Peter J. Leithart

The German historian of manners Norbert Elias begins his book The Civilizing Process by asking how the “modes of behaviour considered typical of people who are civilized in a Western way” came about. Through a survey of etiquette books and other documents dealing with topics like table . . . . Continue Reading »

In an epilogue to his 1998 book, Awakening the Buddha Within, Lama Surya Das, a popular American Buddhist writer and lecturer, surveyed the current state of “Western Buddhism” and identified “ten emerging trends.” They make for curious reading. Western Buddhists are more “lay-oriented” . . . . Continue Reading »

Coriolanus is far from being the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays, but many of us remember the plot from high school English. Caius Martius, a great Roman warrior, conquers the Volscian city of Corioli, and for this exploit he receives the honorific title “Coriolanus.” Following his . . . . Continue Reading »

A Tale of a Tub , published anonymously in 1704, was the first of Jonathan Swift’s great satires. It tells of three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, who represent, respectively, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Their father has given each of the brothers a coat, with instructions not . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s called straining a gnat and swallowing a camel. At its annual meeting in Atlanta in November 2003, the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) voted to permit Clark Pinnock and John Sanders to retain their membership in the society. The two had been charged with denying the ETS statement of . . . . Continue Reading »

That Austen recognized the absence and failure of the Church in combating individualism makes her a public theologian to reckon . . . . Continue Reading »

The anonymous alliterative Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the gems of Western medieval literature. It gives a colorful portrait of court life, of heaped tables fringed with silk, knights and ladies in stately order, “velvet carpets, embroidered rugs, . . . . Continue Reading »

In early July 1759, three friends met at an inn called the Windmill outside the German city of Königsberg, for what might be called an “evangelistic” or “counseling” session. Intellectuals all, the three friends had earlier been cobelligerents in the cause of rationalism and the . . . . Continue Reading »

Liturgy and politics don’t mix. For two things to mix, they have to be separable; liturgy and politics are not. Participation in the Christian liturgy is always a political act. Worship, far from being a retreat from politics, embodies a new kind of politics, a genuinely Christian politics. . . . . Continue Reading »

In an essay written during World War II, C. S. Lewis raised the question of learning during wartime. What, he asked, is the use of pursuing arcane knowledge when the world is collapsing about us? Isn’t this like fiddling while Rome burns? Since I teach at a Christian liberal arts college, this . . . . Continue Reading »