The Archive
Matthew LoftusPoliticsFeatured
Freedom Road's call to "pause" the culture war until a moderate justice can be found to replace Anthony Kennedy actually reinforces culture war norms.
Matthew LoftusFamilyEthics
This op-ed from the New York Times about raising a child in a world facing environmental crisis is moving, even if you disagree with its premises: Living ethically means understanding that our actions have consequences, taking responsibility for how those […]
Matthew LoftusFamilyCultureEconomicsEducation
I mentioned my Comment review of Jamil Jivani’s debut book Why Young Men? before, and he’s done a follow-up interview with the associated Convivium: One of the things I explore in the book – which is a pretty defining part of […]
Guest WriterFeatured
Phillip Cary argues that understanding what Augustine meant by "concupiscence" can help us to see why the Spiritual Friendship movement is needed.
Matthew LoftusEconomics
Here’s a fun one from John Lancester at the London Review of Books: The economist who has done more in this field than anyone else, Branko Milanović, has a wonderful graph that illustrates the point about the relative outcomes for […]
Matthew Loftus
I very much enjoyed reading this essay by Alissa Wilkinson about two fictional places called Gilead: the eponymous town in Marilynne Robinson’s book Gilead and the nation run by a pseudo-Christian cult in Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale. The latter, recently […]
Matthew LoftusFamilyHealth & Medicine
This is a tremendous essay on one victim of the opioid crisis, as narrated by her brother: Several years ago, I felt convicted to ask Tricia for forgiveness. She was in jail at the time. By appearances, I was a […]
Matthew LoftusCulture
This The New Atlantis article about Google, its power, and its struggles with regulation is very interesting. But the ending is perhaps the most troubling: Google links to a December 2016 Fortune article that explains, “Querying the search engine for ‘did the Holocaust happen’ […]
Matthew Lee AndersonFeatured
Joseph Minich, the author of Enduring Divine Absence: The Challenge of Modern Atheism, joins Derek and Alastair to talk about what’s distinct regarding contemporary atheism and how Christians should respond to it. If you’re interested in supporting the show financially, […]
Matthew LoftusFamilyCulture
This essay by W. Ralph Eubanks is a good introduction to the challenges of race’s enduring power in America: Race is an absurdity, having long ago been discredited as a valid biological category and, in the Brown decision, a defensible legal one. […]
Brandon D. SmithFeaturedEvangelicalismFormation
“How dare you?!” You might remember this phrase from Mark Driscoll, one of my early heroes in the so-called “New Calvinism” movement. His growl was aimed at men during a rant about how they misuse women sexually and otherwise. It […]
Matthew Loftus
I was delighted to find that one of my all-time favorite short stories (surpassed only by “Watch With Me”, the most profound exploration of community and mental illness I have read), “A Half-Pint of Old Darling” by Wendell Berry, is […]