Benjamin J. Dueholm
Zora Neale Hurston brings us the voice of a former slave
Hurston's singular ear for the beauty of speech and memory brings Cudjo Lewis's story to life.
The talented Tara Isabella Burton
In Burton's debut novel, Louise and Lavinia represent the possibility that compulsive self-disclosure is a form of self-concealment.
Confessions of a (moderate) prude
I am finally old enough to admit something: the mysteries of adulthood, those "mature themes" we try to hide from the young, are mostly stupid.
The servant who perseveres (Isaiah 50:4-9a)
Isaiah’s suffering servant plays on our own ambivalent ideas about violence, passivity, and retribution.
What does a high priest do? (Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33)
A worshiper can go a long time without any idea of who Melchizedek is and what it means to be a priest according to his order.
March 25, Palm Sunday B (Mark 11:1-11)
Humility isn't a stunt for Jesus—it's a condition of his life.
March 25, Passion Sunday B (Mark 14:1-15:47; Psalm 31:9-16)
In the hours before the Passion, the Jesus who was hidden becomes revealed.
March 18, Lent 5B (John 12:20-33)
The crucified Jesus in John's Gospel is cosmic—and magnetic.
The earnest, hilarious Al Franken
The senator's jokes are still funny, even if Trump has made his satire obsolete.
Marilynne Robinson's vision for democracy
Critics are correct that Robinson doesn't offer an alternative to the Christian Right. But she never claimed to.
Obama's unprecedented voice
No president knew the literature and religion of America better—not even Lincoln.
Political songs of love and hate
Leonard Cohen's spiritual side had an erotic edge—and an eschatological one.
To know and not to know
Understanding an election requires stories. Last night, our stories proved inadequate.
A baptism in a world of violence
When I parked the minivan in the church lot, it still sounded like the type of horror we have had no choice but to become stoic about: 20 dead in a bar, as many more wounded, a dead shooter and a thicket of questions. By the time I returned it had become something different.
How does it end?
The apocalypse, it seems, is cultural and psychological rather than historical. One can only hope that this theory is right.
After Trump's rise, will conservatives be Plato or Diogenes?
Plato, it is said, confronted Diogenes as the great Cynic philosopher washed his greens for dinner. “If you had humored Dionysius”—the tyrant of Syracuse who had called Plato as an adviser—”you wouldn’t be rinsing greens now.”
Diogenes answered him, “And if you rinsed greens, you wouldn’t have been a slave to Dionysius.”
God and man in Trumpland
This week, the National Review published a statement to Catholics opposing Donald Trump’s campaign for president. Authored by right-wing eminences George Weigel and Robert George, and cosigned by an impressive list of Catholic intellectuals and leaders, the document joins a body of anti-Trump literature that is coming into its own stentorian rhetorical conventions.
Trumpism without racism?
Something subtle and remarkable has happened in American politics—and, it seems, in democracies across the developed world. The big arguments over what the state owes the people, in terms of services and public welfare, have been somewhat eclipsed. Now the focus is on who counts as people in the first place.
Theological work to be done, but by whom?
Writing at a safe remove from the fever swamps and the hate crimes—without, in fact, even mentioning them—Ross Douthat argues that pious Muslims must inevitably face conflict between the “lure of conquest, the pull of violent jihad” and the ambiguous, unsettled place of traditional religion in a secularizing culture.