Latest Articles
Irony, fear and the sentimentality of terrorism
It seems odd in this era of “pervasive cultural irony” (David Foster Wallace) that Americans are so prone to sentimentality. We have been schooled to be cool with the shocking, the disgusting, the daring, the outrageous–to strike postures of ironic detachment and to mask our true feelings by displaying their opposite: indifference, say, for disappointment or amusement for anger. Having recently attended a reading featuring the poetry and fiction of undergraduates, I submit as anecdotal evidence a roomful of students and professors who winced not a whit as bland and clinical reportage about post-adolescent sexual experimentation was lauded as literary art.
Austerity takes some hits
This is a welcome development:
Call them the debt crisis dissenters.
The two parties are miles apart on how to cut the deficit and national debt: Republicans want to slash spending even more. Democrats want to raise revenue.
And then there are the other Democrats — the ones who reject the entire premise of the current high-stakes fiscal fight. There’s no short-term deficit problem, they say, and there isn’t even an urgent debt crisis that requires immediate attention.
Tuesday digest
New today from the Century: Philip Jenkins on the Waco siege 20 years later, Debra Dean Murphy on sentimentalism and terrorism, more.
Terror and guns
Three people died in the attack on the Boston Marathon. That same day, 11 Americans were murdered by guns.
Female converts to Islam facing growing scrutiny
When Karen Hunt Ahmed and her Muslim husband divorced four years ago, many friends asked her, “Now you can stop this Islam stuff, right?”...
God makes a home
Jesus’ promise that he and God will come make a home with us sounds like good news to me.
Our so-called secular age purports to have disenchanted us of our pre-modern superstitions. Many of us find God’s stark absence from our daily affairs to be our most prominent experience of the divine.
Impractical advice
If you check out Bibles online or in a bookstore, you are likely to run across something called a Life Application Study Bible....
Monday digest
New today from the Century: The editors on the relative problem of terrorism vs. gun violence, Andrew Packman blogs the lectionary, more.
Miniseries midrash
The hardest review to write is the B- review. And the History Channel’s five-part miniseries The Bible is neither excellent nor miserable.
Spring books: Reviews
Our spring books issue's reviews include Stanley Hauerwas on David Gushee, Shirley Hershey Showalter on Sonia Sotomayor, Ralph Wood on Rowan Williams and more.
Jerusalem court upholds women’s right to pray at Western Wall
Women who want to wear prayer shawls while praying in the women’s section of the Western Wall are not breaking the law, according to a landmark decision ...
Archiving M.E.M.O.
One of my tasks as the Century’s online-editorial intern is to archive past issues on the website. It can be tedious, but it’s also quite fascinating to see various subjects develop in the magazine’s pages over time. At this point I’ve worked back as far as Christmas 1998, meaning the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal is front and center. I was 11 when that happened; I know the present-day Clinton everyone loves much better than the 1998 Clinton no one knew what to do with.
But by far the highlight is reading Martin Marty’s old columns.
"No child's died yet, so they stay open."
In case you missed it last week, when the breaking-news kind of media kept dominating our attention: Jonathan Cohn's cover story on home-based child care is pretty startling.
Friday digest
New today from the Century: Katherine Willis Pershey reviews Glennon Melton and Rachel Srubas, John Turner reviews Catherine Brekus, more.
Sarah Osborn’s World, by Catherine A. Brekus
Catherine Brekus introduces us to a disturbing, heartbreaking and improbably inspiring life....
Carry On, Warrior and The Girl Got Up
Shortly after Glennon Melton was plucked from obscurity thanks to a series of enormously viral blog posts, Scribner beat out nine other major publishers in the bidding for her first book, Carry...