• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
    • About Current
    • Masthead
  • Podcasts
  • Support

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.”

John Fea   |  December 4, 2021

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?”

John Fea   |  April 9, 2021

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

John Fea   |  February 26, 2021

“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

John Fea   |  November 17, 2020

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

John Fea   |  July 23, 2020

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

John Fea   |  July 20, 2020

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

John Fea   |  May 22, 2020

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?

John Fea   |  March 13, 2020

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*

John Fea   |  January 3, 2020

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

John Fea   |  December 23, 2019

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

John Fea   |  June 4, 2019

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”

John Fea   |  January 19, 2019

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

John Fea   |  December 19, 2018

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”

John Fea   |  August 27, 2018

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…”

John Fea   |  June 15, 2018

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

John Fea   |  April 25, 2018

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

John Fea   |  April 4, 2018

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.

John Fea   |  January 27, 2018

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?

John Fea   |  January 18, 2018

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...

W.H. Auden on Catholicism and Protestantism

John Fea   |  October 30, 2017

Here is another Protestant Reformation post.  This one is stolen from Alan Jacobs’s blog Snakes and Ladders.  What follows is a quote Jacobs posted today from Auden‘s review of Erik Erickson’s Young Man Luther: The Christian doctrine which Protestantism emphasizes is that...

Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Patron Access

Way of Improvement blog banner

“The gun is our Moloch”

May 24, 2022 By John Fea

On “thoughts and prayers” and “God-given rights”

May 24, 2022 By John Fea

What. Are. We. Doing?

May 24, 2022 By John Fea

It’s going to be an “old school E Street band lengthy tour”

May 24, 2022 By John Fea

A word to Southern Baptist culture warriors: Please shut your mouths and start dealing with the systemic immorality in your own house

May 24, 2022 By John Fea

More Blog Posts

Subscribe via Email



Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

Footer

Contact Forms

General Inquiries
Pitch Us

Search

Subscribe via Email



Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide
Subscribe via Email


Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide