Category: Culture
the insanity of autonomy
Kate Shellnutt asked wrote a piece in Christianity Today discussing a new Gallup poll suggesting that Americans are getting more liberal in their social views: The church today finds itself in a precarious position, as an ethical shift pushes public...
Andy Crouch on race, power, and culture making
Just wanted to quickly highlight some recent podcasts featuring Andy Crouch. I have long enjoyed Andy’s writing and his work with Christianity Today (here’s my review of his most recent book, Strong and Weak), but I found these podcasts full of...
This is war! Now put down your sword and pick up your ear trumpet.
I very much appreciate what Alan Jacobs and Rod Dreher have said in response to last week’s post, which draws out an issue that I didn’t really address head-on. Alan puts it this way, in the context of disagreement between orthodox...
Is the Benedict Option a “Safe Space”?
With the release of Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option book, both the main question (“how do Christians cultivate local institutions to pass on our faith?”) and various sub-questions–such as how to deal with the unique threat that the Sexual Revolution poses...
Sympathy for the Trump Voter
Should we sympathize with Trump voters? I found this essay from Rick Perlstein pretty enlightening, even if I disagree with a lot of what he had to say. In short, Perlstein writes about the captivating experience of dealing with a very intelligent Trump...
I love candy, but I’m glad my wife won’t let me eat it all the time
This post from Seth Godin helps describe a phenomenon that I haven’t quite been able to wrap my head around for a while: The economics seem to be that the only way to make a living is to reach a...
What Wendell Berry Gets Wrong About Wendell Berry
Tamara Hill Murphy’s Plough essay, The Hole in Wendell Berry’s Gospel, is well worth reading even if I disagree with much of it. She gives two principal concerns: The first accusation is of papering over the flaws of rural life...
If our enemy is modernity, aren’t immigrants and Muslims on our side?
2016 has been a bad year in general for principled conservatives, but this article on the divide between “ideological conservatives” and “civilizational conservatives” brings up a big, ugly fracture point that may be far wider than just their affinity for Islam...