Best of Mere Orthodoxy 2020

December 29th, 2020 | 15 min read

As in previous years, here is a compilation of the best writing we’ve published in 2020. God has been kind to us this year as we are now wrapping up what has been our best year for traffic since the highly disruptive algorithmic changes Facebook made in 2018. (2016 and 2017 were very strong years before declines in 2018 and 2019, which is a fairly common story for online media outlets due to the aforementioned changes on Facebook.)

Also, if you’ll forgive a bit of year-end fundraising: We did everything listed below (and more) on an annual budget of a bit more than $8,000. We’re now trying to grow our budget substantially ahead of next year’s launch of the Mere O print edition, which Lord-willing will be arriving in subscriber inboxes in late August/early September of 2021.

If you have benefitted from our publication this year, would you consider a year-end gift? If you give through New Horizons Foundation, your gift is tax-deductible. Or you can join our Patreon. We’ll have more news on how to subscribe to the print magazine early next year. (If you gave at the $100 level or higher on our Kickstarter, you already have a subscription.)

Now, without further delay, the year that was at Mere Orthodoxy:

January

Our Fathers Left Us Evangelicalism

Notes on Christianity Today’s Impeachment Editorial

The Mystique of the Pro-Life Movement: On Trump and the March for Life

February

Death in Venice

Dwyane Wade’s Selective Essentialism

March

Grift Before the Storm: Three Days at CPAC 2020

The Hidden Transubstantiation of Contemporary Worship

How Should Christians Respond to the Coronavirus?

Learning in Quarantine

Reasonable Service: What the PCA’s Latest Controversy Says about Its Understanding of Outreach, Evangelism, and Ethics

“No Wealth But Life”: Moral Reasoning in a Pandemic

April

The God Who Hears Our Laments

Sacraments, Technology, and Streaming Worship in a Pandemic

Our Lives or Our Freedoms: The Fear of Tyranny in a Time of Pandemic

Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism?

May

Lynching Then and Lynching Now: Racial Justice as Christian Imperative

Cats and Sixty Foot Whales: Reflections on Children’s Books

Natural Law from Noah to Milton Friedman: A Review of David Vandrunen, “Politics after Christendom”

The One God of Katherine Sonderegger

Keep Christianity Weird

June

Against Evangelical Minimalism

Why We Need the Doctrine of Eternal Generation

The Cost of Food in America

Guns and the Shaping of Character

July

D. B. Hart’s Inquisitor

Making Sense of Kanye 2020

August

American Evangelicalism isn’t patriarchal or feminized. It’s matrilineal.

Against Textbooks: Why We Need Bigger Stories

In Defense of Premodern Exegesis

To Open or Not to Open? A Humble Plea

The Strange Death of the Populist Dream and the Victory of Woke Integralism

Southern Guilt, Southern Gospel

September

The Church of Individualism

An Appeal from a Christian Liberal Arts University President

The Market Made Me Do It: The Scandal of the Evangelical College

Tethered Still

October

Who’s Your Authority?: Notes on Ideology and Enemies

Radio Theatre and the Problem of Evangelical Art

It’s Not the Economy: Big Tech, Anti-Trust, and the Future of Political Liberalism

November

Politics Is More Than Abortion vs Character

Markets and the Strangulation of the American Family

December

Searching for Other Feminisms: An Interview with Leah Libresco Sargeant

Time is Always Time: Christopher Nolan, T. S. Eliot, and Creatureliness

Dementia and the God Who Remembers

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 The Atlantic, 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).

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Best of Mere Orthodoxy 2020

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

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