Current

“Love and duty called you someplace higher Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire”
– Bruce Springsteen

The fascination of conservatives with Hungary underscores the paradox at the heart of the movement

For all of our efforts to reckon with Confederate memorials, a tribute to the Lost Cause remains prominent in our most sacred of places

How easily we forget the strangeness of the body

Recently someone close to me, a devout evangelical Christian, texted to explain why he was not getting the COVID-19 vaccine. “Jesus went around healing lepers and touched them without fear of getting leprosy,” he said. And if this reference to […]

What exactly is Trump’s brand of masculinity?

Katie Luther went from being depicted as a vile prostitute to a happy homemaker. Why does that matter?

How do nations endure amid threatening political differences?

Tomorrow’s historians will no doubt pay special attention to the time in which we now live: a season of cut-throat politics, a pandemic that has changed everything, a collective cry for racial justice on American streets and in public discourse, […]

The source of American political dysfunction is the two-party system. Until we face this, nothing will change.

Amid tedium and strain, remember this: Maturity is worth it.

Is there yet a way to seize its promise?

What does reason require us to believe?

Our president has his head in the sand. Yesterday’s ABC News interview with George Stephanopolous was painful to watch. Instead of taking the opportunity to admit that the American evacuation of Afghanistan was an utter disaster, Biden gave the impression […]

Who needs them? Both progressives and conservatives, it turns out.

Something is always at stake

In the midst of our loneliness, deep is calling to deep

What conservation looks like when nobody’s watching

A “wonderful awful tree” shows us some wonderful awful things about ourselves

If you want to know what college students think about the values that define America, ask them to write a review of Ben Franklin’s Autobiography. Over the last twenty years I have read hundreds of these reviews, written by the […]