March 2025
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
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Letters
In a beautiful essay (“Against Christian Civilization,” January 2025) somewhat reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon “Christendom”, Paul…
The Dirty Science
My formal introduction to the costs of inquiry into sensitive matters began at 6:30 Eastern time on…
Killing Time
On October 29, 1945, Jean-Paul Sartre delivered his lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” a declaration of independence…
Letter to a Young Bishop
Your Excellency, I’m writing only because you asked. I have so far successfully avoided the role of…
Dostoevsky’s Credo
What does it mean to believe something? Is it possible for a person to profess an idea…
Don’t Count On It
Things don’t turn out as we expect. People don’t either. Take friendship as an example, or perhaps…
Biden Is the New Francis
Early in 2016, articles began to appear noting similarities between Pope Francis and Donald Trump. Trump’s promise…
Covenantal Capitalism
One recent afternoon, while visiting Universal Studios, I found myself seriously contemplating socialism. I was standing in…
The Re-Churching of Men
Church life in America has been majority-female for some time. According to Pew Research, women make up…
The Age of De-Globalization
Annex Greenland! Take back the Panama Canal! Canada as the fifty-first state! Speaking at an early January…
Large Language Poetry
In my ideal undergraduate course in literary criticism, the first semester would include a brisk introduction to…
Knausgaard and His Time
Karl Ove Knausgaard treats the stage business of life with gravity, seeking in it, perhaps, some key…
Lurid and Marginal
“I think religion has got everything appallingly wrong,” Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch told an interviewer in 2015, “and…
Necessary Societies
On the Dignity of Society is an anthology of Russell Hittinger’s previously published articles, organized into three…
Mind the Gap
I grew up in a religiously sympathetic, if not always actively practicing, household. During my toddler years, my…
Merkelʼs Country
German readers have a powerful appetite for doorstop political autobiographies, gossip-filled 600- and 700-page apologias by major…
The End of March
Stands of bearded iris, purple in mourningSpring up, early, among their cool green speartips,Pale and pointed, palmlike,…
Letter to a Middle-Aged Poet
Nature and history have made us what we are, fat hapless amateurs stranded some ninety million miles from the nearest…
Birds of the Air
Look— crimson berries for songbirds, writhing worms for red-breasted early birds, swarming mice and astonished doves plucked…
Local Weather
Moving slowly among her solemn friends,she speaks of him in the present tense.Hail flays the roof, its…
