Archives for December 2024

I no longer control my own X feed

  |  

Someone hacked my X feed over the weekend. Nothing on the feed since December 7, 2024 is my work. (My last post was a repost about St. John’s basketball). My X biography was altered (it has now been wiped clean) […]

Commonplace Book #288

  |  

John Adams had held out the hope that America could be a “Republic of Virtue,” a nation in which the baser tendencies of humankind could be tempered by the higher ideals of virtue, benevolence, and duty. But after the revolution, […]

Farewell for now

  |  

The 2025 circus will be fascinating to watch, and this is my note to Current readers that Iā€™ll now be at a different vantage point.

Barack Obama on megachurches

  |  

If you read some commentators and scholars, evangelical megachurches are places where Christian nationalism, patriarchy, white supremacy and a bunch of other ominous things happen. They might even try to evangelize you! It seems like Barack Obama is trying to […]

How to read one hundred pages every day

  |  

Matthew Walter, the editor of The Lamp, calls it the “One Hundred Pages Strategy.” Here is how he does it: Almost nothing I have written in the last few years has given rise to more correspondence than a throwaway column […]

What was Eric Metaxas’s role in the new Bonhoeffer film?

  |  

There has been a lot of confusion on the relationship between MAGA evangelical Eric Metaxas and the film Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin. Warren Throckmorton scored an interview with the film’s director, Todd Kormanicki. Here is a taste of Throckmorton’s Substack […]

Finding hope in western North Carolina

  |  

David LaMotte is a songwriter, speaker, author, and peace activist from western North Carolina. In his recent piece at Duke Divinity School’s Faith & Leadership blog, he explains what it means to “wait with deep hope” in the wake of […]

Biden creates the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument

  |  

Here is Sarah Klotz at the Pennsylvania Capital-Star: President Joe Biden created theĀ Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National MonumentĀ in Pennsylvania on Monday to underscore the oppression Indigenous people faced there and across the broaderĀ Native American boarding school system, as well […]

Commonplace Book #287

  |  

Fear and loathing, then are effective sources of solidarity and can provide a framework through which political discourse and action can take place. Yet negative solidarity is always limited in its effectiveness. Absent any other shared beliefs and commitments, not […]

Jacoby: Marxism got lost in the academy

  |  

According to historian and public intellectual Russell Jacoby, Marxist scholarship is alive and well, but it has failed to reach ordinary people. Here is a taste of his Jacobin piece, “American Marxism Got Lost on Campus“: But specialization also entailed […]

If the 2024 election is any indication, America is less polarized

  |  

Here is Harvard University law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos at The Washington Post: Hereā€™s a shocker: One of the unnoticed themes of the recent election wasĀ depolarization. The electoral chasms between groups of voters shrank compared with four years earlier. This was […]

Sunday night odds and ends

  |  

A few things online that caught my attention this week: Founding friendship Is “The American Century” over? The great dechurching “In Alexander Hamilton’s apt words, the Senate can prevent the appointment of ‘unfit characters’ who would be no more than […]