Peter J. Leithart

In t he March 26 issue of the New Republic , Leon Kass and Eric Cohen analyzed the moral crisis of professional American sports. While focusing on the steroid scandals that have rocked Major League Baseball, Kass and Cohen argue that biotechnology is only a symptom of a deeper and broader . . . . Continue Reading »

When it arrived in the world, Christianity announced the end of sacrifice. But in its growth over the long centuries since then, it may have muted its own founding message, a victim of its own success. Does Galatians have much to say to people who have never worried about ritual contagion or the . . . . Continue Reading »

"Obscure" hardly begins to describe the obscurity of the German-American thinker Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888¯1973). Though never a household name, he was admired during his lifetime by W.H. Auden, who wrote a foreword to one of Rosenstock-Huessy’s books; Lewis Mumford; Harvey . . . . Continue Reading »

What has Pentecost to do with public life? As Paul would say, much in every way.The Bible does not permit us to confine the work of the Spirit to the inner man or to private experience. Through Isaiah (44:3), the Lord promised to pour out water on the land of Israel and his Spirit upon . . . . Continue Reading »

I got a letter, a signed letter, from Senator Barack Obama the other day¯me and several million other Americans. He’s running for president, you see, and he wants my support in helping him change the political landscape. What concerns people, it seems, is not the "magnitude of our . . . . Continue Reading »

From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority , by Roger Lundin, Rowman & Littlefield, 288 pages, $39.95 About midway through From Nature to Experience , Roger Lundin juxtaposes three moments from American history. The first occurs in July 1632, when a crowd of Puritan . . . . Continue Reading »

The German historian of manners Norbert Elias begins his book The Civilizing Process by asking how the “modes of behaviour considered typical of people who are civilized in a Western way” came about. Through a survey of etiquette books and other documents dealing with topics like table . . . . Continue Reading »

In an epilogue to his 1998 book, Awakening the Buddha Within, Lama Surya Das, a popular American Buddhist writer and lecturer, surveyed the current state of “Western Buddhism” and identified “ten emerging trends.” They make for curious reading. Western Buddhists are more “lay-oriented” . . . . Continue Reading »

Coriolanus is far from being the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays, but many of us remember the plot from high school English. Caius Martius, a great Roman warrior, conquers the Volscian city of Corioli, and for this exploit he receives the honorific title “Coriolanus.” Following his . . . . Continue Reading »

A Tale of a Tub , published anonymously in 1704, was the first of Jonathan Swift’s great satires. It tells of three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, who represent, respectively, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Their father has given each of the brothers a coat, with instructions not . . . . Continue Reading »