Tracing the disappearance of the thing we need most.
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">Jason Demetri
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More From This Contributor
In Search of a Truly Good News Faith
What will it take to renew evangelicalism?
How Much Truth Is There in Beauty?
Would you eat an ugly cucumber? Millions of dollars ride on your answer to that question. So does a lot of theology. According to a recent study published in The Journal of Marketing, tons of produce and other food is tossed out every year in the United States as...
African Stone, Orthodox Icons
Carving out a life of faith and meaning through participation in an ancient art.
Inhabiting Our Feeling Bodies
Eating disorders, emotional bodily experience, and the body of Christ.
Embroidering Hope
How ordinary objects of beauty invite us into greater courage.
From Imagination to Incarnation
On the redemptive possibilities of poetry and what it means to be a custodian of language.
Log Off and Go to Logotherapy
Viktor Frankl’s prescriptions for the online soul.
The Materiality of Digital Culture
It’s not as invisible—or as disembodying—as our devices lead us to believe.
Worlds of Sound
The power of soundscapes in memory, narrative, and practice.
Care at Scale
Bodies, agency, and infrastructure.
Beyond Sexual Capitalism
The Christian’s invitation.
Mortality and Natality in the Pandemic
Our tragic world needs beginnings. What, now, are we beginning?
Embodiment’s Grace
Recovering the gifts of human finitude.
Of Monuments and Men
What wisdom does the Bible offer regarding our practices of remembrance?
Take Me to the Border with You
The human stories behind migration statistics.
Virtue Must Advertise
Why virtue signalling is a good and human thing and efforts to suppress it will lead to social disaster.
The Pharisee on Social Media
Virtue signalling and the vice of self-righteousness.
Ten Commandments for Tech
Our tech devices are designed to make life easier, but maybe ease isn’t what we need.
Toward a Contemporary Confession of Good Medicine
Three practitioners speak.
Medicine and the Ministry of Presence
Recovering one of medicine’s most underrated yet precious resources: time.
Character in Crisis: The Challenges of Moral Formation in Higher Education
A conversation between two practitioners.
Labours of Love
Cultivating grounds for hope and good work.
Looking for the New Humanists
A review of Jason Blakely’s We Built Reality.
Forging a People, Sustaining a Nation
Lessons from the book of Exodus.
A Black Woman at War
Battling for God and a nation’s people.
The Literature of Social Change
How stories help us make sense of structure, agency, and ourselves.
Reconciliation Is Spiritual Formation
A framework for organizational practice.
My Inequity, Your Inequity
How do you repent of social sin?
O Virtue, Where Art Thou?
The dynamics of moral agency in an age awakened to social sin.
On Forming a More Perfect Union
How can we develop the character required for social change?
Against Moral Innocence
To think Christianly is to seek not innocence but repair.
Tuning the World (and Ourselves)
How medieval music theory can help us fight climate change.
What Is the City on the Hill?
On the uses and abuses of John Winthrop’s famous sermon.
The Liberating Word Made Flesh
Frederick Douglass’s powerful witness embodied a vision for love and justice that remains a rebuke to the violence of our day.
Hard Work and the Good Life
A vocational audit for 2021.
Hope in the Land of Dying
Is Christian hope more like anticipating a family reunion or making a pilgrimage to the Lord’s temple?
Reviving Intellectual Hospitality
How to open our minds, hearts, and homes to our neighbours.
Review: The Blood of Our Attention
How to love your crooked historical neighbour with your crooked heart.
Review: A Deeper Way of Living
Taking a closer look at the joys and sacrifices of community living.
Designing for Trust
Cities should draw us together, not pull us apart.
Photo Essay: Making and Keeping Peace
The wise person knows how much harder it is to create than to destroy. One requires vision and courage; the other simply reacts. As free societies around the world reckon with surging populism and we gaze warily at one another, it’s worth taking a moment to revisit...
Visceral Lending
Why personal relationships and trust are the heart of credit.
One Nation, Sinful Under God
A greater appreciation of sin could unite America.
Building Trust Across the Political Divide
The surprising bridge of conflict.
Mapping the Parable of the Good Samaritan
To imitate the good Samaritan, first we need his healing.
The Complexities of Forbearance
Augustinian insights for an age of polarization.
The Mystery of Trust
What the military can teach Congress, news outlets, and churches about winning back the faith of the people.
Sowing for Trust
How might we renew the conditions for dignity first?
Forest Fire
A poem.
The Longest Year
Reflections on 2020.
Wilderness Perspective
A monastic ethos for a militant age.
The Return of the Cold Warrior
Reflections on Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies.
Grace Under Pressure
A photo essay.
Through a Looking Glass Darkly
How (and how not) to be certain of yourself.
Journeying from Fear to Love
“It’s time to come home,” Prime Minister Trudeau urged Canadians abroad. The gravity of the global pandemic dawned on us as we watched his address while COVID-19 statistics climbed. The time that has elapsed since that day feels liminal—uncertain at best—as the weight...
With Faith Like a Child
Learning from Jesus’s nearest and dearest.
Liberated to Play
Recovering Jürgen Moltmann and a paradigm for living into God’s victory.
Crisis Philanthropy: Challenges and Opportunities
An interview with David Weekley and Robin Weekley Bruce.
Leadership in Uncertain Times
The refining fires of crisis are revealing truths about human precarity and possibility that could be a playbook for “normal” times.
Spiritual Practices for Public Leadership
Guarding one’s soul in and out of season.
Proverbs from the Poor
Insights on living below the margins.
Wisdom for Uncertain Times
A biblical tour.
Seeking Patterns Beneath
Lessons on creative wisdom from jazz and its disciplines.
Uncertainty: The Beauty and Bedrock of Statistics
Sometimes a bit of uncertainty can be a marvelous thing.
Deeper Still
Facing fear, chronic illness, and death throughout a lifetime of uncertainty.
The Colour of the Soil
How the discovery of the lies in one part of America’s agrarian tradition led to the discovery of deep truths in another.
Is Europe Christian?
Considering an intellectual genealogy of European secularization.
Wisdom for the Wilderness
Preparing a new generation for uncertainty and flux.
Sacred Conversations
How might we speak fruitfully about our most precious principles?
Going Viral
A post-mortem of the effects of a Twitter post on my soul.
Leadership, Forgiveness, and Our Loves
An exchange of letters.
Principles for a Just Pandemic
A framework to help us negotiate today’s trade-offs in public life.
Reading While Black
Reviewing Esau McCaulley on African American biblical interpretation.
What Kind of Turning Point?
History is an unpredictable thing. Respect it.
Deepening the Interwoven Life
Releasing the limits of self to kairos time.
The Delusions of Isolation
I am a bachelor, not a hermit.
The Holy Trinity, Race, and a Time of Crisis
Perhaps we should take a look at God’s identity papers before we ask people for theirs.
Diversity and the Common Good
The urgent need to train the minds of children and renew the minds of adults.
What Is “the Church”?
Revisiting a two-thousand-year-old question.
A World Remade
Trying to see through smoke and fire.
Embodied Histories
On Sunday mornings, after the rustle of the people in the pews quiets down and an expectant hush has fallen over everyone, a minister walks up the aisle between the pews behind one of the elders of the church. At the front of the sanctuary, they stop and turn toward...
Forging a Better Country
It’s time to build. Start where you live and work.
Storied Cities
The lost link between a city’s forgotten history and its cultural potential.
Terrence Malick and the Question of Martyrdom
“Does a man have the right to let himself be put to death for the truth?” —Søren Kierkegaard
Postliberal Epistemology
We all want to know and be known, but nobody today knows how.
Justice and Race: What We Can and Cannot Change
We can talk about power, but we also need to talk about principalities.
Inherited Flavours
Ordinary inheritances: a symposium.
The Season of Delight
Ordinary inheritances: a symposium.
This Body, Broken
Ordinary inheritances: a symposium.
Locating Our Invisible Wounds
Confronting our blindness before and after the virus.
Vocation in a Time of Precedented Uncertainty
If it’s worth doing at any time, it’s worth doing now.
A Letter to Dietrich von Hildebrand
Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889–1977) was a German philosopher known for his works in ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. He was one of Europe’s most outspoken voices against Nazism and Communism. A convert to Catholicism, he had a...
A Letter to C.S. Lewis
Professor C.S. Lewis The Kilns, Lewis Close, Headington, Oxfordshire, UK Dear Professor C.S. Lewis, I hardly mean to bother you. I know you receive thousands of letters each year and that it is your habit to answer all of your mail. I do not want to burden you with...
Dear America
Dear America, You have a memory and history problem. As a political science professor, I am privy to the background and the foreground of the cultural moment as I live vicariously through the lives of my students—active consumers and budding culture makers that they...
Permanence amid Impermanence
How storms reveal our anchors.
Welcome to the Apocalypse
The Veritas Forum hosted a commencement speech contest for the class of 2020, together with Comment and Augustine Collective. As Veritas wrote in the invitation to graduating seniors, “Some people describe commencement speeches as “cultural barometers” that offer...
We Are the Unprecedented Ones
The Veritas Forum hosted a commencement speech contest for the class of 2020, together with Comment and Augustine Collective. As Veritas wrote in the invitation to graduating seniors, “Some people describe commencement speeches as “cultural barometers” that offer...
Evangelicals
A review.
You Are What You Read
Does segmenting the market necessarily segment the gospel?
When the Past Has No Place
The power and peril of examining personal history.
In the Shadow of Memory
“The act of imagination is bound up with memory.” —Toni Morrison
The Stories We Tell
Discerning history in all its multitudes.
The Witness of the Weak Centres
Belonging, friendship, and prayer in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Good Birth, Good Death
Reflections on my thirty-ninth birthday.
The Great Reset
Making way for a world remade.
Memento Mori
WWhat am I looking for? An out of date announcement of my own death? —Stephen Maturin via Patrick O'BrienI see it most clearly the morning after a late night, or at the end of a long and tiresome day. I straighten from the bow I take when I wash my face, I take a...
A Living Memory
Amalek, forgetting, and the lessons of Jewish memory.
Community + God: Inextricable?
I’ve been thinking about community for a good twenty years now; around the same amount of time that I’ve been thinking about God. I realize now that my ponderings on these notions are actually one and the same; my search for community has always really been about my...
Lost Word: Tribe
tribe noun \ ˈˈtrīb \ a people to be together who we cannot be alone. Tribe is the place we live breathe and have our very (human) being together. We were born to ///be very whole, ///be very loved ///be very known. We long to feel the sweet serenade of love...
What Is Community?
An illustration.
“I Saw a Man Fly! I Am Sure I Did!”
And the wolf will dwell with the lamb…
The Political Captivity of the Faithful
There are things only the church can do. It should do those things.
“I Didn’t Become an Apache. I Was Born an Apache.”
Contextualizing surrender to the transcendent within the inheritance of tribe.
Jesus Is a Jew
The ineffable becomes intelligible in Israel.
Reflections on Peacekeeping
I stare at the two envelopes in my hand and feel the fury rise in my throat. I am helping my parents sort through their mail after a trip, helping settle them back into their tiny independent living apartment, helping. The rage astonishes me. Rage toward political...
On Peacemaking
Owning and sanctifying our natural tendencies for Christ’s sake and the public good.
The Family: Where You‘re Free to Be a Jerk
Small tribes: cosmic consequences.
Habits for Ideological Times
“The one who contends with beasts should take care not to become a beast in turn.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
A Christian Like Richard J. Mouw
Friendship between the Reformed theologian and a Latter-day Saint historian.
The Tribes That Bind
Wrestling with loyalty in a fractured age.
In Acknowledgement of Acknowledgements
Dispelling the myth of the solitary genius.
How Garbage Collectors Can Refresh Our Theology
Scraping back the veneer called “vocation.”
A Spiritual Autobiography
We all come from God. If things go well, by God’s grace, we are all headed back to God. But the road is almost never very clear, and it is the ruts and hurdles that make up the stuff of a story.
Become America
A conversation about saving the civic soul.
Meeting Grace
I laid breathless on my back, staring in the direction where my feet would normally be, at an enormous, bulging belly. I gently caressed the ball-shaped appendage, shooting Dave an assuring grin and a thumbs-up as it tightened and relaxed through contractions. The...
Of Loves and Laws
Legality is not morality, this we know. But the relationship between the two is always worth scrutinizing, bound up as it is in foundational questions of truth and conscience, human nature and social change, justice and order. As the flows of human migration continue...
Patchwork Patterns
In need of a small victory and a tactile point of focus, I dedicated a few evenings to mending. Inspired by the beautifully useful Japanese art of sashiko and compelled by a bike-chain-shredded hole in a favourite red jumper, I patched the elbow with geometric...
Headquarters: Common Dignity, Common Life
An update from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
We Are Never Alone
Some thoughts on accompaniment.
A Letter to Love
Dear Love, Have you noticed how easily people seem to claim my work for yours lately? To be blunt, I am as offended as I am proud. You may be the star of today’s vernacular, but you’ve become nearly obsolete in practice. And me? Well, I have become a master of...
Turning the Tide
A new page in Christian influence.
The Reflective Patriotism of Land of Hope
Finding proper perspective on America’s history.
Proximity Over Punditry
Seeing and being seen in back-row America.
Who’s Afraid of Social Justice?
A robust defense of justice as commanded for the Christian, enacted by the Church, and defined for the world—from a talk that Comment Senior Editor Brian Dijkema gave at the Davenant Institute’s 2019 Convivium Irenicum in Lake Lanier, South Carolina.
Public Faith, Public Space
Where will the public meet if churches disappear?
Headquarters: Introducing Comment’s New Editor-in-Chief
Letter from the publisher.
Richard Rohr: A Field Guide
Exploring a vestibule of Christian faith.
Contour Plowing
How working with, rather than against, nature can help feed nine billion people.
Citizens Aren’t Just Born. They’re Formed
Why civil society is no substitute for a distinctively political education.
Drawing Up Accounts
Why a moral view of finance is fundamental for the common weal.
When the City of Man Is Redlined
How best to stitch the wounds of segregation?
A Tidy Mind
Thinking is like chores: never done, but necessary for public (and private) life.
Why Character? Why Now?
Communities require moral coherence to flourish. Is that possible today?
World View
An annotated reading of your world.
To Love Is to Build
Drawing the contours of social renewal.
Selling Our Birthright for a Quiet Pew
In church, our children are not our children. They’re brothers and sisters in Christ.
Dreading Monday
The spiritual crisis underneath our jobs.
Lords of Misrule
Holy disorder and hope for the world.
A Damnable Shame
The church as co-conspirator in unrelenting, adaptive racism.
“Surplus Population”
History tells of the past, how we write it tells of the present.
Twelve Rules for the Bookish Life
(Of course, the bookish life needs no rules.)
Prophet of the Human-Built World: An Introduction to John Ruskin
Linking our prayers and our purchases, our art and our labour.
The Elusive Common Good
A flawed but useful case for modest consensus.
Headquarters: The 2019 Ross and Davis Mitchell Prize
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
A Migrant Invasion?
Beyond platitudes and towards policy on immigration.
The Age of Anti-Biography
Widening our view of life stories.
Can Churches Come in from the Cold War?
The way North American churches reacted to the pressures of power decades ago still haunts them.
The Armenian Option
What might a North American Christianity inspired by Armenia look like?
In Praise of Miscellany
Because life has its odds and ends.
The Future of Church-Race Relations
Why looking back might be the best way for the church to look ahead.
A Productive Manifesto
A populist policy agenda that just might work for America.
Crossing the STEM Divide
Thinking hard about soft skills and how they’re developed.
The Church and the Common Good
Can we equate the church’s eternal mission with temporary politics?
The Year of “Whose” Lord?
Let’s not expect too much of (Christian) humanism.
Getting Simple Right
The art of organizational vitality.
The Difficulty with Diversity
Can American pluralism make room for an Islam that is truly different?
Headquarters: Work & Economics
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
Minimalism and Monasticism
Doing with less should help us find more.
Minimalism for the Sake of the World
Minimalism Symposium: Stories of more and less
Building a Better Broadway
Can we design a city for contentment?
Minimalism by Design
Minimalism Symposium: Stories of more and less
Sabbath Simplicity
Minimalism Symposium: Stories of more and less
Liturgies of Less…and More
Sometimes quiet, ordinary rituals are the most difficult.
Why Not to Be a Minimalist
Minimalism Symposium: Stories of more and less
The Commons: Editing as Asceticism
Graceful expression takes fewer words than you think.
A Regimen of Grace
Embracing the austerity of Protestantism
Consumption Pharisees? On the New Minimalism
Is there room for others in our tiny homes?
Work and Family in Sync
There’s a time to work, and a time to raise children. We should be concerned when those rhythms are interrupted.
Trading Brunch for the Eucharist
The church is a jarring challenge to our self-help philosophies.
Holy Clutter
Our stuff isn’t just for private joy; we have things to share.
Fear, Anger, and Finding Another Way
When is it right to be afraid?
When Self-Help Means Less Help
Learning to live as if you’ll die one day.
Gardeners and Pilgrims
Reviving place in the Christian imagination.
Headquarters: Family
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
Living with Integrity in a Splintered World
How do we pursue wholeness in the centrifuge of modern life?
Dismemberment and Integrity
Toward a sacrificial understanding of wholeness.
The Integrative Power of “Why”
What do amazement, wonder, and awe have to do with integrity?
Liberty, Equality, …Disintegration?
A conversation with the author of Why Liberalism Failed.
Data as Icon and Idol
What happens when metrics become moral injunctions?
The Commons: Social Architecture
Promoting a flourishing society.
Learning How to Pay Attention
A journalist considers what it means to listen, and how to reimagine his profession.
The Sabbath City
A city should design for useless things.
The Peril, and Possibilities, of Christian Political Parties
Lessons from nineteenth-century Christians on political catechesis.
Outside In
What do we see when we look at ourselves?
Held in Common
Connecting the dots in our lives.
Living with Integrity
In a world that feels like it’s disintegrating, what does it mean to follow the One in whom all things hold together?
From Donors to Patrons: A Conversation
Recovering patronage as partnership.
Don’t Call It Theocracy
A caution for reactionary liberals who hear “theocracy” whenever Christians talk about “the kingdom.”
Sans Amis en Paris
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Not Just Fun and Games
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
The Summer 2018 issue focuses on a unique problem plaguing our society: social isolation. We asked you – our readers – to contribute short stories of heartbreak and hope to help illuminate social isolation in all corners of society. Here are your stories.
Little, Not Small
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Getting Ahead
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Beyond Sex
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
The Gentlemen’s Whiskey Club
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Practicing Connection
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Porching in Indianapolis
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Intentional Isolation in Suburbia
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Cultivating Friendship
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
Beerbelly Elegy
Your favoured end of the beer cooler shouldn’t predict your politics.
Alone on the Train
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
If Despair Is the Disease, What Is the Treatment?
How discarded images can forge a path to life.
The Commuter Campus Island
Social Isolation Symposium: Stories of hope and of heartbreak
All the Lonely Workers
Why the social dimension of work is more important than ever.
Headquarters: CRFI
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
The Fellowship of the King
A social church for a lonely world.
Single Beds Were Made for One
Social isolation starts in families—thankfully it can end there too.
Single and Dying to Self
Relationships are messy, but the messiness contains a sanctifying purpose.
The Architecture of Loneliness in Refugee Communities
The biggest obstacle facing refugees and immigrants might actually be loneliness.
Why Do the Young Men Rage?
When young men feel like outsiders, they are more drawn to violent ideologies that validate their experiences.
Isolation and the Prospects for Democracy: The Challenge for the Alienated
Does pluralism have an answer to our social estrangement?
Life on a Line: Human Movement Through Urban Space and Time
Our lives could be recorded as a continuous line representing movement in space from conception to dissolution. What would such a line tell us?
Love, Again
On a celibate breakup and what happened after.
Not Meant to Be Alone
Social isolation is a quiet epidemic in affluent Western societies. What’s happening? What can be done?
Markets are Made: The Story of Capitalism
A lot hinges on whether capitalism has a history.
Is there a Christian Pluralist Approach to Immigration?
Just immigration policy needs more than just hospitality.
Christian Higher Education in an Exponential Age
Not all values can be quantified.
What Is Marilynne Robinson Hawking?
Calvinism in the Toronto Public Library.
Undomesticated Love
Is it really “dissent” that we need to recover today?
The Modest University
The moral argument in favour of limits on the moral jurisdiction of universities.
Marilynne Robinson’s “Apologia Gloriae”
Grateful for the novelist’s public witness, we might worry about what’s missing.
Is the University Worth Saving?
Society has questions. Let’s not dismiss them.
Headquarters: Education
Updates from Cardus on the Renewal of Social Architecture.
Are We Our Students’ Keepers?
Thinking about country-club campuses and daily bread in North America’s universities.
Hospitality in Higher Education: Is There Room for All?
Is it an accident that support for higher education is shrinking just when those historically excluded finally have access?
Can We Trust the Gatekeepers?
We criticize the university for offering mere credentials; but would we want it otherwise?
Heterodoxy to the Rescue
Jonathan Haidt’s mission to save the university.
A University for the Sake of the World
Christian higher education should be as distinctive as it is integrated.
The Commons: Renewal of Higher Education Starts in Kindergarten
It takes the whole village to educate its next generation.
Paideia on the Practice Field
Stadiums are at the heart of our universities. Who’s getting played here?
What the University Can (and Cannot) Do
Randy Boyagoda, principal of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, where he also holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters and is professor of English, in conversation with Comment managing editor Doug Sikkema.
The Politics of the Good Samaritan
We’ve projected our political biases onto the parable. Can we hear it again, afresh?
Public Office as a Spiritual Discipline
The governor of Tennessee reflects on the call to political service as a call to take up your cross.
In Praise of Forbearance
Dusting off a virtue we’ve forgotten, and need more than ever.
Comment: Our Favorite Reads of 2017
A look back on the best articles and books that crossed the paths of our editorial board in the past year.
Mass Incarceration and the “Politics of Respectability”
Sometimes complicity is less about responsibility and more about diminished agency.
Loss and the Christian Virtue of Hope
The road to Emmaus is a journey through hopelessness with a God who refuses to leave us.
Finding Forgotten Friends
Apprenticing Ourselves to the Past
Headquarters: Ross and Davis Mitchell Prize for Faith and Writing
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
To Knock a Chip out of the Wall: Sophie Scholl
Learning from Sophie Scholl in Charlottesville.
The Uses of Friendships: Moses Mendelssohn
It’s when we resist conforming to the expectations of our contemporaries that we are a gift to them.
A Society of Friends: David Elton Trueblood
David Elton Trueblood was a friend to the world and a friend to me.
Seeing the Beauty of Dappled Things: Gerard Manley Hopkins
A poet taught a physician how to see again.
A Vocational Friendship: The Cappadocians
How a letter to John Stott encouraged my journey to fourth-century Cappadocia.
At the Bottom of the World is the Word: Martin Luther
Learning to taste the Word of God with Martin Luther.
Learning to Be Free: Booker T. Washington
What someone who was enslaved can teach us about a liberal education.
Making Sense of Our Contradictions: Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal knows us well: as glorious and wretched, hungering for God but prone to distraction.
The Friend We Need but Do Not Want: Martin Luther King Jr.
On the inconvenience of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Story About Religious Freedom You Haven’t Heard
The Christian origin of religious-freedom arguments.
The Commons: Resist the Tyrannical Now
Seeing the invisible at church or a used bookstore.
What’s Your Institutional IQ?
The problem with institutions isn’t at the top.
Communion, Liberation, and the Beauty of Ordinary Faithfulness
The importance of a public witness that is not merely rebuke but invitation.
Failure to Launch?
A biblical spirituality is one that sends us into the world.
The Strange New World of the Beatitudes
An encounter with the Sermon on the Mount says something about Christianity as a whole.
Renewing the Church for the Sake of the World
The fabric of civilization is unravelling, the barbarians have broken through the gates, and looming threats to society have left the ruling elite anxious, unnerved, looking for someone to blame. So they turn to Christians and the church. The scene will feel contemporary, but in fact it is the opening context for Augustine’s fifth-century apologetic, […]
Headquarters: Social Cities
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture
Choosing Church
There are lots of reasons to avoid church, but here are the reasons to look again.
The Perils of Confession as a Public Act
Nothing less than a seriously demanding church life is adequate to the conditions of today’s world.
Not Trained By Angels
Democratic responsibility begins in elders’ councils, budget meetings, and volunteer nursery assignments.
New York City Without A Church?
Imagine a map of your city without churches. Now imagine the sort of society we’d have without those congregations.
The Church is Bigger Than We Can See
Narratives of a “secular” city are told by people looking in the wrong places.
Go Into Your Room, Close the Door, and Engage the World
Why private prayers can be a public act.
Catechesis for a Secular Age
What if the common good just might depend on conversions?
Of Smelly Monks and Annoying Neighbours
A new book reminds us of the crowded, communal roots of the spiritual disciplines.
Building a Church for the Church Not Built by Hands
Can a church that doesn’t care about its looks truly be called evangelical?
The Commons: Ora et Labora on the 401
We’re never alone on the journey.
Persuasion Is for Amateurs
Why a focus on adjectives, rather than nouns, might be the salve our political culture needs.
Pastoral Care as Public Theology: A Conversation with Tim Keller
Why the church being the church is a gift to society.
Real Estate and the Realities of Racial Injustice
A trio of books document the long, sordid history of white home ownership and black exclusion.
Let Us Now Praise Middle Men (and Women): A Theology for the Hospitality Industry
We revere “makers” and idolize products; we should cultivate gratitude for the art of service.
Does Tyranny Need a Twelve Step Program?
Democracy and tyranny have a codependent relationship
Reforming Civil Religion Today
There is not one model of Reformed political engagement. Which is most needed in the age of Trump?
I Was Told There Would Be More
Why should we think adulthood is synonymous with independence?
The Devil You Don’t Know
A data scientist uncovers the power of hidden algorithms that carry out digital injustice.
The Headscarf: Islam’s Gift to Western Democracy
Learning to welcome Islam is a way to relearn what democracy is about.
Sacred Heritage, Sacred History
As Canada approaches its sesquicentennial, an American historian recalls lessons learned at their bicentennial.
Filth Therapy: A Cunning Word
A question in the novels of Robertson Davies: What ways of Wisdom have been discarded by modern Knowledge?
L’Etat, C’Est Toi
Why proclaiming Christ as King provides the basis for religious freedom for those who don’t.
Do We Need a Foreign Policy Pope?
The trouble with trying to discern orthodoxy from heresy in civil religion.
A Form of Godliness
Why civil religion won’t save us from religious nationalism or radical secularism.
The Commons: Cultivate Your Calling
A word of advice to recent graduates.
Can States Be Christian?
Political philosopher Jonathan Chaplin helps us think about civil religion by making things more complicated.
Behind the Tapestry: Continuing the Conversation with Andrew Bennett
Why we should learn to love the knots and messes of democratic life.
Editorial: Reconsidering “Civil Religion”
What if religious communities are the best hope for renewing liberal democracy?
Who’s Afraid of Secularism?
What will civil religion look like in a post-Christian America?
What gives you hope in your corner of the world?
What if good news is right under our noses?
Hoping for Too Much?
An Obama staffer’s memoir shows that the problem with American politics might be us.
Thoughtlessness, Sloth, and the Call to Think
What happens when we give up on thinking? Hannah Arendt warned us years ago.
Welcome to a Movement
Comment promotes a “wide angle” understanding of the Gospel’s impact. Join the movement now.
The Cornerstone the Economists Rejected
An economist discovers that morality matters for healthy markets—and society.
In Violence We Trust?
Can we meet our desire for security with more than lamenting “senseless violence”?
The Benedict Option or the Augustinian Call?
Considering two ancient options for the contemporary church.
The Shipwrecked Book: Mark Lilla’s Nostalgic Prison
Is all social conservation just defensive reaction?
“Deserve’s Got Everything to Do with It”
The resentment that explains rural white political identity sits in tension with both grace and truth.
The Death of Expertise as a Decline of Trust
When we trust our feelings more than anything else, we stop trusting expert knowledge. And it could kill us.
Pluralism, Difference, and the Dynamics of Trust
What’s the likelihood of living together if we can’t even trust our neighbours?
Who Watches the Nudgers?
It’s less about trusting government and more about governments being trustworthy.
Tocqueville and Twitter Feeds
Don’t expect either social media or social science to save us; what we need is social theory.
The Commons: Explorations in Social Capital
The invisible power of trust.
Headquarters: Faith in Canada 150
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
Liberal Democracy Has “Trust Issues”
Why civil society won’t revive our trust in government.
Surveillance and Trust
When someone’s always watching, someone’s always suspicious.
Finding Trust in the Economy
Trust, like currency, can be debased. Knowing how to grow trust is the key to a thriving economy.
Trust without Teachers
Social media have become the new custodians of knowledge. This matters.
“Please Join Me in Expressing Displeasure with the Draft”
If we can’t be civil, is faking it going to help?
Editorial: Teach Us (How) to Trust
Suspicion and cynicism play right into the hands of authoritarian demagogues. Let’s consider another way forward.
Lost in the Aggregate
Our government doesn’t need more rules, it needs more judgment.
“High” Tories, Low Impact?
Worrying about “true” or “pure” or “real” conservatism is a recipe for irrelevance.
The Life and Death of Evangelicalism’s Little Magazine
Where will the evangelical life of the mind find a home after Books & Culture?
How to Grow Old
Aging doesn’t have to mean decline; make it a pilgrimage of hope.
Recovering the Revolutionary Nature of Christianity
Why we can’t afford to forget history.
By the Book
If prayer is a craft, we shouldn’t be ashamed to learn from the masters.
Headquarters: Cardus Education Survey
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
Rejigging Christian Culture
The demolition of cultural scaffolding made room for invisible cages.
A Story Called Rest
Can we imagine a society where Sabbath constrains our clamorous desires?
Millennials and the Military
Who wants to sign up for a war that can never be won?
The Will is Not Enough
Why we need to think less about our phones and more about our practices.
The Church as Jig
What would it mean to resurrect the idea of a “Christian society”?
Cleaning Dishes as a Revolutionary Act
“Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”—P.J. O’Rourke
The Commons: Designed Isolation
It’s difficult to love what we can’t see.
Jigs for Marriage and Celibacy
You can’t die to yourself by yourself.
Editorial: Cultural Jigs
Finite creatures can find freedom in good constraints.
How to Get Beyond Your Tribe
The bad, the ugly, but also the good of group identification.
Exhibiting the Revolution
Putting art back in its place—everyday life.
Looking at the Election Through Polarized Lenses
What kind of pluralists do we want to be?
Taking a Stand on the Farm
How the Agricultural Revolution gave birth to its own anti-revolutionary party: the agrarians.
Who was the Brain in that Jar?
Sometimes all good teaching needs is the right framing.
Raising the Ante
We still have something to learn from the innovative Anti-Revolutionary Party. And it’s not what you might think.
Full Circle: Art and Revolution
Sometimes the best artistic innovation is simply what composers call “theme and variation.”
Freeing Love
Perhaps the real revolutionaries are those who keep their promises.
Thinking Carefully about “Creative Destruction”
“Move fast, break things” is a terrible way to organize an economy.
Revolution”ism” and our Secular Age
What if unbelief is a social ill? Would we have the courage to name it? And hope otherwise?
Revolution U
What today’s critics of the university get right…and wrong.
Openings in Our Fractured Republic
The way to achieve justice and prosperity isn’t to abandon everything you’ve inherited.
Victim Impact Statements
Listening to the stories of the children of divorce.
The Commons: Standing Up to Revolution
Forgiveness has the power to stop endless cycles of violence.
The Anti-Revolutionary Pulse of “Paradise Lost”
Is it better to reign in hell than serve in heaven?
Editorial: Join the Anti-Revolutionary Party
You have nothing to lose but your hubris.
What Are We Willing to Know?
Forming wisdom in an age of information overload.
In Vino Societas
A sommelier and business owner considers the social importance of conviviality and craft.
Eating as Discipleship
The food economy is still an accessible place to begin working out an economy of membership.
Hope in the Ruins: Why Politics Can’t Save Our Politics
In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin pens a manifesto for subsidiarity and solidarity.
Beyond “Coexist”
Why should we desire unity about pluralism?
Better Living through Chemistry?
Why chemists need to be humanists.
Pursuing Health in an Anxious Age
Medical technology brings no peace like trusting in a God who is actively at work.
Hope in the Valley? A Conversation with Peter Thiel
A Silicon Valley entrepreneur offers a minority view on “progress.”
Headquarters: Cardus Family
Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.
Playful Minds
Games can recover play in learning, but we still have to know what it means to “learn.”
How Then Shall We Work?: Automation
A symposium on the changing nature of professions in the digital age.
How Then Shall We Work?: Medicine
A symposium on the changing nature of professions in the digital age.
The Commons: In Search of Connection
Navigating Canada’s Silicon Valley as a modern Mennonite.
Welcome to the Desert of the Real: A Conversation with Peter Thiel
Amid Silicon Valley hype, an entrepreneur’s pessimism might be a sign of hope.
Who’s Reprogramming Your City?
How we can keep smart cities from becoming settlements for sophisticated savages?
Digital Restlessness and Something More Certain
If we’ve stretched into the “fourth dimension” of cyberspace, why does the world feel so flat?
Habits of Mind in an Age of Distraction
Small steps to meet the challenge of hearing God in a technologically disruptive environment.
How Then Shall We Work?: Entrepreneurship
A symposium on the changing nature of professions in the digital age.
How Then Shall We Work?: Journalism
A symposium on the changing nature of professions in the digital age.
How Then Shall We Work?: Divinity
A symposium on the changing nature of professions in the digital age.
Are Bible Apps Destined to Purify the Printed Word?
The fulfillment of the hypertext dream has cleared the way for printed Bibles to pursue other ends, like being read.
Editorial: Our Built World
Some assembly required
Up with the People?
There’s nothing magical about “the people,” unless they aspire to become a citizenry.
A World Without Work?
If work is service, the opportunities to work are infinite.
Why Give? Recovering Charity from Philanthropy
A study of early Christian almsgiving challenges the technocracy of contemporary conceptions of giving
Strength in Weakness
We have the power to help others gain more authority by exposing ourselves to risk
A Toolbox for Changing the World
Cardus, the think tank that publishes Comment, shares a few tips on renewing social architecture and influencing culture.
Taking Aim at Ambition
A writers collective looks for virtue amidst the vices of hubris, pride, and vainglory
Reconstructing the Alliance Between Christianity and Organized Labour
It’s time to pick up the missing pieces in Heath Carter’s history of Christian Labour
Disciplining the Law: A Conversation with Joan Lockwood O’Donovan
Why the rule of law needs to remember it is ruled by Another—and what happens when we forget
Editorial: The Rule of Law and the Way of Love
There is no opposition between law and mercy
World View: An Annotated Reading of Your World
Topics this issue include election campaigns, heavenly citizenship, the mayor of Montaigne, and why the Christian tradition has long seen publishing as mission.
Headquarters: Payday Lending
Cardus’s “Banking on the Margins” project seeks non-legislative means of solving the moral problems of payday lending.
The Context of Love is the World: Liturgies of Incarceration
A professor went to prison to teach; he had a lot to learn.
Reasons for Law and the Bonds of Love
Why law is a gift from a loving God who wants us to flourish.
Church Discipline as a Public Good
What ancient Pharisees and modern Jezebels get right and wrong about discipline.
“His Law is Love, and His Gospel is Peace”
Learning to dance with God’s law.
Worship as Public Legal Pedagogy
The church’s public proclamation reminds society of the law—and grace—that transcends the state.
The Short and Tragic Lives of Black Youth
On culture and the constraints of “choice” and responsibility.
Justice, Beauty, and Habits of Waiting
Sometimes all the law needs is a little patience.
The Religious Roots of Rights Talk
Do Christian roots get in the way of a rights’ consensus?
The Dignity of Confession
Learning to see the image of God in the most broken image bearers.
Whither American Conservatives?
Michael Gerson delivers the 2016 Cardus Hill Family Lecture
Whose Religion? Which Flourishing?
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi wants you to flourish too. Now what?
Hearing Lost Voices: Risky Friendships and Faithful Presence
Lessons about friendship, education, and influence in the life of Hannah More
The Super Bowl and “the Supersex Myth”
What justice advocates can learn from their critics
White Flight, Church Polity, and the Institutional Dynamics of Race
Understanding why churches fled and the tools that helped them return.
Embracing a Missionary Moment
A Review of Revisiting “Faithful Presence.”
Opening the Soul of the City: Talking About Cities with Noah Toly and Milton Friesen Part II
Adding new dimensions to our city maps.
Urban Drama: Talking about Cities with Noah Toly and Milton Friesen, Part I
Shining a light in the shadowed backstage of global cities.
Comment: A Year in Review
An editorial symposium of some 2015 highlights
Deconstructing Failure
How the fall of BlackBerry teaches us to act with courage amid moral uncertainty.
Reestablishing Rhythms of Remembering
The church’s unique practices of memory are a gift to an aging society.
Editorial: Memory, Forgetting, and Hope
A biblical call to remember must be written in the future tense.
Lessons for an Amnesiac Society
How to remember in an age of disruption.
Covering Our Tracks
If we lose our aesthetic heritage, we lose the means to speak to an age enchanted by images.
Memory, Making, and the Gift of Inheritance
A reader’s vignette.
We Don’t Talk About That
When remembering is painful, but necessary.
How to Read an Encyclical (and Why)
A Protestant’s grateful guide to these papal “technologies of remembrance.”
Memories Need Stories
A reader’s vignette.
The Justice of Memory, the Grace of Forgetting: A Conversation with Miroslav Volf
How to remember the truth with love, and why we should hope to forget.
Abandon All Hope Ye Who Forget
The life of Herman Bavinck shows us how to remember the past, not try to live in it.
The Commons: Remembrance That Limps
Remembering and forgiving with our crooked human hearts.
Competing Memories: A Conversation with Rudzani Muloiwa
A South African photographer talks about how to remember.
A Wardrobe in Kansas, Portal to Mystery
A “show and tell” exploration of the Eighth Day Institute in Wichita, Kansas.
Building Better Markets for the Poor
You can be part of a Cardus initiative to reform payday lending.
The State of Joy
What if we tried to assess the health of society, not merely in terms of GDP or a consumer confidence index, but in terms of joy?
High-Performing Networks
Want to change the world? Cultivate friendships; use your imagination.
“”Laudato Si’””: Structural Causes of the Ecological Crisis – Part II
What hath air conditioning to do with Jerusalem?
“”Laudato Si’””: Structural Causes of the Ecological Crisis
What hath air conditioning to do with Jerusalem?
Notes from the Underground: Facing the Refugee Crisis in Hungary
How do we know the capacity of our social architecture unless it’s tested?
Education and Inequality
Private education is a public good.
The Public Intellectual as Poet: A Conversation with Margaret Somerville, part I
Stretching the imagination of a secular society.
In the Bodies and Labours of Women
Maternal testimony should not be treated as auxiliary to the real work of modern medicine, but instead should be esteemed and sought after as a foundational building block for the delivery of health care.
Mortality and the Limits of Medicine
Why is the experiment of turning dying into a medical experience failing?
The Commons: Death Is Natural
A culture of life cares for the dying.
Democratizing Community Health
Money for health care often bypasses the powerless.
Editorial: Health Beyond the Hospital
Because a healthy social architecture requires healthy citizens
Headquarters
Our Social Cities program asks, Are local faith communities growing or shrinking? Are people more or less involved in neighbourhood groups than they have been in the past?
Mortals Telling Stories on the Threshold of Mystery
If we want a better medicine, we have to become better patients, and that means becoming better storytellers.
Trusting Math
Sometimes caring about numbers is how we care for the vulnerable. Sometimes it’s a way of effacing the image of God
Learning to Let Go
Seeking wisdom at the end of life.
“Healthism” and a Healthy Society: A Conversation with Margaret Somerville, part II
Stretching the imagination of a secular society.
Putting Charity Out of Business?
Revisiting the Reformation in the collection plate.
Understanding Organized Crime (with a Little Help from Augustine)
What gangs love.
Is Ecology Haunted? An Ecocritic Reads “Laudato Si`”
The meaning of “ecology” that ecologists forgot.
In Defense of Elitism
Do you want to live in a world where everyone gets an “A”?
Free to Serve: Why Pluralists Should Support Religious Freedom
Freedom is not a zero-sum game.
The Ethics of Attention in an Age of Distraction
Why you need to get out of your own head.
How “Creation Regained” Changed Everything
His only regret was expressed in a poignant question: “Why haven’t we heard of this before?”
Closing the Graduation Gap
Opportunity does not exist where odds are something to be defied.
Erotic Inequality
Let’s not confuse difference with inequality.
Our Further-Off Neighbours
On moral education and farming small.
Marriage is a Social Justice Issue
A conversation with Brad Wilcox about the social revolutions that have generated economic inequality.
Making Marriage Work
Our economies and cultures depend on it.
Inequality: Complex Diagnoses, Multiple Prescriptions
What are we talking about when we talk about “inequality?”
Predatory Lending is Theft
Why it’s time for Christians to call for an end to payday loans.
Reviving Citizenship in the New Gilded Age
Piketty take note: the democratic challenge posed by inequality is not simply about economics or politics narrowly understood: it is about culture.
We Are All Complicit
Why the American Dream remains elusive for so many of our kids.
Our Racist Inheritance: A Conversation Kuyperians Need to Have
A report from the Kuyper Center for Public Theology’s recent conference on “Faith and Race”.
Run Toward the Pain
Broken cities need those minor leaders who cultivate a community’s moral formation.
A Theology of Immigrant Labour
Foundational thinking on immigrant labour has to do with public justice, rights, duties, and responsibilities.
“Creation Regained” at Thirty, Part II
A more comprehensive view of the Christian religion.
“Creation Regained” at Thirty
The story behind one of neo-Calvinism’s biggest little books.
Living with Liberalism: understanding regimes of tolerance
How tolerant is liberal toleration?
Rethinking the Secular, Redeeming Christendom
The very mission of the church takes it into the imperial palace, the executive mansion, the halls of the capitol.
Beyond “Creation” and Natural Law: An Evangelical Public Theology
What Oliver O’Donovan can teach Kuyperians
Pedagogies for the Public Square
We cannot all be right in the public square.
The American Housing Massacre
We don’t want a world where fat cats eat starving dogs.
Money: The Unlikely Mentor
Because money talks . . . about virtue.
A Seamless Fusion of Beauty and Utility
It’s easy to wax eloquent about woodcutting while disparaging “big” industry, but there’s more to the story.
A Seamless Fusion of Beauty and Utility
It’s easy to wax eloquent about woodcutting while disparaging “big” industry, but there’s more to the story.
Tapping on the Glass
The consequences of turning our decisions over to algorithms.
Voices from the Fields
We asked practitioners to reflect on the work of their hands.
Work, Play, Love … and Learn
Schoolwork is real work.
The Work of Our Hands
The faith and work conversation we’re NOT having.
The Beauty of Work, the Injustice of Toil
Why John Ruskin should be a patron saint of the “faith and work” conversation.
Physiology Lessons
How things work together.
Learning with Your Hands
What short order cooks and organ makers tell us about being human.
Happiness, and Other Goals for Our Kids
Science can show us what parenting does to us, but can it show what parenting means to us?
The Ennobling Constraints of the Everyday
How everyday moral decisions are embedded in some of life’s deepest questions.
The Joy of Sex, the Pangs of Labour
There’s potential for an unlikely romance between workers’ rights and family values
The Lamb of Wall Street
Could business use a catechism?
Serving God On The Inside And On The Outside
Are Christians in Politics inevitably compromised?
Thank God For Bureaucracy
A defense of good regulation.
Prudence > Courage
Being governed by prudence.
Talking About God in Public
Rowan Williams offers an indispensable aid for anyone struggling to talk about God publicly.
Who Owns “Social Justice?”
Social work has been dominated by progressivism. But there’s another way.
A Prudential Manifesto: Class Struggle for the Common Good
The gap between the life that elites preach and the life they live.
Change the World from Home: A Conversation with Rod Dreher
Change isn’t always big.
Redeeming Conservatism
Conservatism is more hopeful and optimistic than we like to give it credit for.
Twelve Features of a Scriptural Imagination
Who is the artist to help us imagine ways to conserve creation and culture?
A Devastating Day
What meaning can we find in despair?
The Gift of Guilt and the Recovery of Joy
There is no more characteristically modern assumption than the belief that it lies within our power to find happiness.
Is Social Conservatism Conservative?
Even the left should be pro-family.
“The Dickensian Aspect”: Persistent Poverty and Inequality
A twenty-four year sociological study shows that there are distinct advantages to being white and poor over being black and poor.
Zero to What, Zero to Where?
Entrepreneurship is on the rise. What are the kids pursuing, and should we invest?
Public Health and the Common Good
The church speaks out against abortion and euthanasia, but lags in creating a culture that supports the most vulnerable.
Deacons, Church, and World
Deacons should be permitted to look deeper at the roots of the social issues causing material need.
Social Reform As If History Matters
Challenging the monopoly of the state should not be confused with burning it to the ground.
Contemporary Fiction and a Longing for the Miraculous
“I don’t want realism! I want magic!” —Tennessee Williams
How to Survive the Secular Apocalypse
When the cracks get too wide, what keeps the secular society from crashing down?
Scotland Decides—But About What?
The central question facing Scottish voters.
On History, Children, and the Inevitability of Compromise
All of history is an argument.
Cracks in the Secular
Longing for “something more” in the secular.
Sacred and Secular Belief: Can We Have Peace?
Are we on our way to a belief-free society now that we are educated and prosperous?
A Postcard from the Pacific Northwest
What does the future hold for secularism in the West?
Making Room for Faith
It doesn’t help the cause of faith to caricature science.
Is Religious Journalism Haunted?
Cracks in the myth of objectivity.
Imagining an “Open” Secularism
The intersection of ideas and public life for understanding our “secular age.”
What Then?
Throughout history, the light has always broken through.
Building Ethical Bridges in a Secular Age
Fear of the secular is not helpful or necessary in our religious conversations.
Inequality in an Acre
There have to be more frequent, and more creative, ways to bridge the inequality gap.
Grinding Through the Pleasure Factory: Reading Arendt at Disney World
Disney World is a happiness factory; and darn it, it actually seems to work!
“Why Do I See the World So Differently?”
How existential questions of faith compelled philosopher Charles Taylor to write “A Secular Age.”
What does rest look like for you this summer?
While Comment is usually interested in faith and work, we asked some of our favourite writers and friends to tell us how they are working at rest this summer.
Marriage for the Common Good
You’re staring into your spouse’s eyes and your backs are to the world. Is that going to work for anyone but yourselves?
What are you reading?
In the dreary busy-ness of February we vow: “This summer I’m going to read________?”
Inequality, Gentrification, and Justice: A Conversation with Jonathan Bradford
Humans can only put up with disconnection for so long.
Shalom Starts at Home: A Conversation with Jonathan Bradford
Lessons learned in 40 years in the inner city.
A postcard from the Global Cities Summit
It will take more than knowledge to create flourishing cities.
The New Parish: Finding the Church in All of Life
Without engaging the world, the church becomes a fad nurturing cynicism and despair.
The Other Side of the Story
How churches contribute to the erosion of social architecture.
The Other Side of the City
The city is good AND broken.
Social Cities Photo Contest Winners
We asked you for original photos that show renewal, vibrancy, and thiving in your neighbourhood.
Converging Trends in the City
When the ideals of beauty and justice meet the realities of the city, we need wisdom and a gentle touch.
The Magic of Mayors?
How mayors might keep democratic governance viable.
The Skyscraper Problem
Like it or not, skyscrapers are here to stay.
Building Cairns in the City
Designing cities to cultivate rootedness and memory.
The City is Complex: Lessons from “The Wire”
How HBO teaches us to exegete our cities.
The Urban Turn
Will urban planners or the secular elite start noting the significant impact of religious influence in cities?
Chicago
Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps...
Ambition, Influence, and Entrepreneurship
Leaders take a liberal arts approach to life.
The Hidden Curriculum of Leadership
Leaders take a liberal arts approach to life.
Beyond “Engagement”: The Next Conversation We Need About Politics
Looking elsewhere for the robust embrace of politics that will speak today—to our time and place and audience.
Getting Back to Place
Because place has such a power to shape, we must be mindful of how we shape our places.
A Real Bonhoeffer for the Real World
Can we still treasure a Bonhoeffer deeply flawed? Must our heroes remain on their pedestals?
In the Beginning was Economics
Our lives are a response to God’s Genesis 3 command.
Sweetness and Power
Thinking about an upcoming Scottish referendum forces us to think beyond the United Kingdom and into Canada, Crimea, and elsewhere.
Living Words for a Living Faith
Thomas Cranmer wrote a prayer book, and shaped an entire society.
Hope Beyond Frustration
Biblical wisdom for the cultural apocalypse.
A Cord of Three Strands
We can’t walk toward the good if we can’t recognize it.
Face to Face with the Wronged
Confronting apartheid, changing perspectives
Putting Love to Work
Love is for practice, not pontificating.
Faithful Compromise
The lost art of brokered effectiveness in our public life.
In the Beginning Was . . . The Left and the Right
What to do about the modern political divide?
The Grey Area is Holy Ground
The bottom line for great compromisers: “It’s not that simple.”
In Good Faith: Compromise in the Face of a Revolution
The personal and public nature of compromise
Consumption and Culture-Making
Let’s fight for balance and care in our fight against resource over-consumption.
Why Not Rather Be Wronged?
Loving our enemies could have surprising results.
Social Architecture: An Invisible Casualty of War
Make trust, not war.
“Hotel Dieu”
The miracle is that, in a largely secular society, this San Francisco community still supports charity and believes it is a priority to care for the vulnerable.
A Table in the Wilderness, An Altar on the Farm
Creation as liturgy.
Health By Numbers
Are statistics becoming more important than people?
Monastic Wisdom for Public Life
Finding new rivers in the desert.
Confessions of a Former Skeptic: Questions for Institutional Vocation in the Garden
Learning to love the institution of church.
Where Does the World Need Me?
An invitation to consider your own pursuits of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Reading Culture Charitably
We need to remain attentively open to the Spirit’s gifts in unexpected places. When we do so, we might be surprised to find that even the empire is less disordered than we expected.
“The Ballet of Street Life”: On Common Grace Liturgies
Our culture’s liturgies can dance to the beat of God’s drum.
An Artful Conversation with Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
Conversing with care: what we can learn from Jane Austen’s England about communicating.
Culture Care: Called to be Patrons
Let’s lay down our weapons of culture war and become patrons of beauty, tending our culture with care.
Let’s Talk About Your Investment Strategy
We are all patrons, even if we don’t mean to be.
Welcoming Kickstarter into the Clubhouse
While it can and should never replace the deep patronage necessary for shalom, online crowdfunding can have a valuable place in positive culture-building.
Learning to Care
For parents, education is about growing in our children the capacity to care, regardless of the education system we choose for them.
Philanthropy as Culture-Making
All of life is a gift lived under grace and the only appropriate response is gratitude expressed through generosity.
iDevotion
Just how much do you love your iPhone?
Keats’s Phrase
My father’s been dead for thirty years but when he appears behind my shoulder offering advice, or condemnation, or a quiet pride in something I’ve done that isn’t even thistledown or tiny shavings of balsa wood in the eyes of the world —“Albie, grip in the middle and...
The End of Patronage?
An art historian with an insatiable curiosity discusses what it meant to be a patron of the arts—and what it means today.
Why Philanthropy Matters
Despite tunnel vision, Acs’s book raises important questions about philanthropy’s impact on culture.
Institutional Faithfulness and the Christian School
Who are the patrons of the Christian school, and what does that role mean?
Letters
Continuing the conversation.
Canada, the North American “Alternative”: A Conversation with Mark Noll
What might the renewal of social architecture look like in higher education—in Canada and the United States?
Is There Room for Religion in Canadian Law?
A look at Canadian case law after the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Triumph of the Quantitative or an Erosion of Trust?
Numbers don’t tell the whole story. Augustine does.
The Point of Kuyperian Pluralism
Facing exploitative capitalism and overweening statism, Kuyper’s vision of pluralism should still inspire Christians today.
An Eclectic Inheritance: Kuyper’s Politics Today
Kuyper’s understanding of gender and racial dynamics is sorely lacking. Yet his views on political engagement, his appreciation for religious pluralism, and his commentary on globalization are still prescient.
MINE! Kuyper for a new century
Abraham Kuyper stands out as a giant in public theology: his theological probings were never far removed from his public commitments as the founder of two newspapers, a university, a political party, and a denomination.
Casting Call: Abraham Kuyper and the Drama of History
The life and writing of pastor and politician Abraham Kuyper show that a faith-informed view of history is necessary to envision and shape the future.