Articles 356

Christianity spread because people actually believed Jesus was their Lord and Savior. They believed in miracles not metaphors.

Proper forgetting depends on the idea of a nation itself. For Renan, “a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle” built on two things, the past and the present.

To prove the American proposition, we must dedicate our lives to its truth with our deeds every day, and maybe someday with our lives themselves.

I belong to this place—if not for the next thousand years, at least for the summer. In such a displaced age, even that has to mean something.

My grief would overwhelm me if I were not in God's grace. — Joan of Arc, February 24, 1431

Between these extremes, however, is free choice within reasonable limits, which I believe makes the value of community and its deliberative fruits still possible, even within the reality of the…

However, in St. Thomas and the Forbidden Birds, James Matthew Wilson shows that the seeds of a rebirth of civilization are to be planted and nurtured in the soil of…

Like the very young and the very old among us, we must forget the learned delusion of independence that revolution prefers and accept the radical dependence of the human condition.

While she relates the years of kaleidoscopic confusion, she provides waypoints to keep the reader grounded: “This is where we are, and this is where we’re going.”

Automobiles shield you from the outside world, its sounds, its colors. But on my bike, I encounter my environment directly.

In other words, knowledge and reason are no match for our gargantuan vices. The giants passion and pride cannot be held at bay by the ignorance that prevails in public…

Her work is certainly redolent of sorrow and, as she describes it, the eternity that dwells within her. But her words also carry hope and surprising faith that she will…

Williams reminds us of a lesson that we should have already learned good and hard, namely that rejection of Christianity does not result in blissful liberation and self-expression.

So whatever value motherhood gets assigned on earth, it’s pretty clear what position it holds on high. You may feel invisible here, but you certainly aren’t in Heaven.

Perhaps one day moral clarity on this issue will be found or the values of the American people will align more neatly. Until that day arrives, if ever it does,…

But our culture’s celebration of Halloween suggests that we know yet more. We sense not only that we are dust and will return to it; we also sense that life…

A democracy is not kept by filling in a ballot bubble once every four years. It’s kept by responsibly and virtuously exercising our freedoms in our homes, communities, and institutions…

One of the novel’s achievements is the way that it unfolds this centuries-long story with both clarity and subtlety, establishing a clear feel for right and wrong while casting no…

When Christ died on the cross, the disciples did not know he was going to rise again. But for Christians today, we see the full picture, and these are not…

Zoning laws, housing codes, and a culture marked by suspicion and antisociality make it difficult to revive the boarding house, a living arrangement that once applied to nearly half of…

Perhaps that’s the lesson at the heart of both The Master and His Emissary and Moby-Dick: when we adopt a utilitarian posture of domination over the world, we misapprehend it.

I had to understand life and nature not as something to be mastered, but as gifts afforded to me to steward by a God abundant in goodness.

Life knocks us down. It is the price of this world, however much we may kid ourselves otherwise. Our falls become part of us.

The editor-in-chief of the FPR website discusses the recent conference in Grand Rapids and his latest book, Words for Conviviality.  Highlights Resources Jeff's bio and buy the book (and some…