Joe Carter

Micah makes an excellent point that a renewed emphasis on craft would benefit art. In a smilier vein, Jed Perl argues in The New Republic that museums should provide a renewed emphasis on excellence: A few months ago the National Endowment for the Arts released a rather bleak “Survey of Public . . . . Continue Reading »

A few months ago I listed four things to consider if you wanted to become an author. My post was rather pessimistic but it was downright sunny compared to this passage from a recent article by Jeffrey Tayler : Aspiring writers and journalists eager to quit their day jobs and freelance for a living . . . . Continue Reading »

What would you guess is the most reproduced work of art in the world? A work of Islamic art? The Mona Lisa ? Monet’s Water Lillies (which can be found in the dorm room of every college-aged female in America)? The answer is likely to surprise you—unless you’re British It’s an . . . . Continue Reading »

On September 12, 1960, Senator and Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy went to Houston to deliver a speech on religious toleranc e before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers. The speech was one of the most deleterious and misguided in modern . . . . Continue Reading »

From the abstract of Pinkovskiy and Sala?i?Martin’s working paper ” African Poverty is Falling . . . Much Faster than You Think! ” (PDF): The conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. Using the methodology of Pinkovskiy and Sala?i?Martin (2009), we estimate . . . . Continue Reading »

The most oft broken vow by Christians, says theologian Carl Trueman , isn’t marital vows to remain faithful, ministerial vows to preach the gospel, or baptismal vows to raise children in the fear and nurture of the Lord: No.  The most broken vow is almost certainly that by which church . . . . Continue Reading »

Conservatives probably shouldn’t have a favorite Marxist literary critic, but Terry Eagleton is mine. (True, he’s also the only Marxist literary critic I’ve ever read but I suspect that even if I read others he’d retain the title.) Reading his Literary Theory convinced me that . . . . Continue Reading »

Ron Rosenbaum explains our fascination with tabloids : Tabloid stories are our equivalent of Old Testament admonitory allegories. Which may explain why liberal tabloids are rarely successful in the long term. Because, it seems, successful tabloids believe in sin. Ineradicable, original sin. The . . . . Continue Reading »

In his provocative review-essay, ” Why There Is No Jewish Narnia ”, Michael Weingrad attempts to explain why Jews dominate in so many areas of literature yet produce few works of fantasy: To put it crudely, if Christianity is a fantasy religion, then Judaism is a science fiction . . . . Continue Reading »

The Knights of Columbus and Marist College recently released the results of a survey of “American Millennials,” young adults age 18 to 29. Some of the findings include: • 85% of Catholic Millennials (those 18-29) believe in God. • 66% of Catholic Millennials say abortion is . . . . Continue Reading »