Peter J. Leithart

I’ve made adjustments to bring this piece up to date, but I wrote most of it in January 2009 when President Obama was inaugurated for his first term. Friends told me at the time that I was overwrought, that Obama’s election was a fluke. Tuesday, I think, proved them wrong. Something died this week. It probably died four years ago, but Tuesday it was pronounced dead… . Continue Reading »

Last week, gunmen from the Islamic sect Boko Haram attacked the Church of the Brethren in the village of Atagara in northern Nigeria, killing two and torching the church on their way out. Over several days, the terrorist group killed dozens in the same region and forced hundreds to flee. In the northeastern city of Potiskum, thirty-one people were murdered over a three-day period recently, and a church was burned… . Continue Reading »

Evangelicals gladly assent to Jean Daniélou’s claim that the mission of the church “continues the mighty works, the mirabilia Dei, recorded in the two Testaments” and agree that “God still accomplishes his mighty works, in the conversion and sanctification of souls.” Few Evangelicals, though, would make sense of his further claim that “The working of God’s power among us is through the sacraments.” … Continue Reading »

Some centuries ago, someone (a politician, I suppose) disconnected theology from the rest of the academy, hustled it down a dark hallway, and locked it in a basement office with stern warnings to “Stay put” and “Behave.” Theologians, by and large a meek race, complied. They have spent their time holding long seminars and filling shelves of books with monographs on details of Scripture, on historical studies, on the arcana of systematic theology”many of them of great erudition and enduring value for the church… . Continue Reading »

We live in a pornographic age that falls dismally short of creating what Pope Paul VI called a “climate favorable to education in chastity.” But we misconstrue the problem if we worry only about the sheer number of unclothed bodies, the sheer expanse of exposed flesh, that appears on TV, in film, or on the web. The fundamental problem is not a lack of clothing but the widespread failure of mass and high culture to represent the truth about the human body… . Continue Reading »

In The Gift, first published in the 1920s, the French ethnologist Marcel Mauss describes several Pacific Rim “gift economies.” Mauss argues that exchanges among these tribes are radically different from exchanges in money economies. In capitalism, trade is a utilitarian pursuit of self-interest; you don’t need to befriend the baker or butcher so long as he provides useful goods and services… . Continue Reading »

Once upon a time, preachers could grab attention because everyone believed they had something to say that everyone needed to hear. With sin and Satan abroad in the land, Puritan preachers and their congregants were convinced that only their specialized knowledge of the Bible and theology, or of the supernatural world, or of the twists and turns of the sinful heart could lead from death to life. Not many years ago, preachers spoke with authority as the best-educated men in the parish… . Continue Reading »

Like a billion other viewers, I caught some of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Games earlier this week. It was a marvel of planning and choreography. The visual highlight in a breathtaking spectacle was the moment when the two-hundred and four burning petals, lit from seven torches, rose to form a single, monumental cauldron at the center of the Olympic Stadium… . Continue Reading »

Christian worship is inherently political. As Bernd Wannenwetsch points out, this isn’t because worship is a tool for ginning up enthusiasm for a candidate or for stirring the fires of patriotism. On the contrary, “It is just because Christian worship is not a means to an end that it is political.” Worship is political because it “opens out into” the kingdom of God, and because in her worship the Church “anticipates the city of God” with its eternal liturgical assembly… . Continue Reading »

America’s health care system is insane. As David Goldhill observed in a 2009 Atlantic piece, asking an insurance company to pay for a routine visit to the doctor is like filing an auto insurance claim every time you fill up. Because they don’t have to worry about out-of-pocket expenses, patients try everything, no matter how much it costs or how remote the chances that it will help. Insurance costs don’t rise because insurance companies are especially greedy. Costs keep rising because of dynamics inherent in the system… . Continue Reading »