The Archive

Every essay.

Jake MeadorBook Reviews

What Are Christians For?: An Invitation - Commonplaces

We are in a new era of preparation. The deconstructors have come and, mercifully, will soon be gone. The world we have known is at an end. This is true for the church, I think, as many of the defining […]

Jake MeadorChurch

The Five Phases of Movement and Cultural Renewal - Commonplaces

Start by listening to this Mark Sayers lecture from a conference in Melbourne a few years ago. Sayers argues that one of the ways the discussion about Christianity and the west has gotten off track is that it’s not really […]

Bill MeloneFeaturedEvangelicalism

A Second Fundamentalism and the Butterfly of American Christianity - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

We live in a time of division, as many of us can wearily testify, but we also live in a time of disorientation. Navigating divisions can be challenging, but the challenge multiplies when we are disoriented, and that is a […]

Jake MeadorBook ReviewsHenri De Lubac Project

Hating God - Commonplaces

In his book on the transformation of sexuality in the Roman world brought about by Christianity, Kyle Harper observes that Christianity was experienced as a deeply liberating force by many in the empire. For Romans, the sexual energy of men […]

J. Chase DavisFeaturedCultureCurrent Politics

Borderless - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

There is great concern in the church today about individualism. From Carl Trueman’s work on expressive individualism to other works revealing its deficiencies and threats to Christian spirituality, ours is believed to be an age of individualism. These critiques are […]

Flynn EvansFeaturedCulture

Making Theology Public - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

A steadily growing number of disillusioned evangelicals are finding comfort in the subversive doctrines of Christian Reconstructionism. As noted by Andrew Walker in an essay about the movement, those taking in the notions of Reconstructionism suffer mostly from dissatisfaction with […]

Jake MeadorChurch

The Ecosystem - Commonplaces

I see two problems that are going to catch the American church in a pincer maneuver if we don’t sort them out soon. First, our institutions are decaying, decadent, or dying and as the boomers die a lot of the […]

Jake MeadorChurch

Panopticon Discipleship - Commonplaces

(I’m just trying to do some short stuff that would’ve gone on Twitter, in much less thoughtful, developed form, on the personal blog instead.) One of the trends I have noticed in many conversations with people who have left the […]

Jake MeadorChurch

Preaching in a Disorienting, Low-Competence Society - Commonplaces

Beck: I think Newbigin was right. On Friday I was making Newbigin’s point by describing the modern world as “a moral vacuum.” And my point at the end of the post was to note that advice-giving has intrinsic appeal in […]

Jake MeadorChurchHenri De Lubac Project

Critical Race Theory Isn't Going to Get You - Commonplaces

In an old standup bit from a few years before his untimely death, Norm Macdonald mocked the way American media sometimes manufactures fear through their coverage of global affairs before memorably pivoting to the one country that really did scare him. […]

Rory GrovesFamilyFeaturedEconomics and Business

Resignations and Reunions: Industrialism's Broken Promises - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

An epochal shift is underway; one that social scientists will dissect for decades. And it doesn’t bode well for corporate America. In what economists are calling ‘The Great Resignation’, one-third of the employed workforce—over 47 million laborers—quit their jobs in […]

David MooreFeatured

Transcendentalists Against Slavery - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Peter Wirzbicki is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. The following interview revolves around his book, Fighting for the Higher Law: Black and White Transcendentalists Against Slavery. Fighting for the Higher Law: Black and White Transcendentalists Against Slavery (America […]