The Archive

Every essay.

Jake MeadorFeaturedCurrent Politics

The Culture War Comes Home

The culture war arrived in my hometown a few weeks ago with the approval of a new fairness ordinance by the Lincoln City Council. The ordinance is designed to provide protections against harassment and discrimination for LGBT+ people in Lincoln. […]

Paul Frank SpencerFeatured

Love in A Pillar of Salt

Noah Gundersen, for as long as I’ve been aware of him, has been my quintessential example of an artist whose art clearly depicts his departure from faith. He shares honestly about his doubts much more than his beliefs. He is […]

Jake MeadorEconomics

Christian Publications in a Post-Christian Context

We know there are two models that work for financing media jobs right now. The first model is to work for a print legacy institution that was well-positioned to weather the transition to digital and is now flush with subscription […]

Randall FowlerPoliticsFeatured

The Axis of Evil Turns 20: Reflections on the State of the Union

Given the state of the world, I expect that the president’s speech tonight will garner more viewers than it normally would. To the average viewer, the president’s State of the Union address can come across as a drawn out pep […]

Matthew LoftusCultureHistory

patriotism good, nationalism bad?

Nationalism may not be the boogeyman you want it to be, but it might be the petard which by nationalists are hoisting themselves.

David MooreFeaturedEvangelicalism

Thinking Christian: Essays on Testimony, Accountability, and the Christian Mind

James Spencer crossed my radar in a rather unlikely way. My friend, Allison, told me about the Moody Center which I proceeded to check out. Spencer, a former academic dean at Moody Bible Institute, is now the president of the […]

Jake MeadorChurchBooks

Dawson on the Other-Worldliness of Christianity

Dawson: But though the religion of that age was intensely other-worldly, its other-worldliness had a very different character from much that we have come to associate with the word in its modern pietist form. It was collective rather than individualist, […]

Ryan McCormickFeaturedHistory

Christian Historiography and American History

Over the past year, parents and conservative activists have clashed with teachers and school officials over how the history of race in America is taught in the classroom. The rhetoric on both sides has been heated, with debate centering specifically […]

Jake MeadorChurchBooks

Dawson on How the West Got Saved

Dawson: Unlike Christian Byzantium, Christian Rome represents only a brief interlude between paganism and barbarism. There were only eighteen years between Theodosius’s closing of the temples and the first sack of the Eternal City by the barbarians. The great age […]

Joshua HrenFeatured

Contemplative Realism: The Germinal Yearnings of a New Literary Movement

“Realists do not fear the results of their study.” —Dostoevsky Maybe I was a twenty-something romantic haunting the East Side of Milwaukee. A draught stole past the cream city bricks, trespassed the strips of sackcloth patching the window. Once a […]

Jake MeadorBooks

What Are Christians For?: An Invitation

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

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 […]