What US veterans taught me about The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan joins Simone Weil in a long tradition of reading the poem as a condemnation of war in all times and places.
Daniel Berrigan and the religion of war
The radical Catholic peace activist believed war is a religion that only a rival liturgy can resist.
The war with Iran is the crowning stupidity of our stupid age
No work of art better unveils war’s essential stupidity than Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
The massacre that never ends
The brief biblical account of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents raises the question of what faith demands when politics fails to stop the killing.
The Cities Church protest and Bonhoeffer’s “promising godlessness”
When a pastor is an ICE agent, faithfulness might be found in what looks like its exact opposite—the active disruption of Christian practice.
All nativity scenes are political
The anti-ICE and “Christ in the rubble” nativity scenes are also theologically profound—and fully in keeping with the best Christmas traditions.
Is fascism inherently Christian?
Antifascist writers of the last century grappled with the same bewilderment we do—and they made sense of their politics theologically.
Mandatory mourning
What the responses to Charlie Kirk’s death reveal about truth, power, and the Christian call to honest grief
The blasphemy of national Christianity
When push comes to shove for nationalist Christians, ethnicity comes first.
How politicians use the Bible
Scholar Hannah Strømmen provides a helpful guide for navigating our scripture-saturated political discourse.
Trump’s artificial images
The AI-generated meme is this administration’s house style—moral degradation made visible.
Why does J. D. Vance want more American babies?
Pronatalists fixate on tomorrow’s imaginary children. Baptism demands that we care for those already born.
False gods of war
In Trump’s Situation Room, as on the fields of Ilium, those who wage war seem unable to experience the violence they inflict as real violence.
J. D. Vance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the parable of the Good Samaritan
The vice president’s mangling of the Christian ordo amoris is just a smokescreen for the largest deportation operation in American history.
Simone Weil’s anti-fascist blueprint
Ros Schwartz’s translation of The Need for Roots makes Weil’s masterpiece feel as urgent today as it was in 1943.
Political demons
For theologian and civil rights activist William Stringfellow, understanding American politics means taking demons seriously.