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Archives for December 2024

Listen to the earliest known country music recording

John Fea   |  December 6, 2024

Here is Geoff Edgers at The Washington Post: John Levin had no idea what he’d stumbled upon at first. About 10 years ago, the collector paid about $100 for a box of wax cylinders at an auction in Pennsylvania coal […]

Using Bonhoeffer

John Fea   |  December 6, 2024

Over at First Things, Joel Looper, the author of a book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reviews the movie Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. A taste: Bonhoeffer was a towering figure of twentieth-century theology whose courage, leadership in the Confessing Church, and ultimate […]

Julie Durbin invites students to “A Way of Pilgrimage in the World.”

Nadya Williams   |  December 5, 2024

What students need to learn is more than just information—a what. What they need is a how and with whom—a way of pilgrimage in the world.

Wehner: If “politics goes bad, if it goes really bad, it can have catastrophic human consequences.”

John Fea   |  December 5, 2024

Peter Wehner is a former George W. Bush staffer, a public intellectual, a writer at The Atlantic and The New York Times, a conservative, and a staunch critic of Donald Trump. He recently appeared on Andrew Keen’s podcast to discuss […]

Perry Bacon Jr. wants us to stop blaming progressives for Harris’s loss. Is he right?

John Fea   |  December 5, 2024

Here is the Washington Post columnist: Center-left and establishment Democrats are trying to marginalize the party’s left wing in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss last month, in some ways mirroring what moderates â€” including Bill Clinton — did in the late ’80s […]

Other controversial presidential pardons in American history

John Fea   |  December 5, 2024

According to Joshua Zeitz, Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden was less controversial than these presidential pardons: George Washington pardoned two whiskey rebels. Andrew Johnson pardoned Confederate officers. George H.W. Bush pardoned six men convicted in the Iran […]

To the Christian Writer

Paul Luikart   |  December 5, 2024

Bring the fire

Wreckers

Jon D. Schaff   |  December 5, 2024

The temptation to be a Wrecker is strong. Augustine reminds us a better way.

Eric Metaxas apologizes to the Bonhoeffer family…sort of

John Fea   |  December 4, 2024

Warren Throckmorton is following this story closely. Here is a taste of his latest: Today, Eric Metaxas offered a guarded apology for his slanderous remarks about the relatives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. During an interview with Glenn Beck on November 23, Metaxas said 86 of […]

Prosak

M. Elizabeth Carter   |  December 4, 2024

Get ready for linguistic anarchy

Is “The Media” in the room with us now?

Elizabeth Stice   |  December 4, 2024

Stop saying “media”!

Philosopher-carpenters

John Fea   |  December 4, 2024

My father and brother are carpenters. My other brother is a plumber. I am a college professor. I thus naturally gravitated to Alex Sosler’s Plough article on schools that blend the life of the mind with the life of the […]

Oxford University Press word of the year

John Fea   |  December 3, 2024

Here is a taste from the Oxford University Press website: ‘Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to […]

CURRENT announces its 2024 Pushcart Prize nominees

John Fea   |  December 3, 2024

The editorial staff of Current is pleased to announce its nominees for the 2024 Pushcart Prize. They are: Agnes Howard, “Privilege, Hungarian Style“ Paul Luikart, “Johnson Throws the Knuckleball“ Tim Larsen, “When H.G. Wells Found God“ Jacqueline Doyle, “Shoplifting“ Tim […]

The “Roman republic slipped into tyranny when powerful men had seduced or intimidated its citizens so that they became a stampeding mob, hungry for bread and circuses.”

John Fea   |  December 3, 2024

Jim Sleeper thinks it might be time to take another look at the Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Here is a taste of Sleeper’s recent piece at Commonweal: “When the people give way,” warned John Adams, […]

REVIEW: Letters to a Future Saint

Melanie Springer Mock   |  December 3, 2024

Exhortations to patience and hope

No, accreditation requirements won’t save the humanities

Nadya Williams   |  December 3, 2024

Gutting the humanities in declining institutions never stops the decline–but leaders still try.

Dinesh D’Souza apologizes for “2000 Mules”

John Fea   |  December 2, 2024

In 2022, conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza produced and narrated “2000 Mules.” a conspiracist political film that claimed Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Here is a description of the film: The 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud orchestrated by […]

On Joe Biden’s pardon of Hunter

John Fea   |  December 2, 2024

Jonathan Chait puts it well: It would be tempting, but unfair, to draw a simple equation between Joe Biden’s situational ethics and that of his successor. A willingness to evade the rule of law is the foundation of Donald Trump’s […]

Interview: John McCabe on Dietrich Bonhoeffer–The Last Eight Days

Nadya Williams   |  December 2, 2024

John McCabe’s new book focuses on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s final eight days.

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