The Archive

Every essay.

Mike AustinFeaturedCurrent Politics

Guns and the Shaping of Character | Mere Orthodoxy

One of the questions that seldom comes up in gun debates is the ways in which gun ownership and use can shape character for good and for bad.

Joy ClarksonFeaturedEducation

Against Textbooks: Why We Need Bigger Stories | Mere Orthodoxy

Textbooks are often harmful to education because they reduce complex disciplines down to bite-sized facts which can be learned and repeated on a test.

Tessa CarmanFeatured

Jane Austen and Christian Hope: On "Austen Years" by Rachel Cohen

Rachel Cohen. The Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020. 304 pp, $28. “We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been […]

Gracy OlmsteadFeaturedCreation Care

The Cost of Food in America | Mere Orthodoxy

Food in America is not actually cheap. It is, in fact, quite costly—to the health of food workers, the happiness of animals, and the life of the land.

Brad EdwardsFeaturedCultureTechnologyChurch

The Church Amongst the Counter-Institutions - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

I watched The Social Dilemma far later than most people not living under a rock. I expected a serious documentary that forecasted serious consequences with a tone of (even more) serious urgency and fear to drive the point home. If […]

Stephen G. AdubatoFeatured

The Danger of Respectable Christianity - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Since its first season premiered on Netflix in 2016, The Crown has garnered attention from viewers, critics, and from the members of the royal family whose lives it portrays. The series’ fourth season, which was released late last year, has […]

Justin HawkinsFeaturedAnthropology

Dignity Beyond Accomplishment - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

“The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgment. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to quantify, to classify, and to punish. It establishes over others a visibility through […]

Samuel JamesFeaturedBook Reviews

When the Therapeutic Replaces Sin - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Chuck DeGroat. When Narcissicism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020. 200 pp, $24. (originally published in Digital Liturgies) Imagine the following scenario. You are approached by two people in your church, […]

Tessa CarmanFeaturedCultureCreation CareJournalJournal 3

Following Christ in the Machine Age: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

How do we stay human in a technocratic age? How do we live rooted lives —spiritually and otherwise — in an unsettled time? How do we make sense of life in the modern world? English writer Paul Kingsnorth has been […]

Tara ThiekeFeaturedJournalJournal 2

When the Ad Replaced the Icon - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Ellen Wayland-Smith. The Angel in the Marketplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. 288pp, $30. Throughout the 2010s the signs of a new holy month became undeniable. Each June seemed to mark an exponential increase in rainbow flags. Early summer […]

Vika PecherskyFeaturedJournalJournal 2

Imperial Migrations - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

The question I dislike the most is, “Where are you from?” My Eastern-European accent usually gives away the fact that I am not, should I say, local. Now that I live on the East Coast, I am often tempted to […]

Bryan BaiseFeaturedCulture

Teach Them Friendship - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

A significant amount of chatter has occupied social media about masculinity, manhood, and why men, both young and old, seem to shy away from these concepts. And just like the platforms from which these discussions arose, there are as many […]