Vocation is where “your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” –Frederick Buechner Writer and theologian Frederick Buechner passed away last week. Michael Gerson remembers him: When the late Frederick Buechner — novelist, preacher, Christian apologist — was asked...
Alan Jacobs dug-up this gem from W.H. Auden’s 1941 review of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christianity and Power. It was published in The Nation on January 4, 1941: A brother once came to one of the desert fathers saying, “My mind is...
Read Ross Douthat’s recent piece on Christian intellectuals. Now read Alan Jacobs’s critique of it. Here is a taste: It’s rare for me to disagree with Ross Douthat as thoroughly as I disagree with this reflection on Christian intellectuals. I disagree...
“I have a theory: Google has changed how college students interact with their teachers. I estimate that 90% of the questions that students email to ask me are already answered on their syllabus and the webpages linked to from the...
Alan Jacobs has two quotes on his blog Snakes and Ladders: Obama: The point I’ve always made to Ta-Nehisi, the point I sometimes make to Michelle, the point I sometimes make to my own kids — the question is, for...
What’s the difference? Alan Jacobs explains in his recent piece at the blog of The Hedgehog Review: Over the past few years, I have become increasingly interested in, and admiring of, plurality. Plurality—a condition of society in which people who hold...
Baylor University’s Alan Jacobs raises some good points about Andrew Sullivan’s return to blogging (if you can all it that). Here is a taste of his post at Snakes and Ladders: I’m really glad to learn that The Dish is returning —...
Something to think about. Here is Jacobs: It’s a terrible experience first for the writer and then for the reader. Thread Reader is meant to make things less miserable for readers, and to some degree it accomplishes that, but whenever someone sends...
Rush Limbaugh is a conservative radio talk show host. Anthony Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I’ll let Alan Jacobs take things from here: Question: Why does Rush Limbaugh think he knows better than...
Jacobs is taking a break from his popular blog “Snakes and Ladders,” but he decided to do one more post reflecting on the last decade. Here is a taste: I miss Books & Culture, and the First Things that was: for many years...
Here is Baylor University professor and Christian public intellectual Alan Jacobs on Mark Galli’s editorial in Christianity Today calling for the removal of Donald Trump. I want him out. I was happy to see him impeached and I would dance for...
I have not been following this whole David French–Sohrab Ahmari dust-up happening right now conservative circles, but I am guessing it has something to do with Trump. But I did get a kick out of this exchange between an editor...
Baylor University scholar Alan Jacobs reflects on Mike Pence and the journalists who cover him: VP Mike Pence says, “Criticism of Christian education in America must stop.” No it musn’t. Nobody and nothing is above criticism. Demanding that others stop criticizing your...
From his blog Snakes and Ladders: It’s all very simple: First, insist in a very loud voice that you are a vigorous supporter of religious freedom. Second, add the following: “But of course I’m no supporter of bigotry.” Third, describe every religious...
Great stuff here from Jacobs. I did not know the practice of taking the long view–a mental habit historians know well—could be viewed as the antidote to a phenomenon with such a technical name. “Recency bias.” Here is a taste:...
Alan Jacobs on Jeff Sessions‘s use of Romans 13: The lesson to be drawn here is this: the great majority of Christians in America who call themselves evangelical are simply not formed by Christian teaching or the Christian scriptures. They are, rather, formed by the media they...
Check out David Michael’s piece on Baylor humanities professor Alan Jacobs. A taste: Early in his career, Jacobs experienced what might be called an extended crisis of audience, a crisis he recalled when I interviewed him in February. At the...
Jacobs is responding here to Rod Dreher’s post at The American Conservative.  I was struck by this paragraph in Jacobs’s response: I’m not exactly a pollyanna about these matters. I have said over and over again that, thanks to my long career...
The Baylor University evangelical intellectual weighs in at his blog. Get some context here. A taste: Point the first: Jerry Falwell, Jr., though not a pastor and holding no advanced degrees in Bible or theology, graduated from two institutions founded...
Over at First Things, church historian Carl Trueman argues that Christian colleges need to prepare financially for a bleak future in a post-Christian age. He writes: The specific point of conflict is likely to be (once again) Title IX legislation that...
