Yesterday, upon hearing of the death of Jimmy Carter, I posted his July 15, 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech (also known as the “malaise” speech). In his award winning book Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch, […]
Commonplace Book #295
In a strangely prophetic passage that suddenly began to be quoted widely in 2016, [Richard] Rorty even predicted that a hyper-moralized leftist politics indifferent to material conditions would eventually drive “members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers” into the […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Anti-elitist should not mean anti-education. The moral wisdom of Joe Biden’s pardons Should Trump erect an arch for the country’s 250th anniversary? Sitting in empty churches What was your first […]
Jimmy Carter at Messiah College
On February 18, 1986, Jimmy Carter visited Messiah College as the inaugural speaker for the college’s Religion and Society Lecture series. Here is a taste of Randy Frame’s coverage of the lecture at Christianity Today: Last month, Messiah College in […]
Jimmy Carter at The Way of Improvement Leads Home
We’ve spent considerable time covering Jimmy Carter over the years here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog: Albert Mohler “hopes and prays” that Jimmy Carter is saved (December 19, 2024) Happy 100th anniversary Jimmy Carter! (October 1, 2024) […]
Jimmy Carter: “…owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning”
In his famous July 15, 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech (often referred to as the “malaise speech”), Jimmy Carter said: In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many […]
Consider adding CURRENT to your 2025 reading routine. Become a member today!
If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, you might find Current interesting: I am often asked if Current is a “Christian” magazine. It will occasionally become obvious that the positions taken by many of our contributors are informed […]
Commonplace Book #294
As a public philosophy, conservatism largely abandoned its public appeal to religious faith. Christian conservatives still made up the plurality of the conservative electorate, but the public appeal to religious ideals and the effort to ground conservatism in Christian theology […]
Song of the day
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Zablatt on the fate of American democracy
This conversation between New Republic editor Michael Tomasky and the the authors of How Democracies Die is worth your time. Here is a taste: TOMASKY: What’s your long-term prognosis for American democracy? LEVITSKY: Mine is evolving. I’ve been repeating the same prognosis […]
Life on Turkey Mountain
The world of my boyhood is gone. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped longing for it.Â
Commonplace Book #293
While not understood sociologically by most on the right, the intent of these new speech codes and the cultural commitments they represented brought into relief both the cultural and economic alienation of working-class, small-town, and more often than not, religious […]
Merry Christmas! Fear not!
As I note every year, notice that Linus drops the security blanket when he says “fear not.”
Commemorating the Greenwich Tea Burning in 1974
Yesterday I wrote about the 250th anniversary (December 22, 2024) of the Greenwich Tea Burning. You can read my remarks at the event here. I recently came across a short documentary on events in Greenwich surrounding the 200th anniversary of […]
Commonplace Book #292
The most obvious and also the most pervasive mechanisms for protecting the power, privilege, and status of the new meritocrats, though, would be through the development of distinct linguistic innovations–ways of speaking (politically correct speech cods–words like Latinx, whiteness, lgbtqia2s, […]
Today on BYU Radio (SiriusXM channel 143)
I recently chatted with Julie Rose for an episode of her Top of Mind show on BYU radio (Channel 143 on your SiriusXM dial.) Here are the show notes: Can America guarantee free expression of religion in public as an […]
Commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Greenwich Tea Burning
Last night I was in Cumberland County, New Jersey (the Robert Wood Mansion in Millville, to be exact) to help commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Greenwich Tea Burning. I first wrote about the tea burning in The Way of […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Arts and Letters Daily is featuring Current‘s best little magazine articles from 2024 roundup. David French, an evangelical, chats with Jonathan Rauch, an atheist about the religion and democracy Michael […]
Mangione did not commit an act of “political violence.” He committed an act of “anti-political violence”
A lot to chew on here. From the editors of Commonweal: In a guest essay in the New York Times, the bioethicist Travis N. Rieder argued that one must be able to understand the anger that seems to have motivated Thompson’s killer while […]
Is left-wing illiberalism dead?
After living through the Dan Feller-SHEAR controversy and the James Sweet-AHA affair, the latter of which had a lot to do with my resignation as president of the Conference on Faith and History, I hope the illiberal fever that spread […]