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War on the Culture War

Southerners have a way of burying their actual thoughts under a welter of pleasantries. So it is perhaps worth asking what lies beneath this apparently straightforward morality tale by Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. As Moore presents it, Losing Our . . . . Continue Reading »

How Nebraska Became the Volleyball State

On August 3, more than 92,000 people filled Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska, to view a women’s college volleyball match between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Omaha Mavericks. It was the largest crowd ever assembled for a women’s sporting event—in any sport, at any level, anywhere . . . . Continue Reading »

A Rabbi for Christians

“Judaism is not even a religion.” This striking line appears in Immanuel Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, a book devoted to winnowing down the articles of Christian faith to what is strictly demanded by rational morality. Kant considered himself a sincere friend of . . . . Continue Reading »

Art Needs Faith

Tis the season of “The Artist”: On screen, in print, and on stage, the man of the hour is the creative genius, the absolutist, the martyr, the suffering sinner redeemed only when he gives himself away, lovingly and without reservations, to his art. Just ask Hollywood, which is all aflutter at . . . . Continue Reading »

Idealistic Nihilism

We live in paradoxical times. Over the last two generations, college students, especially at top-ranking universities, have been educated to believe that there is no transcendence. Human beings are a bundle of instincts, they’re told, or software in meat hardware, or some other reductive . . . . Continue Reading »

Consolations of Middle Age

This past June I attended my daughter’s high school graduation. Observing the wrinkles, gray hair, and softening jawlines of the other parents, I concluded that most people weren’t aging well. A few mothers, hoping to escape these indignities, had been victims of aggressive plastic surgeons, but . . . . Continue Reading »

The Remnant

The day I lost my sight,I could no more see you, my love,Still God is in the remnant. The day I can not hearYour lovely voice reveal your thoughts,Yet God is in the remnant. The day I can not moveMy lips to speak my love to you,Still God is in the remnant. The day I lose my memory,And all the times . . . . Continue Reading »

Polutropos

Sing, O Muse, of the man of many reverses,the man with a mind of many winding ways,turned around and turned away from homethere on the open labyrinthine sea,of the man of many dodges, the windspunweathervane of a wanderer, navigatorforever divagating, of the man with a mindingeniously devious, the . . . . Continue Reading »

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