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First Buds of the Church

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are over now, but the melodies linger on—not only for those who observe the full twelve days of Christmastide, but also for others for whom the season has been mostly about lots of good food, good cheer, and the feel-good sentimentality of “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” . . . Continue Reading »

Lynne Hybels, Evangelicals, and Israel

There is a small but growing movement among evangelicals against unique friendship for Israel, embodied by the recent “Impact Holy Land” conference hosted by Evangelicals for Social Action in Philadelphia. Among the prominent U.S. and Palestinian church voices who spoke was Lynne Hybels, co-founder with her pastor husband Bill of the Chicago area Willow Creek Church, which itself spawned a widely replicated model for especially non-denominational congregations… . Continue Reading »

Apple Graveyard

Jon Berkeley’s illustration for a January 2010 Economist cover depicts Steve Jobs as a modern Moses with a saintly halo. One of his trademark black turtlenecks peeks through his biblical robe, as Jobs displays an iPad instead of the twin stone tablets of Exodus. Joan Schneider, a publicist, told Harvard Business Review in 2010 that Jobs was like a specter, which “appears when there’s something big going on and then fades back from view. It almost gives you goosebumps when you see him.” … Continue Reading »

The Personhood Pincer

The Nonhuman Rights Project made headlines recently by filing three lawsuits seeking to have chimpanzees declared legal persons entitled to “bodily liberty,” and hence, writs of habeas corpus to end their forced captivity… . Continue Reading »

Seinfeld’s Comedy of Custom

A frenzied George, who has promised to pick up Jerry from the airport, is anxiously checking the arrivals board at JFK. He asks a well-dressed businessman next to him for the time, in response to which the man mutters something about a clock over in the corner. Despite sporting a bold gold watch, which he waves in George’s face while pointing him towards the wall clock, the man refuses to check his wrist and tell George the time. The man eventually leaves angrily as George yells after him, “You know we’re living in a society!” . . . Continue Reading »

Plato Is Not Paul

When I was in graduate school in the eighties, foundationalism was a dirty word. We didn’t think it was possible or even desirable to provide a metaphysical grounding for theological claims, so we spent our time doing method instead. Methods, after all, can be applied to a mode of inquiry without raising the question of truth. We were not confident enough in the truth of our faith to subject it to any single account of what truth is… . Continue Reading »

The Bizarre War on Christmas Debate

This year’s renewal of the usually pedantic “Keep Christ in Christmas” discourse had a few interesting twists. A historically early Chanukah allowed Bill O’Reilly to vilify all those who uttered “Happy Holidays!” between a long string of holiday-less December dates. O’Reilly’s latest point of contention—that Santa is verifiably “white”—added an amusing flavor to what has become an annual ritual; one which is played out primarily via bumper stickers, front lawn decorations, Church bulletin boards, and awkward exchanges with grocery cashiers. This year, I was a bit surprised to discover that the trite debate had invaded my football fandom… . Continue Reading »

Cultural Anorexia: Doubting the Decline of Faith in Fiction

When Dana Gioia’s essay “Can Poetry Matter?” appeared in The Atlantic in 1991, it galvanized a national conversation about the state of American literature and how creative writing was being taught, produced, and consumed by the reading public. Among other points, Gioia argued that poetry had become obscure, self-referential, and detached from common experience through the influence of university writing programs and trendy ideological nostrums. Gioia’s latest essay, “The Catholic Writer Today,” published in the December 2013 issue of First Things, bears a striking resemblance to his Atlantic essay on poetry . . . Continue Reading »

St. Peter Faber: Model for a New Reformation

On Tuesday, Pope Francis canonized Fr. Peter Faber, SJ, one of the great figures of the Catholic Reformation; and by doing so, gave us a key to understanding his own approach to the new evangelization, and a model for spreading the faith in modern times. Peter Faber is little known today, but Francis’ announcement should change that. . . . Continue Reading »

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