Essay

1060 RESULTS

Jun 1, 2006 Reading the Bible

Topics:

Neocalvinism . . . Abraham Kuyper? Maybe.

In the thought tradition given impetus by the late 19th and early 20th century’s preacher-politician of the Netherlands, Connecticut Congregationalist Clifford Blake Anderson finds a genuinely public and prophetic theology . . . with certain reservations. Chief among these is the question of how any tradition—including neocalvinism—may be prophetically self-critical.

Mar 1, 2006 City & country

Topics:

The Case for Paleo-Urbanism

Is New Urbanism a pale facsimile of North America’s paleo-urban communities in Toronto, New York City, Montreal, or elsewhere? Is New Urbanism merely “gentrification” by another name? Or, are New Urbanists recovering something lost when high-density, urban communities built on the grid with a tuck and milk stop on the corner were abandoned for gently curving crescents, sweeping lawns, and concrete pads leading to double garages of suburbia?

Mar 1, 2006 City & country

Topics:

Editorial: City and Country

Over the next months Comment explores the meaning of the city—its social and architectural design, its politics, its arts, its relation to the church—and compares it to country and agriculture. Readers and writers alike may invest in this dialogue, and perhaps gain better understanding of the proper place of both city and country in human lives lived well.

Mar 1, 2006 City & country

Topics:

The city and its renewal

Late, long-time U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil thought “all politics is local.” David Koyzis doesn’t think either urban or rural life is normative, but points to how cities could be nurtured to become more livable and sustainable over the long-term.

Mar 1, 2006 City & country

Topics:

“Street-level Justice”: governing metropolitan public space

What have bus purchases, or garbage collection, or zoning laws, got to do with lofty principles like justice? Just give me a bit more efficiency and I’ll go quietly. Issues of efficiency can’t be neatly cordoned off from issues of distribution, of access, of sustainability, of opportunity, of security, and of voice. It’s all about ordering the urban public realm justly, and it’s more relevant than most people think.

Mar 1, 2006 City & country

Topics:

Falling in love with the New York intellectuals

It took a fierce group of 1930s journalists to show the world a new standard for truth, and how much truth should matter in personal and public life. The New York intellectuals insisted, in their ideas and their business, on both the continuing quest for truth, and the importance of living in the light of that truth. Whether or not their beliefs—tinged by Marxism and Modernism—were right, it’s the ferocity of the intellectuals that makes them significant—and charming.