There is, in short, even in a conflict with a foe with whom we have little in common the possibility and necessity of living in a dimension of meaning in which the urgencies of the struggle are subordinated to a […]
Found: A new Phillis Wheatley poem
Here is a press release from the State University of New York at Albany: A University at Albany professor has discovered the earliest known full-length elegy by famed poet Phillis Wheatley (Peters), widely regarded as the first Black person, enslaved […]
Song of the Day
David Brooks: “Biden’s cheerful confidence is an unappreciated national asset”
Here is a taste of Brooks’s recent New York Times column: Biden’s cheerful confidence is an unappreciated national asset. As American power has come to be underestimated, especially since the election of Donald Trump, a man like Biden, who has […]
The Times (London) on Trump’s former court evangelicals and the 2024 election
I was happy to help The Times with this piece. Click here for larger context. Here is a taste of David Charter’s article: John Fea, a historian at Messiah College who studies evangelical culture and politics, said: “This is a […]
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:
In Florida, Teaching African American History Is Against the Law
The latest battlefield in the GOP’s “anti-woke” crusade
Song of the Day
Commonplace Book #231
The poor are not actually as disinterested and pure as the Marxist apocalypse assumes. They do have fewer interests to defend than the rich. But though their justified resentments against injustice may be a creative force in history, their bitterness […]
Evangelical roundup for January 19, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Franklin Graham: Leave Amy Grant alone! Young evangelicals and 2024. 51% of white American evangelicals believe that “immigrants are invading the United States.” Jim Wallis and Robert Jones on Christian nationalism: Evangelicals and the […]
Commonplace Book #230
Genuine community is established only when the knowledge that we need one another is supplemented by the recognition that “the other,” that other form of life, or that other unique community is the limit beyond which our ambitions must not […]
Trump says evangelicals who have yet to back his 2024 candidacy are disloyal
Some of Trump’s most prominent court evangelicals have yet to back his 2024 presidential candidacy. Trump is not happy about it: More here. Is the contractual relationship over? Trump delivered for conservative evangelicals. They got the Supreme Court. Roe v. […]
What is going on at the University of Southern California?
No more “field work” at USC. A university wracked with scandal after scandal is putting its foot down about using the term “field” to describe social work practicum. Here is Yale’s Christian McNamara at the Front Porch Republic: The University […]
House passes a resolution condemning attacks on anti-abortion facilities and groups
Last week the House of Representatives passed H.Con Res. 3 “expressing the sense of Congress condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches. Here is some of the text: Whereas since the May 2, 2022, leak of the […]
What does artificial intelligence mean for writers?
I have largely ignored all of the debate over ChatGPT (“Generative Pre-training Tranformer), the artificial intelligence program used to generate prose. I have largely ignored it because I am not ready to come to grips with the fact that a […]
Commonplace Book #229
The ironic elements in American history can be overcome, in short, only if American idealism comes to terms with the limits of all human striving, the fragmentariness of all human wisdom, the precariousness of all historic configurations of power, and […]
Evangelical roundup for January 16, 2022
What is happening in Evangelical land? Christianity Today‘s Mike Cosper talks to Bono. A federal judge dismisses a lawsuit brought by Christian college students claiming that religious exemptions were incompatible with LGBTQ rights. Southern Baptists on Dreamers. A Southern Baptist […]
Song of the Day
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: The “new history wars” waged at the recent meeting of the American Historical Association. God and guns in American history James Waddell reviews Simon Garfield, All the Knowledge in the […]
Commonplace Book #228
If I say to an American that the country he lives in is a fine one, “Ay,” he replies, “there is not its equal in the world.” If I applaud the freedom that its inhabitants enjoy, he answers: “Freedom is […]