Augustine Amongst the Strong Gods
This is a time of ferment on the American right; that much has become abundantly clear. The post-Reagan consensus built around social conservatism and economic libertarianism is failing, trampled down by an economy that has left middle America behind and...
Nations and Nation-States: A Question for National Conservatives
Early in his book The Fate of Africa Martin Meredith describes the… we’ll call it “unconventional” method by which sub-Saharan Africa was divided in the late 19th century at the Conference of Berlin. Nigeria, for example, contained as many as 250...
The Key Question for the Sanders Campaign
Last night Bernie Sanders, unsurprisingly, won the New Hampshire primary. FiveThirtyEight now gives him a 38% of winning the Democratic nomination—his leading rival, at this point, is a brokered convention, which the site gives a 33% chance of happening. Prior...
The Mystique of the Pro-Life Movement: On Trump and the March for Life
Several years ago Matthew Lee Anderson wrote in these pages that there is no pro-life case for Donald Trump. In many ways the argument has not aged well—Anderson was deeply skeptical that Trump would make good on his promise to...
The Freedom of the Trad
Freddie De Boer has a typically sharp post up at his personal blog analyzing the ‘trad’ trend in some (mostly culturally elite) social circles. Do read the whole thing, but this graf gets at the main critique nicely: Here’s the...
Notes on Christianity Today’s Impeachment Editorial
This is a two-part essay. The first concerns several of the weaker responses to Mark Galli’s recent editorial at Christianity Today calling for President Trump’s impeachment. The latter concerns two of the better critiques and, in particular, one argumentative thread...
Mere Orthodoxy Best of 2019
Here is our annual list of the top pieces we published in 2019 and the general year in writing at Mere O. January Can We Reject Paedobaptism and Still Receive Paedobaptists? Several of our most read pieces this year came...
The 2019 Eliot Awards
Each year in December we publish our Eliot Awards at Mere Orthodoxy for excellence in long-form writing over the past 12 months. You can read our previous editions using the links below: 2018 Eliot Awards 2017 Eliot Awards We will...
Book Review: Kids These Days by Malcolm Harris
For awhile in the Mere O Writers Room we had a quote from one of our members pinned as the channel topic: “It’s hard to transgress liberalism with strippers.” It’s a memorable way of making an important point: Once you...
On The Traditionalists and the Protestants
Ross Douthat had a fascinating interview this past weekend in the New York Times with Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leader in conservative American Catholicism who has been consistently pushed toward the margins of church life under Pope Francis. At the risk...