George Jones has died, and I am afraid a lot of people will think he was a hypocrite. George Jones was no hypocrite. He was the troubadour of the Christ-haunted self. The raw emotion, and even whispers of torture, in his voice can teach American Christianity much about the nature of sin and the longing for repentance… . Continue Reading »
Ephraim Radner is one of those rare theologians whose work can be described as “relentless.” His most recent book, A Brutal Unity, may be his most relentless yet. Radner dismantles every self-congratulatory, self-protective ecclesiology that blinds Christians to what is self-evident to everyone else: The Church is shattered… . Continue Reading »
The final great line in this short series may seem an odd choice because, well, it’s not so great, at least on its own, in terms of either craft or intellectual heft. Some readers may recognize it as the final line in Frank O’Hara’s “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!).” … Continue Reading »
The renowned New York Times reporter John McCandlish Phillips died earlier this month after over sixty years of city watching. He spent twenty-four years keeping an eye on the city for the New York Times, mainly from a perch in the metro bureau… . Continue Reading »
Well, I think we can pack up this Christian thing and take the rest of the day off. That’s if what Charles Freeman writes in A New History of Early Christianity can be believed. Freeman’s book (2009) received only a brief review from First Things… . Continue Reading »
Baseball and movies don’t often play well together. William Bendix as a Marine who dies happy in Guadalcanal Diary because he’s just heard that the Dodgers have won is an icon of 1940s Americana; the same William Bendix as the Bambino in The Babe Ruth Story is a sad business, to be consigned to the (bad) memory bank. … Continue Reading »
Debate scholarships paid for a good part of my college education. Learning to make a coherent argument, buttress it using credible research, and defend it extemporaneously have been invaluable skills over the years. But I’m now wondering if my years of labor in the vineyards of logic and evidence were worthwhile… . Continue Reading »
Earlier this month, during a homily at morning Mass, Pope Francis’ gift for succinct but vivid instruction was on full display: “I don’t know why, but there is a dark joy in gossiping,” he said. “We slip into gossip, making the object of our chatter merchandise to be bartered.” … Continue Reading »
What Does Bowdoin Teach? That’s the title of the 360-page report that my colleague Michael Toscano and I published on April 3. Coincidence gave us a nice round number of pages, but it was indeed our plan to compass Bowdoin College. We set out to create something new: a full 360-degree picture of a liberal arts education … Continue Reading »
We live in an era of unparalleled economic freedom. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, free markets have ruled without much in the way of resistance. As a consequence, for the most part our political problems now involve coming to terms with the global triumph of capitalism… . Continue Reading »
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