The Archive

Every essay.

Susannah Black RobertsPolitics

In Response to Sumpter on Ethnicity and Polity

Toby Sumpter has written a thoughtful response to my Theopolis piece on Wolfe’s Case for Christian Nationalism. I wanted to delay responding till post-Christmas (YES, I KNOW, it is still Christmas till Epiphany, calm down) to avoid generating Discourse, which […]

Jake MeadorFeaturedBlogging

2022 Eliot Awards

I’m going to handle the Eliot Awards a little differently this year. I still am going to link to my favorite magazine writing of the year, but for a few reasons this year’s edition will not be as tightly organized […]

John CarpenterBibleFeatured

Ruth's Prequel to the Christmas Story

Every good story has a good back-story. Ridley Scott made two prequels to his popular Alien franchise. This past year Amazon offered Rings of Power to the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a prequel. The Godfather had The Godfather […]

Joshua HeavinFeaturedFormation

Christmas "Time" is Here

“Quid est enim tempus?” “So what is time?”[1] Pangs of nostalgia for innocence lost, discontent with reality present, and some combination of fear, uncertainty, or despair about the future can combine to make Christmas an especially difficult time. Recently, two […]

Jake Meador

My Work This Year

Almost everything I wrote this year ran here at Mere O, either on the main site or here at Commonplaces. Here’s a link to everything I wrote on the main site. It’s been rather a busy year—I’ve written about 110,000 words on Mere […]

Jake MeadorChurchCommunities

Where Did the College-Aged Evangelicals Go?

I’m trying a new format out with some short-form videos. Here’s our first foray: You can subscribe on YouTube to get alerts when we publish more videos. I’ll also likely cross post them here as well.

Leah Libresco SargeantFeatured

In the Perilous Realm: Tradition and Memory in "The Rings of Power"

At the waning of the year, looking ahead to the blaze of Christmas, I’ve been reexamining Amazon’s adventures in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium. The first season of The Rings of Power was a moral muddle, but the story was strongest when […]

Andrew BeerBibleFeatured

St Paul the Word Sower

“Word sower” deserves reviving. It comes from the Douay-Rheims translation of Acts 17:18: “What is it, that this word sower would say?” The word sower in question is the Apostle Paul, visiting Athens. “Word sower” is a literal rendering of […]

Jake MeadorFeatured

Best of Mere Orthodoxy 2022

We’ll be back with our usual year-end Eliot Awards next week. For now I wanted to spotlight the work we’ve done this year at Mere Orthodoxy. I’ve said it before, but I’m gonna keep saying it: This has been the best […]

Jake MeadorFeatured

A Faithful Second Voice: Announcing Mere O's 2022 End of Year Campaign

To the readers, friends, and supporters of Mere Orthodoxy The Peace of Christ be with You, “Most of the people that show up at our church now want a therapist. I’m not a therapist.” That’s what a pastor said to […]

Jake MeadorChurchCommunities

Stop Blaming COVID

A story from RNS: For the first time since 2018, thousands of college students will gather a few days after Christmas to talk about God’s mission to the world and their place in it. Organizers of Urbana 2022, a missions […]

Jake Meador

Nine Months After Twitter

It’s been nine months now since I stopped regularly monitoring Twitter and more or less automated my account. If you want to know why I did that, read this. If you want to know how it works from the tech […]