Category: Culture
The Joys of Agonistic Life
I was pleasantly surprised when he came up the stairs with a number of Calvin and Hobbes collections. The used bookstore owner had forgotten to price them; so, to make things easy he said they would be $10 each. The...
Mandalorian Dogma
Zealots do not ordinarily fare well in popular American entertainment. The High Sparrow of Game of Thrones was routinely shown to be cruel, power hungry, and devious. His true believer identity turned out merely to be a front, the pathway...
All Alone, After God
Lament is difficult to do corporately. The publicity of it tends to belie sincerity, or at least, to undercut it. If not precipitated organically from some horrible regional or global event, lament usually feels most true when expressed by one...
Deconstructing with Silas Marner
In the early pages of Silas Marner, a devout young weaver falls asleep at a sick man’s bedside and is accused of having robbed the dying man. His religious community resolved on praying and drawing lots… Silas knelt with his...
The Fears and Hopes We Sing in Lullabies
When you fall asleep, dear little one, a grey wolf will emerge from the wild forest and will grab you straight from your bed. Back to the forest he will drag you and will deposit you under a willow tree....
The PR Style in Christian Media
By now the discourse surrounding Joshua Ryan Butler’s book excerpt published at the Gospel Coalition has in some ways exhausted itself. To be sure, Butler’s intentions for the text—to highlight and commend the beauty of the Christian sex ethic—is fairly...
In Conversation with Os Guinness
This marks a veritable baker’s dozen of Guinness books I’ve read. None of the thirteen have been duds, though I certainly have my favorites. Guinness has authored about thirty-five books along with being the lead drafter for the Williamsburg Charter...
Why Are Young Conservatives Less Depressed?
In a recent essay, Matt Yglesias attempted to explain the curious but well-documented phenomenon of why younger progressive minded teens are consistently more depressed than their conservative counterparts.
The Legacy of Lena Horne
In the spring of 2010, I accepted a job with a student tour company to lead a group of middle schoolers from Anniston, Alabama, around New York City. This group wanted a tour that highlighted Black history and culture, and...
Renewing Public Protestantism: Online Media
(this post could be understood as a companion piece to the recent statement regarding a renewal of public Protestantism) If our traffic data is accurate, most of you reading this right now are reading on your phone. Over the last...