Our book review editor Nadya Williams recently described Current as “the little engine that could.” It’s a fitting way to describe our work at this little magazine. We have no full time employees (in fact, we only have a couple […]
Current editor Eric Miller on “The Instructed Imagination”
Listen to Eric Miller‘s address at the recent Front Porch Republic conference. His tour-de-force engages with Wendell Berry, Mark Heard, St. Augustine, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor. Listen: Or watch it here:
“Investments, like saplings, do not yield immediate fruit”: Biden deserves more credit
Binyamin Appelbaum makes the case: President Biden has planted a lot of trees during his first three years in office, pushing through Congress bills that direct the investment of billions of dollars into infrastructure, research and subsidies for domestic manufacturing. […]
The old court evangelicals were mostly silent on the third anniversary of January 6th
Saturday was the third anniversary of the January 6th insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. We continue to deal with the fallout of this dark moment in American history. Next month the Supreme Court may decide if Trump was an insurrectionist […]
Evangelical roundup for January 8, 2024
What is happening in Evangelical land? Russell Moore on evangelicals criticizing evangelicals. Do Anglican evangelicals want to split the Church? Richard Ostling reviews Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. Swiss evangelicals produce a new Bible dictionary for […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: The cult of Michigan football The Chronicle of Higher Education lists the ‘best scholarly books” of 2023. How Zionism mixed with colonialism What is critical theory? History tour guides Why […]
Randall Balmer on the resignation of Claudine Gay at Harvard
Here is the American religious historian‘s column at Valley News: In the late 1980s, while I was teaching at Columbia University, I received an urgent request to attend a meeting at Union Theological Seminary. I don’t recall everyone who was […]
The Supreme Court will take up the Colorado-Trump ballot case
Here is CBS News: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review a politically explosive decision from Colorado’s top court that found former President Donald Trump ineligible for the presidency and would leave him off the state’s primary ballot, stepping into a […]
David Brooks on populism, Trump, and the “zero-sum mind-set”
Interesting observation from his recent New York Times column: Populism thrives on a zero-sum mind-set. The central story that populists tell is: They are out to destroy us. Populist leaders invariably inflame ethnic bigotry to mobilize their own supporters. America’s populist in chief, […]
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: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Arena blog:
David French: “Enough! It’s time to apply the plain language of the Constitution to Trump’s actions and remove him from the ballot”
In his New York Times column today, David French argues that worrying about the “consequences” of keeping Trump off the ballot is not a legal argument. Here is a taste: It’s been just over two weeks since the Colorado Supreme […]
When two early South Carolinians changed their minds about slavery
The South Carolina State Museum recently acquired the personal Bible of enslaver turned abolitionist William Turpin. Historians David Dangerfield (University of South Carolina-Salkehatchie) and Ramon Jackson (South Carolina State Museum) tell us more at Christianity Today: At first glance, William […]
You have to love Jack and Jackie Harbaugh
Coach Jim Harbaugh has taken Michigan football to the national championship game. As many of you already know, the Harbaughs are a football family. Jim’s father Jack Harbaugh is a former college football coach. Jim’s brother John Harbaugh coaches the […]
Taylor University lands a $30 million grant to help revitalize its surrounding neighborhood
Congratulations to Taylor University. It is good to see evangelical colleges serving the common good and loving their neighbors in this way. Here is Kathryn Post at Religion News Service: Taylor University, a leading evangelical institution about an hour northeast […]
And then there were three (at least in terms of GOP debate qualifiers)
Three GOP presidential hopefuls have qualified for the final debate before the Iowa caucuses. They are Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis. Haley and DeSantis will participate in the January 10 debate at Drake University, five days before the […]
When “a decade of ideological transformation” in the academy “comes undone”
After learning that Claudine Gay, the embattled president of Harvard, resigned her post I returned to Len Gutkin‘s December 22, 2023 essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It is titled, “A Decade of Ideological Transformation Comes Undone.” Here is […]
Jill Lepore on “the hold of the dead over the living”
Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, historian Jill Lepore discusses her recent collection of essays, The Deadline, with the magazine’s law editor, Julien Crockett. Here is a taste of the interview: JULIEN CROCKETT: In the introduction to your […]
Frank Bruni offers his “best sentences of 2023”
Here is Bruni at The New York Times: Over recent days, I took on a daunting task — but a delightful one. I reviewed all the passages of prose featured in the For the Love of Sentences section of my Times […]
Back in 1962 The Twilight Zone tackled the crisis of the humanities
It seems like there is an article on the fate of the humanities published every week these days. For example, check out Agnes Callard’s recent essay at The New York Times: “I Teach the Humanities, and I Still Don’t Know […]
On the “poverty of anti-wokeness”
Over at Compact, writer Geoff Shullenberger reviews five books on “wokeness.” They are: Frederik deBoer, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement Richard Hanania, The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics Yascha […]