The Archive

Every essay.

Samuel JamesFeatured

Book Review: Boomers by Helen Andrews

Helen Andrews. Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. New York: Sentinel, 2021. 238 pp. $27 In autumn of 1912, the British journalist Lytton Strachey declared to Virginia Woolf his opinion of the Victorians: they “seem […]

Matthew Lee AndersonMere Fidelity

‘On Reading Well,’ with Karen Swallow Prior

Matt claims that the Mere Fidelity team won’t read fiction with him (though they counter that this is merely due to lack of a suitable reading companion). Karen Swallow

Jared MichelsonFeaturedChurch

Preaching as Confession

‘Three Vicars Talking’ is not what one expects to hear on BBC radio. The Reverends Richard Coles, Kate Bottley, and Giles Fraser pull back the curtain on the strange world of Anglican ministry, offering their audience a raw, unfiltered look […]

Joshua HeavinPassages

Passages Season 1 Episode 2:

What does it mean to confess that God is “one” but also, somehow, this one God is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”? The opening words of the Nicene creed confess that “we believe in one God.”

Brewer EberlyFeaturedTelevision

Pam Against Posturing

Let me preface this by claiming that beauty forms the moral imagination. Aesthetics shape our ethics, in ways both problematic and promising. How does this relate to Michael Scott? Because few of my coworkers have been transformed by encounters with […]

Ryan McCormickFeatured

Third Places and the Horizons of Male Friendships

“I want you to read this article and tell me what you think,” my wife texted me. She had sent me an article published in Harper’s Bazaar entitled, “Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden.” The article details […]

Brad LittlejohnFeaturedHealth and Medicine

COVID-19, One Year On, Pt. I: Threnody for a Buried Nation

One year ago tonight, I sat in the bar of the Hotel George in downtown Washington, DC, waiting for my friend to arrive. The TV in the corner was tuned to ESPN, but for once there was no game on. […]

Paul Frank SpencerFeatured

When Time Isn't Time: Augustine on Tenet

The greatest living movie maker (Christopher Nolan), director of the greatest movie ever (The Prestige – we will have to discuss it another time), has done it again, though you would not know it if you relied on the popular […]

Matthew Lee AndersonMere Fidelity

‘God of All Things,’ with Andrew Wilson

Mere Fidelity’s own Andrew Wilson (teaching pastor at King’s Church London) has written a stunning book, devotional in nature, but premised on examining things as Things, theologically. So

Taylor CraigFeatured

Book Review: Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley

“It is precisely because the Christian faith is the recognition of a work of God—a work that began in the dawn of time and continues in this era—that its essence is a fruit of the ages, while its form is […]

Joshua HeavinHistory/Church History

'Passages,' Chapter 1

(originally published on "Passages") Who wrote the Nicene Creed? Why did the estimated 300 bishops present at the Council of Nicaea use terms such as “Light of Light.

Joshua HeavinPassages

Passages Season 1, Episode 1

Who wrote the Nicene Creed? Why did the estimated 300 bishops present at the Council of Nicaea use terms such as “Light of Light… consubstantial… proceeding…” and more to describe God? Is the creed even intelligible to us today in..