Past Themes

20 RESULTS
Embodiment 39.3 | Summer 2021

Embodiment 39.3 | Summer 2021

Purchase a single copy of our summer 2021 issue. While there are many ways to interpret the markers of “progress” over the last millennium, one line stretching east along the x axis is the gradual displacement of bodies. Without quite realizing it, many of us pre-pandemic were starting to believe that bodily limitations could be cast aside in the quest for more—ignoring the boringly basic needs of our human bodies and their rhythms.

And so this year of death and disease has offered, in a tragically revealing way, a severe mercy of course correction. We’ve realized that embodiment is not actually a hurdle to overcome, but the very yeast for flourishing itself. How will we allow this to reshape our understanding of the good life? Will our app designers and urban planners, theories of change and individual habits reflect this recovery of our creatureliness, of givenness and finitude?

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The Dynamics of Moral Agency 39.2 | Spring 2021

The Dynamics of Moral Agency 39.2 | Spring 2021

We live in an era newly awash in moral language when it comes to the systemic and the social. Frameworks of white supremacy and systemic racism, illegitimate political authority and a corrupted elite dominate our mental maps, each charge vast yet pointed, weighty yet difficult to pin down. As many of us awaken to realities of history that seem to be demanding something new from our lives, the conscientious person is asking, Where is the way of wisdom? How do I avoid becoming paralyzed, or worse, reactive and destructive? What’s the call on persons when the stakes most discussed are not automatically accountable to a person? Is there a call?

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Rebuilding Trust 39.1 | Winter 2021

Rebuilding Trust 39.1 | Winter 2021

We are living through times that often feel like one long commentary on Joni Mitchell’s line “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” From regular encounters on the street to public sacraments, hospitality in the flesh to basic truth-telling from our leaders, it is not the sophisticated accoutrements of an advanced civilization that have screamed in their absence, but rather the rudimentary things we ordinarily take for granted. And among these invisible “essentials” is something increasingly at risk: trust. Symptoms of the rot abound, and just in the nick of time, many cultural observers are starting to take notice. We commend the diagnostic literature to you, but what this winter issue of Comment does is brave the “what now?” question: What might it take to build some trust back in to our withered commons, and for those who have never tasted trust’s rewards, sow it reliably for the first time?

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Navigating Uncertainty 38.4 | Fall 2020

Navigating Uncertainty 38.4 | Fall 2020

If 2020 is defined by one thing, it’s the ushering in of mass uncertainty. Uncertainty about how to behave in the face of a capricious virus, about the future, about whom to trust in the face of conflicting directives. What happens when a society that thought it was successful is shocked into realizing that it can no longer assume an infinitely upward path of progress? What happens to human character when we lose confidence in the same? This fall issue of Comment is an attempt to explore these questions with both honesty and tenderness. We are seeking wisdom from untapped sources—children, jazz, mathematics, cultures adept at thinking in the present tense, refugees, the materially poor. What can we learn from these ignored sages, and from the biblical narrative of exile itself?

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The Stories We Tell 38.2 | Spring 2020

The Stories We Tell 38.2 | Spring 2020

In an age when the humanities are struggling to defend their utility, history tremors at the tip of the spear. It doesn’t seem to explain the way things are, it’s not, well, current, and it doesn’t tickle our endless fascination with ourselves. Yet this spring issue exists to demonstrate that a prismatic study of history may be among the most important disciplines we can undertake for the recovery of a healthier public discourse and the beginnings of mutual accountability. We’ve invited an array of contributors to tell some histories with fresh integrity, explore the role of memory, and discern how much weight to give the past in discerning the contours of our present.

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The Tribes that Bind 38.1 | Winter 2020

The Tribes that Bind 38.1 | Winter 2020

It’s no secret that an “ism” has arisen to diagnose our suspicious moods one to another as group identities become primary and social isolation burrows in—tribalism. Most of us are increasingly living disaggregated lives, our sense of wholeness and belonging fragile as we peer out on a landscape that can appear chaotic at best, hostile at worst. Where is a people we can call our own? By what criteria is this people to be identified, and how then should our allegiance play out? This winter issue takes a pause before these questions, exploring the prismatic meanings and manifestations of tribe as both are shaping our horizons today.

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Love and Fear 37.3 | Fall 2019

Love and Fear 37.3 | Fall 2019

Purchase a single copy of our fall 2019 issue. Noli timere. Be not afraid. This command pervades the Scriptures, and yet many in Western societies are engulfed in a sense that doom is near and what was will no longer be. There is fracture and pain exploding out into the open—for some it’s long-rumbling, for others it’s a shock. Almost everyone feels besieged and misunderstood, reduced to a caricature and cut off without grace. But emerging from this morass is a call to a new kind of engagement with one another, one that Comment would like to answer with a long and unpredictable table that seats elite next to commoner, scholar next to practitioner, black next to white, able-bodied next to handicapped, young next to old, rich next to poor, privileged next to overlooked, immigrant next to indigenous. What does it require to be repairers of the breach? How can a magazine informed by 2,000 years of Christian social thought help us tend to the task? This print issue opens up these questions, inviting an exploration of the fears and loves that compete for eminence in a nation, a neighborhood, a society, a soul.

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To Build Is to Love 37.2 | Summer 2019

To Build Is to Love 37.2 | Summer 2019

Purchase a single copy of our summer 2019 issue. Our world is shaped by humanity’s desire to build and create—a desire that mimics the original Creator’s act of pure love. But is creating limited to artists and architects? In this issue of Comment, loving acts of creation are visible in all kinds of settings, from Wall Street firms to Midwestern farms, and they take many different forms: a daily commitment to one’s local neighbourhood; a compassionate kind of persuasion; or even a private thought. We hope you’ll be inspired to recognize the creative work of everyone around you who is faithfully building—and loving—in their own humble way.

Minimalism 36.4 | Winter 2018

Minimalism 36.4 | Winter 2018

Purchase a single copy of our winter 2018 issue. Minimalism is making its mark on society, one tiny succulent at a time. What does that mean for Christians? The North American church surely does overconsume. Perhaps embracing simplicity could be countercultural and lead us toward certain kinds of holiness and obedience that we’re lacking. Yet things are still at the centre of this new movement that is purportedly anti-consumerist, and might hospitality suffer when we decide that having “extra” is uniformly bad? Among the faith-motivated and others, some adopt minimalism to be on trend, but still others are embracing some really beautiful practices for beautiful reasons, even godly ones.

A Church for the World 35.3 | Fall 2017

A Church for the World 35.3 | Fall 2017

Purchase a single copy of our fall 2017 issue. This issue is all about the church: what it is, what it isn’t, and why it matters. Our concern isn’t just an apologetic for the public importance of the church. It raises important questions internal to the church—questions about reform and renewal. The health of society and the strength of social architecture depend on having churches that are centered on the supremacy of Christ, because to serve the Lord is to serve the world. It’s not if church is for the world, but how.