Growing the Merry Band

December 6th, 2023 | 5 min read

In the immortal Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan describes a scene in which his two protagonists, Christian and Faithful, have arrived in the town of Vanity Fair. The town is something of a mashup between the temple scene just before Jesus scourges it in the Gospels and a contemporary place like Time Square. Commerce is the language everyone speaks and everyone understands.

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Jake Meador

Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, National Review, Comment, Books & Culture, and Christianity Today. He is a contributing editor with Plough and a contributing writer at the Dispatch. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children.