All posts by Jake Meador

Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. He is a 2010 graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he studied English and History. He lives in Lincoln, NE with his wife Joie, their daughter Davy Joy, and sons Wendell, Austin, and Ambrose. Jake's writing has appeared in Commonweal, Christianity Today, Fare Forward, the University Bookman, Books & Culture, First Things, National Review, Front Porch Republic, and The Run of Play and he has written or contributed to several books, including "In Search of the Common Good," "What Are Christians For?" (both with InterVarsity Press), "A Protestant Christendom?" (with Davenant Press), and "Telling the Stories Right" (with the Front Porch Republic Press).

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...

/ December 27, 2022
vocation-writing

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...

/ December 19, 2022

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...

/ December 19, 2022

Christianity Against the Civilizational State(s)

In his book Return of the Strong Gods, First Things editor Rusty Reno suggests that we are nearing the end of the long 20th century and, with it, the end of the American-centric global order that defined the latter stage...

/ December 12, 2022
j-r-r-tolkien

Tolkien Was Right: Notes on the Respect for Marriage Act and the Post-Boomer Church

Some time after his death, an editor was going through the papers and books in J. R. R. Tolkien’s library when he came across an old copy of C. S. Lewis’s pamphlet “Christian Behavior,” which would later be re-published as...

/ November 30, 2022

The Right Instructions

In his piece on the Thorburn affair in Australia, Simon Kennedy offered an important and, to my knowledge, mostly new contribution to the entire negative world discourse. Though he mentioned the idea of “winsomeness” being the problem, he also proposed...

/ November 9, 2022

To Consume

My friend Shane Morris whipped up rather a remarkable storm recently on Twitter with this: Millennials who are very cavalier about not having children are in for a shock when they enter their 40s & realize life is only half...

/ September 19, 2022

Panic

My friend Rod Dreher recently argued from his blog that we have hit a point in the trans revolution where a moral panic is appropriate, saying:

/ September 1, 2022

Threnody for a Good Man

Mat Feltner died at a hospital in Lincoln this week. Obviously it wasn’t Feltner himself — he lives nowhere outside of the mind of Wendell Berry, the pages of his novels, and the imaginations of the many thousands of us...

/ August 31, 2022

Saturday Night Lights

This piece was originally published in 2015 with Fare Forward. I’m republishing it here ahead of Saturday’s kick off and because it is no longer online elsewhere. Any Nebraskan can describe the scene to you: It’s a fall Saturday in Lincoln,...

/ August 23, 2022