Redemption Camp

The revelation is said to have occurred on Willoughby Street in Ebute-Metta, a slum on the Lagos mainland. In 1952, Josiah Akindayomi, then an illiterate peasant, fell into a trance while praying with friends. When he emerged, he saw he had scrawled something on a blackboard, short lines of text he . . . . Continue Reading »

What Manner of Adult?

One of the few things liberal and conservative educators agree on these days is that college students are too fragile. Many of them are intellectually and emotionally unable to engage ideas uncongenial to them. Many are incapable of accepting honest assessments of their academic performance. They . . . . Continue Reading »

War Against Fathers

The New Politics of Sex: The Sexual Revolution, Civil Liberties, and the Growth of Governmental Powerby stephen baskervilleangelico, 408 pages, $30 Divorce cases in the U.S. now account for 35 to 50 percent of civil litigation, at a cost to the public purse of billions of dollars per year. Out of . . . . Continue Reading »

Bondage and Freedom

The 500th anniversary of the Reformation sent me back to Luther and his debate with Erasmus. The two were among the most widely read authors in sixteenth-century Europe. In the early 1520s, they exchanged dueling treatises on free will. They raised recondite theological questions of biblical . . . . Continue Reading »

Neuhaus Was Right

As the Berlin Wall fell, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the end of history—“the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Richard John Neuhaus wasn’t so sure. In a 1996 symposium on judicial overreach, he questioned the . . . . Continue Reading »

The Zealous Faith of Secularism

Begin with a sobering fact. During the past ten years, some of the sharpest observers of our time have come to believe that the tectonic plates underlying Western civilization have shifted momentously. One result is a deep, creative struggle among the thoughtful for new imagery and fresh analogies . . . . Continue Reading »

Padre Mestizo

On September 11, 2017, between midnight and dawn, a statue of Fr. Junípero Serra—whom generations of California schoolchildren called “the Father of California”—was beheaded at Mission Santa Barbara. Reading about the defiled statue in the paper, I immediately question my father, my . . . . Continue Reading »

Protestants and Contraception

Protestants are not known for their familiarity with papal encyclicals. We pride ourselves in doing things our own way, often in order to distance ourselves as far from Rome as possible. There is one teaching in particular that most Protestants readily recognize as Catholic, and it is usually . . . . Continue Reading »

Be Literal

A Book of American Martyrsby joyce carol oatesecco, 752 pages, $29.99 A Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates’s novel about the shooting of an abortionist by a Christian “Soldier of God,” is perfectly unempathetic. Lately we’ve heard a lot about how important it is to feel empathy . . . . Continue Reading »