Peter J. Leithart is President of the Theopolis Institute, Birmingham, Alabama, and an adjunct Senior Fellow at New St. Andrews College. He is author, most recently, of Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor).

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Make Love and War: The Knight's Tale

From Leithart

Emily, the lady-love of Chaucer's “Knight's Tale,” the first of the Canterbury Tales, appears in a garden, and the poet describes her as if where were part of the garden. She is Eve in Eden.But this is no Edenic world. The men who see her are locked out of Eden, locked, indeed, in prison. . . . . Continue Reading »

Nations: Grown or Imagined?

From Leithart

Romantic thinkers, perhaps most especially Johann Gottfried Herder, developed an organic conception of nationhood. A nation is an extended family, and so a perfect nation, the most natural state, is “one nation, an extended family with one national character.” The connection that people have . . . . Continue Reading »

Teach Us to Pray

From Web Exclusives

Christians have watched in helpless horror at the release of videos of masked ISIS warriors shooting and beheading Coptic Christians on a lonely stretch of North Africa beach. We can help, by diligent prayer for brothers and sisters who fall victim to Muslim brutes.But how should we pray? Continue Reading »