Jeffrey Bilbro
Website Editor-in-Chief
Jeffrey Bilbro is a Professor of English at Grove City College. He grew up in the mountainous state of Washington and earned his B.A. in Writing and Literature from George Fox University in Oregon and his Ph.D. in English from Baylor University. His books include Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies and Practices of Hope, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature, Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (written with Jack Baker), and Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms.
Articles by Jeffrey Bilbro
Groundhog Day, Apps, and Foie Gras
“America Needs a Miracle.” The first section of Andrew Sullivan’s musings, where he reflects on Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized and Christopher Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement, is balanced, nuanced, and quite insightful.…
Rivers, Bill Gates, and Hating Literature
“Rewilding Food, Rewilding Farming.” Vandana Shiva argues that we need to improve farming, not get rid of it: “The notion that high-tech ‘farm free’ lab food will save the planet…
Facial Recognition, Urban Dreams, and Rhetoric
“The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It.” Kashmir Hill details the workings of a new facial recognition app for the New York Times. What could go wrong?…
Love Is Its Own Justification: Wendell Berry and the Lure of Political Efficacy
Scialabba insists that our actions are meritorious and good if they are effective, if they transform society and lead to measurable improvements. Berry, on the other hand, upholds love as…
Elites, Content Collapse, and Amish Outhouses
“Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite.” Michael Lind has a new book coming out about the new class war (look for FPR’s review on Monday). The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt:…
Old Tractors, Social Media, and Idolatry
“Once it Comes Time.” Michael Adno narrates the life and work of the photographer William Christenberry: “The thread of memory applied to all his work in sculpture, painting, and photography.…
Nationalism, Ebooks, and Gertrude Himmelfarb
“Rich Lowry’s Nationalist Review.” Patrick Deneen extends the argument he made last summer at the National Conservatism Conference in a review essay of Lowry’s The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful,…
The Farm Bill, Afghanistan, and Philanthropy
I hope you enjoy this week’s slate of essays. I’ll be taking a Christmas break the next two weeks, but look for the Water Dipper to reappear in January 2020.…
G.E.M. Anscombe, Climate Despair, and René Girard
“Untempted by the Consequences.” John Schwenkler has a rich essay on G.E.M. Anscombe in Commonweal. Her fierce fidelity to “doing the truth” makes her a valuable exemplar. “Motivated Reasoning, Part Gazillion.”…
FPR Year in Review
It's been a busy year in the virtual pages of FPR. Exciting things have been happening in what I believe is now called "meatspace"---we hosted our largest-ever conference celebrating the…
Chinese Surveillance, Class War, and a Land Tax
“Exposed: China’s Operating Manuals for Mass Internment and Arrest by Algorithm.” Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian reports on China’s sophisticated system of surveillance and detention of Uighurs: The classified intelligence briefings reveal the…
Lukacs, Tarkington, and Place-Based Policies
“Remembering John Lukacs: Ode to an Academic Outsider.” Will Hoyt remembers the life and writings of one of the great historians and writers of the twentieth century. “The Magnificent Tarkington.”…