Last May and June, our daughter Therese and two friends, all a year out of college, walked for over six hundred miles on the millennium-old pilgrimage route from southern France across the Pyrenees and the breadth of northern Spain to St. James Compostela. Therese did not take a single picture. When . . . . Continue Reading »
In 1860 the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, endorsed a plan for compensated emancipation. Under this plan the government would purchase slaves for the purpose of setting them free. It seemed, initially, like a brilliant political solution. The country had endured decades of bickering over . . . . Continue Reading »
Generations ago, around the time of Stanley Williams’ 1935 study of the man and his works, intellectual fashion made one of its less attractive lurches towards ignorance when it decided that Washington Irving was no genius, but a rather light-weight and decidedly second-rate writer. This gross . . . . Continue Reading »
Our eldest, then about two years old, one day announced “I want . . . ” but did not finish the sentence. My wife and I waited for her to tell us what she wanted—to be picked up and rocked? a cup of milk? her stuffed bear?—but again she said only “I want” and let her voice trail off. She said it a third time, still sounding equally unsure about what she wanted. And then, with a look of enlightenment on her face, said in a loud, firm voice, “ I want! ” Continue Reading »
Small nations look outward. I was born in Jamaica—remain a Jamaican citizen, for that matter—and we Jamaicans learned early that history was something that mainly happened elsewhere. We knew that Jamaica was, at best, peripheral to the social and political developments that defined the age.This . . . . Continue Reading »
The Bible contains a verse that scholars like to quote. It is from the book of Ecclesiastes: “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is weariness of the flesh” (12:12). In context it serves as a warning against the vain illusion that we can study our way to the Kingdom of God. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Following a great Christian tradition going back to the early apologists themselves, Richard Swinburne, in Was Jesus God? (Oxford University Press, 2008), takes up the noble and praiseworthy enterprise of providing rational arguments for accepting not only the truth that Jesus is truly God but also . . . . Continue Reading »
We are far away from the the protectionist, economically isolated world of FDR and the New Deal. More complex international financial transactions and spillover effects among national economies require a reform of the way policy is conducted, both at the international and national level. The . . . . Continue Reading »
If you’re looking for something new to vary the grinding winter sameness, the March issue of First Things will be of no use. In it you’ll find nothing but what you’ve come to expect: just another Pentecostal outbreak of intellect and eloquence applied to the highest matters of current . . . . Continue Reading »
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