Mary’s Visitation in the Present Tense
For the church in the West, July 2nd has traditionally marked the church’s remembrance of the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. Both were with child under fearful and threatening circumstances. And in Elizabeth’s womb John the Baptist leaped...
Learning in Quarantine
For my students On 9/11, I was a senior in college. It was my birthday, in fact. After sleeping in (as I said, it was my birthday), I came downstairs in my off-campus apartment. I couldn’t find anyone. It was...
Happy Reformation Day, or, How Melanchthon Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jesus
Obviously, everyone should celebrate Reformation Day. At this point, even the Church of Rome has surreptitiously attempted to take on board many of the Reformation’s emphases, albeit in impure form and without the necessary dogmatic changes—er, development[1]—that would allow her...
On “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
John Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a poem about the discovery of new terrains of the imagination made possible by the translation of great works into one’s mother tongue.
The Protestant World of Shakespeare
By E. J. Hutchinson It is a monstrous waste of time to try to convince oneself, rocking anxiously back and forth in one’s pajamas, that William Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic—or a Protestant. It is difficult to imagine a more...
On Marianne Moore’s “Poetry”
Why do we read poetry? Why should we? April is National Poetry Month, so it makes sense to take advantage of it to introduce a new series on poetry at Mere Orthodoxy. Its objective is simple: to read some poems,...
To Read Without Pleasure is Stupid: On the Novels of John Williams
By E. J. Hutchinson As we (or, at least, I) eagerly anticipate reading Charles J. Shields’ recently published The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel, the first biography of John Williams, it seems a propitious time to provide a brief...
“Avoidance Is Not Purity”: An Ode on the Pence Rule
By Eric Hutchinson “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?”–King Solomon
On Family Worship and Failure
The latest post in our series comes from Eric Hutchinson.
On Gratitude and the Fifth Commandment
We are pleased to publish this guest feature from Dr. Eric Hutchinson of Hillsdale College. In my first two posts, we’ve seen what the classical two-kingdoms distinction was for the sixteenth century Reformers, whether “Lutheran” or “Reformed,” and also the...