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Novel-Reading and Enlightenment
Allison Coudert (Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America) speaks of an “anthropological revolution”…
Entering Rest, Entering Song
1 Chronicles 23:24-27 is arranged chiastically: A. Levites numbered from 20 years and up. B. David said.…
My Bright Abyss
One paragraph illustrates both the reasons I admire Christian Wiman’s 2013 searingly honest My Bright Abyss, and…
Sincerity or Ritual
The authors of Ritual and its Consequences (104–6) note a contrast between civilizations that are bound by…
From Greatness to Inclusivity
English students at the University of Pennsylvania made news last week by removing a portrait of Shakespeare…
The Divine Inversion
Mary gets more attention than usual this time of year, at least in Protestant churches. But Richard…
Prehistory of “Priestcraft”
“Priestcraft” was one of the charges regularly lodged by skeptics against clergy and theologians in early modern…
Therapeutic Culture
On this episode of the First Things Podcast: Editor Rusty Reno discusses Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of…
The American Religion of Psychology
Keith G. Meador devotes his contribution to The Secular Revolution to an analysis of the therapeutic takeover…
A Daily Plan for Reading Shakespeare
Once again I offer, to anyone interested, a daily reading plan of my own devising that will…
Augustinian Optimism and Modern Science
Peter Harrison points out in his The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (10–11) that…
Annie Glenn and Other Famous Stutterers
The death of pilot, astronaut, and senator John Glenn should move us to think of his wife…
Erotics of Reading
In the middle stanzas of “Erotikos Logos,” watching someone else reading, Scott Cairns (Slow Pilgrim, 278) writes,…
From Polemic to Propaganda
Andrew Pettegree (Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion) observes a shift in rhetorical tone in Protestant-Catholic debates…
The Limits of Brotherhood
Andrew Pettegree (Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion, 201-2) describes the post-Reformation efforts to cultivate a sense…
