The Archive

Every essay.

Rabekah HendersonFeatured

Why Our Churches Should Be Beautiful - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

In the last few decades, American churches have gotten a new look—but don’t call it a facelift. Instead, think of it more as a toning-down, as church exteriors have ridden themselves of their steeples and other religious symbols, while their […]

Jake MeadorFeaturedJournalJournal 2

On Loving Newcastle - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Michael Chaplin. Newcastle United Stole My Heart: Sixty Years in Black and White. London: Hurst and Co, 2021. 280pp, $25.00. The first thing to say is that Michael Chaplin’s Newcastle United Stole My Heart is one of the most delightfully […]

Elizabeth SticeFeaturedEvangelicalism

Fear and Deconstruction - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

In Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inaugural speech, he told the American people that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The country was enduring a major economic crisis and would soon face the threat of fascism encircling the […]

Jake Meador

Christian Communities at Work - Commonplaces

Any sort of Christian community, be it a household, a church, a study center, or even something as large as a Bruderhof community, needs to practice three types of work as part of their life, it seems to me.

Jake Meador

Christian Communities at Work - Commonplaces

Any sort of Christian community, be it a household, a church, a study center, or even something as large as a Bruderhof community, needs to practice three types of work as part of their life, it seems to me.

Amy Nelson BurnettFeaturedJournalJournal 2

The Third Reformer - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Bruce Gordon. Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet. New Haven: Yale, 2021. xxii + 349 pp, $32.50. The contemporary of Martin Luther and predecessor of Jean Calvin within the Reformed family of churches, Ulrich Zwingli is sometimes described as “the third reformer.” […]

Matthew LoftusFeaturedJournalJournal 2

Who’s Going to Clean the Toilets in Your Utopia? Anna Neima’s The Utopians - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Anna Neima. The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society. London: Picador, 2021. 320pp, $39.95. “I saw a horse collapse in the street: the driver was knocked aside by the starving people, who rushed to cut chunks from the […]

Ashley HalesFeaturedHistoryJournalJournal 2

Who is This New Man? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

The rubber band of our American common life is stretched to breaking.[1] Our connections are tenuous, our politics polarizing, and our sense of civic housekeeping — where we provide for others for the common good — seems like a foreign […]

Graham ShearerFeatured

Calvinism and Liberty - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

If you had to summarize Calvin’s teaching on resisting tyrants it would be: don’t. Even as his Protestant compatriots, the Huguenots, faced persecution and he fled France to Geneva, Calvin was firmly on the side of maintaining political order. He […]

Laura CerbusFeaturedJournalJournal 2

Learning to See with Norman Wirzba - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Soon after we moved to Australia, my family hiked in a temperate rainforest in the Yarra Ranges, an hour-and-a-half from our house. Southern Victoria is home to several of these rainforests. They challenge my prior knowledge of rainforests as places […]

Jake Meador

Reality and Reformed Media - Commonplaces

Over the weekend I gave a paper at a small conference that was basically pitched as “let’s offer the most sympathetic, from-the-sources account we can of modern ideas about self and nature, then let’s knock them down with Walker Percy […]

Jake Meador

Reality and Reformed Media - Commonplaces

Over the weekend I gave a paper at a small conference that was basically pitched as “let’s offer the most sympathetic, from-the-sources account we can of modern ideas about self and nature, then let’s knock them down with Walker Percy […]