Category: Social Trends
Theologians Were Arguing About the Benedict Option 35 Years Ago
There’s been quite a bit of controversy lately. Perhaps you’ve heard about it. The uproar surrounds a set of proposals regarding the state of American society and the character of the church in its midst. Let me give you some...
Progressives, Harry Potter, and Little Platoons
We’re pleased to publish this guest feature by Bart Gingerich. Why do progressives like Harry Potter? Ever since the election of Donald Trump, the left has been regularly referencing to JK Rowling’s popular books in order to rally the opposition...
Hamilton, Meritocracy, and Patriotism
I held out for as long as I could. My resistance was sustained chiefly by a stubborn contrarianism that resists as many trends as possible, particularly those that can be credibly connected to New York City, Washington, San Francisco, or Los...
Brexit and the Moral Vision of Nationhood
On the morning of June 24, Britain awoke to the devastation of a vast political and social earthquake, as, after an unpleasant and divisive campaign, a majority of our nation voted to leave the European Union (EU). The aftershocks and...
On the Quirky Author Bio
If you’ve spent any amount of time online then you have come across a weird genre of online writing that we’re going to call the Quirky Author Bio. You’ll find them at the end of blog posts all over the...
Monasteries, Protestantism, and the Joy of Indifference
Recently a Catholic friend who has frequently visited a monastery for much of his adult life asked me about how Protestants can create stable communities that will preserve and pass on the Christian faith without monasteries. For many Catholics, he...
Walt Whitman on Neighbors and Strangers
It is good to remember, especially in light of these presidential primaries, that no era is without its share of baffling endorsements. Andrew Carnegie, whose imperious steel mills did more than perhaps anyone to antagonize the neo-transcendentalist folklore of Leaves...
On Prayer Shaming
If you grew up evangelical, or at least in the fundamentalist brand of evangelicalism I grew up in, one of the things you learned about prayer is that it isn’t gossip if you tell a compromising story about another person...
The Strength of the Hills Is Not Ours–Our Modern Identity Crisis
Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when the family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this...
Listener Response to the Mere Fidelity Refugee Episode
Hannah Sillars, a Mere Fidelity listener, wrote in after listening to last week’s Mere Fidelity refugee episode to comment on one particular point about the ongoing refugee crisis. Hannah Sillars is an author and marketing professional who lives in Toronto, ON, with...