Archive
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Articles
Of Roots and Adventures
I have lived in Ohio, Michigan, Georgia (twice), Pennsylvania, Alabama (also twice), England, and Idaho. I left home to go to college, left another home to attend seminary, and...
When Winning Feels Like Losing
I remember what winning feels like. An opening-drive lightning strike, up by three touchdowns midway through the second quarter, the defense an impenetrable wall, scrubs and water boys entering...
Liberalism Going in Circles
Paul Kelly’s forthcoming Against Post-Liberalism could hardly be more timely. Post-liberalism has recently been a topic of intense debate, as liberals and liberal-leaning...
I With You Am
Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus meets the remaining eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee. He declares his authority in heaven and on earth and sends his disciples...
Outgrowing Nostalgia in The Ballad of Wallis Island
No man is an island,” John Donne declares in his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. The Ballad of Wallis Island, a new film directed by James Griffiths, gives us not...
The Classroom Heals the Wounds of Generations
“Hope,” wrote the German-American polymath Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “is the deity of youth.” Wholly dependent on adults, children have little scope for action and “can only hope for the best.”...
Beauty Rhymes with Death
Jan Zwicky is a Renaissance woman—a philosopher who has taught at Princeton and the University of Victoria, an award-winning poet who teaches creative writing at various institutions, a violinist...
Third Ways and Other Ways
Charlie Kirk’s assassination has fired up a long-standing evangelical wrangle about “third-wayism.” Keen to avoid being boxed in by either the right or the left, third-wayists say Christians must...
A Time for Hatred?
For two weeks, two icons of horrific violence have dominated the news: the August 22 murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was peacefully checking her phone on a...
Hegel-Sized
A sense of an ending is in the air, but there’s little consensus about what’s ending or why. Progressives worry about the end of democracy, while MAGA conservatives celebrate the sudden implosion...
Trump and the Churches
Politics is important, but it’s not the first thing. What we call politics isn’t even the first political thing. The churches’ prayers, preaching, song, communion, charity...
Clapping Trees and Other Biological Wonders
Two books on plant evolution, both alternately nutty and brilliant, were recently published. The subtitle of Robert N. Spengler III’s Nature’s Greatest Success contains the punch line: “How plants...
Democracy Needs Religion—but Which?
German sociologist Hartmut Rosa characterizes modernity as the product of a triple acceleration. Technology speeds up movement and communication, technological change itself keeps accelerating, and, as a result, social...
Jesus Is the Key to All Scripture
To the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the risen Jesus explains “things concerning himself in all the Scriptures,” beginning with “Moses and with all the prophets” (Luke 24:27). He repeats...
The Genius of American Christianity
Chesterton was half-right: America is a “nation with the soul of a church.” The other half of the truth is that many of our churches lack basic features of...