Contempt for religious faith has been growing in America’s leadership classes for many decades, as scholars such as Christian Smith and Christopher Lasch have shown. But in recent years, government pressure on religious entities has increased. It involves interfering with the conscience rights . . . . Continue Reading »
Christian witness suffers terribly when Christians adopt the left’s theories of history and methods of social change. Continue Reading »
From G. K. Chesterton to Sidney Mead to Robert Bellah and beyond, observers have noted that America is a “nation with the soul of a church.” No one, however, has yet attempted to assess the latest manifestation of this fusion of Christianity and nationalism. Taking America Back for . . . . Continue Reading »
After the Second World War, American intellectuals promoted a grand narrative about the origins and development of Western civilization. The purpose of this narrative was less academic than political. Its goal at home was to catechize a diverse country in an open-ended story that celebrated the . . . . Continue Reading »
Americans increasingly live alone. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the single-person household is now the second-most-common living arrangement in the country, encompassing more than a quarter of Americans. Living alone is among the risk factors for loneliness and premature mortality. . . . . Continue Reading »
Christianity is a religion of losers. To the weak and humble, it offers a stripped and humiliated Lord. . . . . Continue Reading »
Of the Passover festival in Jerusalem, St. Luke concisely reports, “When the festival was ended, Jesus stayed behind but his parents did not know it” (2:43). Of course they didn’t know it. They are parents. What makes anyone think they knew anything at all? The twelve-year-old Jesus decided to . . . . Continue Reading »
Devil’s Dictionary of Dating Continue Reading »
Many of those here only know a verse of any given carol, sometimes less— sometimes an isolated phrase or terse refrain like “Gloria.” Most still confess the apostolic faith, though as naïve in its theology as those days when as children they would sing on Christmas Eve in church. Now . . . . Continue Reading »
I cannot conceive an argument with John’s Jesus,” Jacob Neusner once wrote, “because eternal Israel in John is treated with unconcealed hatred.” The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, was written for a Jewish audience, and the Jesus it portrays is someone with whom Neusner could imagine a . . . . Continue Reading »
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