Nationalism is not Xenophobia

by R. R. Reno

It is atomized societies that are susceptible to demagogues—not societies that enjoy strong social bonds and organic communal solidarity. Continue Reading »

9 Sep 2016 0

What’s Preaching For?

by Peter J. Leithart

What should a preacher do in his Sunday sermon? Lecture on the Bible? Talk about Jesus? Tell stories? Comment on current events? Exhort Christians to live Christianly? Continue Reading »

9 Sep 2016 0

Heaven in Ohio?

by Jerry L. Walls

A book by Donald Ray Pollock is always an entertaining ride, by turns riveting, hilarious, revolting, and poignant. But reading Pollock can be surreal if you grew up a mile down the road from him in Knockemstiff, Ohio. Continue Reading »

8 Sep 2016 0

Echoes of Phyllis Schlafly

by Charlotte Allen

Schlafly deserves to be remembered for what she actually was. She was a brilliant student. She was a stay-at-home mother who launched a full-time career as a political activist and public speaker from nearly the day her first child was born, doing a neat end-run around the feminists who claimed to have invented the idea that a married woman could have a professional life. She was a formidable debater and a prolific author to the very end. Continue Reading »

7 Sep 2016 0

Catholicism’s Empty Quarter

by George Weigel

Québec, a flourishing Catholic region for centuries, is now Catholicism’s empty quarter in the Western Hemisphere. There is no more religiously arid place between the North Pole and Tierra del Fuego; there may be no more religiously arid place on the planet. And it all happened in the blink of an eye. Continue Reading »

7 Sep 2016 0

The Waters of Death . . . and Life

by Brian Pedraza

As a theologian, I am far more acquainted with the life-giving aspects of water than with its death-dealing ones, but the recent floods in my community of Baton Rouge have compelled me to reflect upon the latter. Continue Reading »

6 Sep 2016 0

Celibacy, Self-Acceptance, And the Extra Inkling

by Eve Tushnet

Descent into Hell is a complex portrait of the relationship between the living and the dead. It's a book of apologetics written in the style of horror. And it's a book about acceptance. Continue Reading »

6 Sep 2016 0

Hans Friedrich Grohs: From Bereavement to Benediction

by Timothy George

He was born four years after Kaiser Wilhelm II ascended the German imperial throne; he died nearly a century later, in the same decade that witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. He was drafted as a soldier in both world wars and experienced firsthand the Nazi reign of terror in between. Few artists have lived so fully, or recorded so faithfully, such a vast sweep of human history. Continue Reading »

5 Sep 2016 0

Speaking from the Peripheries

by R. R. Reno

These days, there are no Christians with currency as intellectuals, which is to say as articulate public voices who interpret present political and cultural trends for a broad, educated audience. Continue Reading »

2 Sep 2016 0

The Dangers of Abandoning the Terminally Ill in Suicide Prevention

by Wesley J. Smith

Excluding the terminally ill from suicide prevention campaigns is discrimination and a form of abandonment. Dying isn’t the same as being dead; it is a stage, albeit a difficult stage, of living. Continue Reading »

2 Sep 2016 0