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Upper-Class Christianity

Pour la canaille, il faut la mitraille: For the rabble use the grapeshot, the Duke reportedly said of an Irish mob. No, not John Wayne (“The Duke”), but the Duke of Wellington. In America today, we often hear of two mobs, antifa and the deplorables. One mob is praised and encouraged by . . . . Continue Reading »

The Cross and the Machine

We must have been fifteen or sixteen when we discovered the church visitor’s book. It was an old church, maybe medieval, and I would pass it with my school friends on our way to the town center. I’m not sure what possessed us to go in; it might have been my idea. I’ve always loved old . . . . Continue Reading »

On Demons

According to the Talmud, the demons are more numerous than we are. “They stand over us like mounds of earth surrounding a pit.” Rav Huna teaches that “each and every one of us has a thousand demons to his left and ten thousand to his right.” Abba Binyamin tells us that “if the eye had the . . . . Continue Reading »

Origen’s Ladder

No Christian writer of the early centuries elicited greater hostility among critics of the new religion than did Origen of Alexandria. He was born toward the end of the second century, at a time when Greek thinkers began to sense that Christians presented a formidable social and intellectual . . . . Continue Reading »

The Greatest Christian Novel

When Dostoevsky wrote his last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, the ­revolutionary movement that would lead to Bolshevism was well ­underway. The terrorist organization People’s Will—one of the first such organizations in the world—performed daring assassinations and . . . . Continue Reading »

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