Longtime listeners of the The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast will remember our interview with Bob Crawford, the bass player of the folk-rock band the Avett Brothers. Listen here. I have long appreciated Bob’s support for our work at […]
Archives for April 2023
What is popular this week at Current?
Here are the most popular features of the week at Current: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Arena blog:
What I am reading: lessons on marriage from Janice Holt Giles
Marriage roles are hotly contested in our society. Wrapped up as they are not just in the deeply important work of the family but also in debates over conceptions of biological sex itself, these roles are difficult to define. Efforts […]
Happy Anniversary?
Renewal begins with the parish—not the pope
Is it bad for you and others to respond to emails asap?
During the pandemic, email quantity has escalated in many workplaces. For some/many of us, this new and higher volume of digital correspondence is now the new(ish) normal). In today’s NYT Opinion piece, psychologist Adam Grant argues that some of us […]
The Author’s Corner with Travis A. Rountree
Travis A. Rountree is Assistant Professor of English at Western Carolina University. This interview is based on his new book, Hillsville Remembered: Public Memory, Historical Silence, and Appalachia’s Most Notorious Shoot-Out (University Press of Kentucky, 2023). JF: What led you […]
Evangelical roundup for April 13, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Iowa evangelicals love Donald Trump. Nikki Haley is the commencement speaker at Pat Robertson’s Regent University in Virginia Beach. The diversity of evangelical support for Israel. Shane’s list of common sense gun laws: French […]
The New York Times’ “Come to Jesus” Moment
Has the “paper of record” become the new hub of Christian social criticism?
Mass shootings
It’s difficult to write about the recent shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. One fears saying something stupid or insensitive. Further, given the emotional heat regarding the tragedy (see the Tennessee Legislature) it seems there is a ready cadre of […]
Commonplace Book #256
Though the evidence of the dead end of Father Greed is found everywhere in history books and is all around us now, greed with us at present is not a sin. With us, it cannot rise, like abortion and racial […]
“Just a little bit of flattery”: Christianity Today and J. Edgar Hoover
Christianity Today news editor and historian Daniel Silliman reflects on his current employer’s relationship to FBI Director (1935-1972) J. Edgar Hoover. Silliman’s thoughts were triggered by his reading of Lerone Martin’s The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover. Here is a […]
“Christianity in overalls”
Over at Jacobin, Stephen Barton introduces many of us to J. Stitt Wilson, the socialist major of Berkeley, California from 1911 to 1913. Here is a taste: On Easter Sunday, 1911, San Francisco’s Central Theater was packed with more than […]
Virginia will commemorate “Green Book” locations
The Negro Motorist Green Book (or simply Green Book) was an annual guidebook that included businesses–hotels, restaurants, etc.– friendly to African American travelers. Last month Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin signed into law a bill that designates surviving Green Book locations […]
The Author’s Corner with Sharon Ann Murphy
Sharon Ann Murphy is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History and Classics at Providence College. This interview is based on her new book, Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States (University of Chicago […]
On turning yet another year older
For two of my college years at the University of Virginia, I got to live in the French House, a beautiful historic mansion on the edge of campus. There were clear rules involved: all conversations in the house had to […]
REVIEW: The Free Speech Conundrum
If neutrality regarding speech is impossible, how do we settle our disputes about it?
Businessman Kenneth C. Griffin gives $300 million to the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The rich get richer. Here is The Harvard Gazette: Harvard University announced today that business leader and philanthropist Kenneth C. Griffin ’89 has made a gift of $300 million to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to support the […]
Commonplace Book #255
Consider Thomas L. Friedman’s announcement (New York Times, January 9, 2019): “I believe there is only one thing as big as Mother Nature, and that is Father Greed–a.k.a. the market. I am a green capitalist.” As a green capitalist, Mr. […]
Ukrainian mothers who traveled into Russian-occupied Ukraine to get their children back
The war in Ukraine has largely faded from the news of late, but this does not mean that the suffering there is any less profound. An emotional piece in the New York Times this weekend highlights the impact of war […]
Fox News anchor Brett Baier: “I look at my job as being sort of like an ice hockey goalie trying to stop bad pucks from getting through…”
I am not sure if Brett Baier is Jim Craig of the 1980 Olympic team or Elvis Merzlikins of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Whatever the case, he has faced a lot of “bad pucks” over the years. Here is David […]