After the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education ordering the desegregation of public schools in Topeka, Kansas, lawsuits promptly were brought to dismantle legally sanctioned segregation in other states. One of these was Arkansas. There, Governor Orville . . . . Continue Reading »
monastic missions: wall paintings in the monastery of st. antony at the red seaedited by elizabeth s. bolmanyale university press. 307 pp. $65 St. Antony is usually regarded as the father of Christian monasticism. He was deeply involved with the disputes of Arius and a staunch defender of Athanasius . . . . Continue Reading »
The name of Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) was so well known in nineteenth-century America that when residents of Hartford, Connecticut, visited other cities they were often greeted with, “Do you know Horace Bushnell?” Bushnell, pastor of Hartford’s Congregational North Church from 1833 to 1859, . . . . Continue Reading »
Leon Kass has described himself as a strange man who writes strange and untimely books. Given the intellectual condition of the contemporary academy, this is by no means a bad thing. Trained professionally as a physician and biochemist, Kass has, without formal academic training, taught courses in . . . . Continue Reading »
The 1920s and ’30s were a time of intense intellectual ferment in Germany. Radical questioning was the order of the day in every domain of thought, including religion. Take, for example, the uncompromising debate that took place between the young Leo Strauss and Julius Guttmann, a student of the . . . . Continue Reading »
The anti-abortion movement has been struggling since 1992, when the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade and the country elected a President who supported abortion rights. These combined events broke the heart of a movement that had seemed on the verge of eliminating the unrestricted . . . . Continue Reading »
Who brought down the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston? A survey of print and broadcast media around the country produces no dissent from the answer: Bernard Law was brought down by the agitation of lay people and priests who are regularly described as “reformers,” and by determined investigative . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m sure we are all pleased that the Linkers have been blessed with a son, as Damon Linker reports in “Fatherhood, 2002” (November 2002). Moreover, it is good to know that mother and child (and, we must now add, father) have passed successfully—indeed, triumphantly—through the . . . . Continue Reading »
We do not customarily look to opera for moral edification. Examples abound: twins, separated at birth, reunite and conceive a superman child before one is killed by his father (Wagner’s Die Walküre ); a polygamous American seduces and later abandons an Asian girl and their child . . . . Continue Reading »
When William Wilberforce rose in Parliament on the evening of May 11, 1789 to give his maiden speech against the slave trade, he argued that the trade was both inhumane and unnecessary for the British economy. His words were part of a conscious strategy that began in 1787, when the British Abolition . . . . Continue Reading »
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