The Archive

Every essay.

Matthew Lee AndersonFormation

Epiphany, Obscurity, and New Year's Resolutions - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Epiphany is a season of commemorating a light that shines in the darkness. Epiphany also gives meaning to those who dwell in darkness.

Matthew Lee AndersonLiterature

Law and Les Miserables, Revisited

Les Miserables is about law. And grace. Readers often put law and grace against each other, but Les Miserables keeps them together.

Matthew Lee Anderson

What's Wrong with the Hobbits? Jackson's Malformed Moral Universe - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

The moral visions of J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson are very different. The Lord of the Rings books have a more stark moral universe.

Matthew Lee AndersonWeekend Reading

The Mere Orthodoxy Year in Review

The highlights of what we wrote in 2012.

Brad LittlejohnPoliticsintellectual empathypolemics

Speaking the Truth in Love: Rules of Engagement for the Polemically-Inclined

Intellectual emapthy is a virtue that we are short on these days. Brad Littlejohn explains what speaking the truth in love means.

Cate MacDonaldFormation

What Christmas Bells Might Mean

Christmas is meant as a remembrance of the most shockingly concrete experience the world ever had that God was not dead, and he had not forgotten us.

Cate MacDonald

Of Women and the Freedom to be Holy - Mere Orthodoxy

Christianity in the 18th and 19th century was good for women, or at least Mary Shelley thought so.

Guest WriterBook Reviews

Ryan McIlhenny’s Kingdoms Apart (Part 2): Redeemed Culture as Christian Witness

Ryan McIlhenny’s Kingdoms Apart (Part 2): Redeemed Culture as Christian Witness

Guest Writer

Ryan Mcllhenny's Kingdoms Apart (Part 1): Stirring the Waters - Mere Orthodoxy

Matthew Tuininga engages Ryan Mcllhenny's Kingdoms Apart.

Matthew Lee Andersonembodiment

When Your Publisher stops Publishing Your Book: Earthen Vessels *Really* Cheap

Earthen Vessels is going out of print. This is your last chance to get a paper copy.

Guest WriterChurch

Women Bishops, N.T. Wright, and Douglas Wilson

Anglicans turned down women bishops. N.T. Wright and Douglas Wilson both responded to the issue, but their response shows a lack of intellectual empathy.

Cate MacDonaldEducationHouston Baptist University

On Teaching Lambs

I love teaching, or so I thought. Turns out, what I have loved is watching people learn. Teaching is another thing altogether, a thing fraught with peril.