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
“The danger of being a professional exposer of the bogus is that, encountering it so often, one may come in time to cease to believe in the reality it counterfeits.”
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...
Christian intellectual life: “strategy” or “vocation?”
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...
Quote of Day
“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...
Barack Obama and Ibram X. Kendi on American politics
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...
Plurality over pluralism
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...
Alan Jacobs on the return of Andrew Sullivan’s blog The Dish
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 —...
Alan Jacobs Does Not Like Twitter Threads
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...
Why Does Rush Limbaugh Think He Knows Better Than Anthony Fauci?
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...
Alan Jacobs on *Books and Culture* and *First Things*
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...
Civility and the Search for Common Ground Are Important, But Sometimes We Need a Prophetic Witness
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...
Conservatives Are at Each Other’s Throats. Alan Jacobs Weighs-In
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...
Alan Jacobs: “Demanding that others stop criticizing your preferred group is a cheap identity-politics move”
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...
Alan Jacobs on Religious Freedom
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...
Alan Jacobs on “Recency Bias”
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: Most Evangelicals “are simply not *formed* by Christian teaching…”
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...
Alan Jacobs: Christian Intellectual
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...
Alan Jacobs on White Christian Males in the Academy
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...
Alan Jacobs on Jerry Falwell Jr.
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...
What Looms on the Horizon for Christian Colleges?
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...