The Wittenberg Door

Reading the Bourgeois Mind with Léon Bloy

Léon Bloy delivers satires that aim to liberate souls from cages they did not even know they occupied.

The Axial Age and the Sacred Community

Our disregard of tradition and community has left us alienated and estranged compared to more traditional societies that rely on a web of family, community, and religion.

A Resurrection Story

On May 20, 1945, days after the end of World War II, my mother’s Aunt Anne was shot in both legs by a Communist gunman in Yugoslavia and left for dead.

Thomas Aquinas: Front Porch Cosmologist

Thomas’ cosmological theology was thoroughly enchanted and magical, and it is his enchanted and magical view of the cosmos that we so critically need today.

Weird Christianity’s Aesthetic and the Tyranny of Values

So long as old Christianity is treated as an aesthetic or an alternative lifestyle or a set of values contending against alienated modernity, it will never be anything more than a therapeutic commodity. But if we allow it to reckon with us, we may find ourselves snared in the grasp of “something real.”

Imagining Divine Participation

No matter how fallen or distant from God the world around us may seem, the distance is never absolute.

“And the Word Was Made Flesh”: Placing Ethnicity in the Gospels...

It is a recognition of the beauty and goodness of ethnic diversity combined with a message of universal love and mercy that should be at the heart of a true Christian politics.

The Silence of the Bells

The war on coronavirus is silencing vital cultural and cultic rhythms in America. Easter reminds us that what comes after silence can make it worth the wait.

Pandemics, Power, and Holy Week

On Good Friday, Pilate and nearly everyone else thought that he was in control. He wasn’t. And on this Good Friday, Pilate’s heirs have much less power than they think they do.

With One Eye Squinted: R.R. Reno and Living Life in a...

Let us not, however, in our haste to condemn Reno for his imprudent practical advice, ignore the truth of the underlying point. Religious believers hold that there is more to existence than this material life.