Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post and a research professor of Islamic studies at the Fuller Seminary. Here is a taste of his moving piece on the limits of liberal individualism: I can imagine being both more […]
Archives for January 2024
Will Nikki Haley pull off a Gary Hart-style upset in New Hampshire?
The New Hampshire primary–the first of the primary season–is scheduled for January 23, 2004. Sometimes strange things happen in the New Hampshire primary. Remember when: Henry Cabot Lodge beat Barry Goldwater in 1964? Edmund Muskie beat George McGovern in 1972? […]
The Author’s Corner with Jennifer M. Black
Jennifer M. Black is Associate Professor and Program Director of History at Misericordia University. This interview is based on her new book, Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). JF: What led you to […]
REVIEW: Make Your Best Self
It’s harder than we think it is
If you want to view Paradise
In a comparison between the new Willie Wonka film and the old, there is a clear winner.
As Current enters 2024, we’d love your support!
Our book review editor Nadya Williams recently described Current as “the little engine that could.” It’s a fitting way to describe our work at this little magazine. We have no full time employees (in fact, we only have a couple […]
Current editor Eric Miller on “The Instructed Imagination”
Listen to Eric Miller‘s address at the recent Front Porch Republic conference. His tour-de-force engages with Wendell Berry, Mark Heard, St. Augustine, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor. Listen: Or watch it here:
How Lyotard Predicted the Decline of the Humanities
Dreams of emancipation need not die
Reflections on Mike Pence’s new book, Go Home for Dinner
Mike Pence’s new book prompts reflections on motives. How we tell our stories matters, but so does why we tell them.
“Investments, like saplings, do not yield immediate fruit”: Biden deserves more credit
Binyamin Appelbaum makes the case: President Biden has planted a lot of trees during his first three years in office, pushing through Congress bills that direct the investment of billions of dollars into infrastructure, research and subsidies for domestic manufacturing. […]
The old court evangelicals were mostly silent on the third anniversary of January 6th
Saturday was the third anniversary of the January 6th insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. We continue to deal with the fallout of this dark moment in American history. Next month the Supreme Court may decide if Trump was an insurrectionist […]
Evangelical roundup for January 8, 2024
What is happening in Evangelical land? Russell Moore on evangelicals criticizing evangelicals. Do Anglican evangelicals want to split the Church? Richard Ostling reviews Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. Swiss evangelicals produce a new Bible dictionary for […]
Humanities, Minor
Mass literacy ≠mass humanism
Not all college presidents are keepers
When there are so many other scandals, some much worse, I am personally begging you: do not use up your ire on Claudine Gay.
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: The cult of Michigan football The Chronicle of Higher Education lists the ‘best scholarly books” of 2023. How Zionism mixed with colonialism What is critical theory? History tour guides Why […]
Randall Balmer on the resignation of Claudine Gay at Harvard
Here is the American religious historian‘s column at Valley News: In the late 1980s, while I was teaching at Columbia University, I received an urgent request to attend a meeting at Union Theological Seminary. I don’t recall everyone who was […]
The first Blessing of Unicorns of 2024!
The Unicorn roundups are back! In this first roundup of the year, reads on work and theology, Dostoevsky, natural rights of women, and books some writers dream of writing.
The Supreme Court will take up the Colorado-Trump ballot case
Here is CBS News: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review a politically explosive decision from Colorado’s top court that found former President Donald Trump ineligible for the presidency and would leave him off the state’s primary ballot, stepping into a […]
David Brooks on populism, Trump, and the “zero-sum mind-set”
Interesting observation from his recent New York Times column: Populism thrives on a zero-sum mind-set. The central story that populists tell is: They are out to destroy us. Populist leaders invariably inflame ethnic bigotry to mobilize their own supporters. America’s populist in chief, […]
From Farce to Tragedy
One lesson from January 6th: Karl Marx had it backwards