Every now and then I write a post to ask you to become a Current member to help sustain this little online magazine. Current‘s unique voice would not exist without your support. Please consider becoming a member today so that […]
Albert Mohler “hopes and prays” that Jimmy Carter is saved
I don’t have two hours and forty minutes to listen to Sean DeMars’s interview with Albert Mohler, so I am glad that Mark Wingfield did. Here are a few snippets of his piece at Baptist News Global: Toward the end […]
Did any evangelicals “hold their nose” and vote for Donald Trump in 2024?
At Baptist News Global, Robert Jones discusses the recent post-election findings from the Public Religion Research Institute. He writes: There is no evidence to support what I have identified as two “zombie myths” (because they just won’t die despite lack […]
Our favorite essays of 2024 from other little magazines
More of our favorite things!
LONG FORM: The Responsibility of Christian Intellectuals in the Age of Trump
How should we think, write, and speak?
The Washington D.C. Archdiocese to Sean Feucht: Please get off our lawn
Here is MAGA worship leader Sean Feucht: Here Ruth Graham at The New York Times “Trump Transition” blog: Sean Feucht, a prominent conservative Christian activist with ties to President-elect Donald J. Trump, announced this week that he would headline a […]
Pope Francis tells jokes
And in The New York Times no less! Here is a taste of Pope Francis’s “There Is Faith in Humor“: Jokes about and told by Jesuits are in a class of their own, comparable maybe only to those about the carabinieri […]
Just how “Mormon” is Mitt Romney’s political theology?
Mitt Romney left the U.S. Senate this week. Over at The Dispatch, Samuel Benson reflects on his “farewell address.” A taste: …There are some today who would tear at our unity, who would replace love with hate, who deride our […]
The Gospel of Luke, not Karl Marx
Shane Claiborne:
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: There are no social media utopias A war of Catholic magazines A conservative center at the UNC-Chapel Hill Studs Terkel’s Working at 50 The problem with blue-collar populism Paul Kingnorth […]
Commonplace Book #291
“…from the Great Recession in 2008 to 2018, both gross domestic product and household income increased in Democratic districts and declined in Republican districts. Likewise, in educational attainment, the number of adults with a college degree grew significantly in Democratic […]
Paul Kingsnorth: “Against Christian Civilization”
In October 2024, writer Paul Kingsnorth delivered the 37th Erasmus Lecture to the Christian community associated with First Things magazine. After I read it, I could not help but wonder what the audience in attendance at this lecture thought about […]
On the politics of the average American
Tyler Austin Harper brings the evidence: The politics of the average American are not well represented by either party right now. On economic issues, large majorities of the electorate support progressive positions: They say that making sure everyone has health-care coverage is […]
Commonplace Book #290
We come to see that there is within every man, the image of God, and no matter how much it is scarred, it is still there. And so, when we come to recognize that the evil act of our enemy […]
Luigi Mangione, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Hobsbawm, and “social banditry”
Bruce Springsteen has a song on his Wrecking Ball album called “Jack of All Trades.” The entire album is a critique of big capitalism in the wake of the 2008 recession. The song has a lyric that came to my […]
MacArthur Foundation Announces $20 Million in Support of Local News
More good news for local journalism. Here is the press release: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today announced $20 million to support newsrooms and provide journalism infrastructure as part of its commitment to revitalize local news. MacArthur launched the Local […]
The intellectual life of Luigi Mangione
According to Brank Marcetic at Jacobin, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson was “far from an ideologue.” Here is a taste of his piece: If you wanted, you could cherry-pick your way through the digital trail Mangione […]
The Joe Rogan of American Catholicism
Check out Molly Worthen’s fascinating piece on Robert Barron, the bishop of Winona-Rochester (MN) and founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. Here is a taste: Now is an unlikely time for a Catholic ministry to grow. Fewer and fewer […]
Commonplace Book #289
What could break the endless cycle of injustice? The prophetic myth of Judaism and Christianity, both of which required “the spiritual discipline against resentment.” Such a discipline discriminated “between the evils of a social system…and the individuals who are involved […]
Where are all these nationalist evangelicals who “seek to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free market economics?”
Some of you may recall historian Matthew Sutton’s claim that “post-World War II evangelicalism is best defined as a white, patriarchal, nationalist religious movement made up of Christians who seek power to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free market economics.” We […]