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Matthew LoftusCultureHistory

wokeness and gnosticism - Doctors Without Boredom

I enjoyed this essay from Anthony Barr on the question of “wokeness” and gnosticism: I want to suggest that “woke” is a redeemable term. If we think of wokeness as loving attentiveness to reality, a commitment to seeing the world […]

Matthew LoftusFamilyCultureHistoryEthics

the paranoid style in American Christianity - Doctors Without Boredom

Christians are always tempted by fear, but genuine challenges require genuine faith.

Matthew LoftusCultureHistoryEthics

can white people be saved? - Doctors Without Boredom

I know many of my followers might be skeptical of the concept of “whiteness” and may bristle at the question, “Can white people be saved?” If that’s you — and even if it’s not — I invite you to read […]

Matthew LoftusFamilyCultureHistoryEthicsCriminal Justice

we need a twenty-first century Comstock - Doctors Without Boredom

Anthony Comstock was vilified and mocked in his time, but our times call for a new Comstock -- and some real restrictions on pornography.

Matthew LoftusCultureHistory

"making human life safe for human beings" - Doctors Without Boredom

This is a fine essay by James Poulos on the failure of “mass enlightenment” to occur via technology and the urge of the institutional elites to add more technology to fix the problem: On those premises, the internet arose. By […]

Matthew LoftusCultureHistoryEthics

colonizing Mars won't be nearly as exciting as we think - Doctors Without Boredom

Micah Meadowcroft is in top form with this essay at The New Atlantis about the letdown that colonizing Mars could be: Consider your place in our interplanetary future. Let us speculate. Suppose that SpaceX or some similar enterprise has succeeded, […]

Matthew LoftusCultureHistoryEducation

where Foucault and the Apostle Paul meet - Doctors Without Boredom

This interview with Alan Jacobs is full of all the things I love to think about! The new book has an “Interlude,” in which you point to “other pilgrims, other paths,” and one of the figures is Dorothy Day, an icon […]

Matthew LoftusCultureHistoryEthics

"gifts of time, money, and sympathy" - Doctors Without Boredom

If you’ve never read this essay on W.H. Auden’s quiet benefience, you’re in for a real treat: W.H. Auden had a secret life that his closest friends knew little or nothing about. Everything about it was generous and honorable. He […]

Matthew LoftusFamilyCultureHistoryCriminal Justice

murder, policing, and justice - Doctors Without Boredom

This well-reported story about TJ Smith, the Baltimore Police Department’s former spokesman who lost his half-brother to violence in the city (and just resigned!), is well worth reading and reflecting on: As for Smith, his failed struggle to lead Dionay […]

Matthew LoftusCultureHistoryEconomicsHealth & Medicine

"Nothing can take form except within limits." - Doctors Without Boredom

Wendell Berry summarizes many of our contemporary problems quite well in this excellent interview with Gracy Olmstead: Those problems could be summed up as the triumph of industrialism and industrial values over the lives of living creatures, and over the […]

Matthew LoftusCultureHistoryEthics

social justice, evangelicalism, and history - Doctors Without Boredom

I tried not to follow the brouhaha over the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel too closely — too much to keep up with when I felt like the original statement was a whole lot of shadowboxing and thus […]

Matthew LoftusCultureHistoryEconomicsEducation

"has anyone asked working-class families if being sucked into a frantically achievement-obsessed rat race is a benefaction they are interested in?" - Doctors Without Boredom

This essay from Helen Andrews is just too enjoyable not to share: Does Currid-Halkett have anything bad to say about the new elite? She has just one complaint, which she repeats again and again whenever she senses that she is sounding too […]