe we can just call it something else, like, “Living with family and friends in a neighborhood designed to encourage the building of social capital, relying on them in real…
October 6, 2023

Is the Internet to Blame for the Decline of Literary Fiction? Possibly, But Maybe Not in the Way That We Think

It is not solely (or perhaps even primarily) about there being more hours of work and therefore less time for reading. It is about the possibility of work hovering over…

Wisdom is Born of Wonder: A Review of Wonder Strikes

A good number of Christian scholars draw first and foremost on Thomas Aquinas for their accounts of beauty. Desmond, though he’s aware of and engages with the Thomistic tradition, has…
October 4, 2023

Happiness Fit for Humans: A Review of A Web of Our Own Making

Barba-Kay argues that we tend to resolve our cognitive dissonance by outsourcing all the choices that do matter and consoling ourselves with a plethora of choices that don't.
September 27, 2023

The Pantheon of Ancient Wisdom

The liberty and justice which republics are erected to safeguard requires, as Milton and the Founders knew, a moral, virtuous, and religious citizenry. Without this moral and virtuous spirit, the…

Home Alone

This trend is peaking in a small rectangle, the smartphone. As Marc Barnes observes, the smartphone has replaced the TV. The smartphone is portable and personal and has enticed us…