Colin Phelps is not the first to discover a graced thing in college: it’s the unchosen self-knowledge that is most liberating. | Continue reading
Scotsdale, AZ. With a vaccine on the horizon, it is time to think hard about how our country should look when the pandemic ends. The state of America under the coronavirus has been a window into liberal democracy left to its natural inclinations. While all countries have faced ch … | Continue reading
The FPR leadership has decided to make a foray into a new medium (for us). And given this transitional moment in American politics, this seems like a good time. We will be hosting an on-line discussion that, hopefully, provides an interesting and unique take on current events. Fo … | Continue reading
I have spent considerable time in ravines, drawn to them by an appetite for domestic exploration: though they worry me, I have also been drawn to them; I traverse the ravines to find the spirit of my place. | Continue reading
“Failures of Leadership in a Populist Age.” In an essay that rings even more true after the events of Wednesday, Yuval Levin warns would-be populist leaders to shun the temptations of fantasy and root their words and actions in reality: It is the task of leaders in populist eras … | Continue reading
Robinson presents us with an encounter: a participatory, embodied experience; a blessed and broken reality; the sacraments. And from this encounter, we receive courageous eyes to see the precious things that have been placed in our hands and to honor them accordingly. | Continue reading
Too many children grow up learning no lessons, organising no peers, and exploring no territory, unless it be shifting electrons around a screen, and the screen becomes their world. | Continue reading
In these days of Twitter democracy, when platforms for political expression are so accessible, it sometimes seems, paradoxically, that citizens have little actual say in decision making about our country’s future. | Continue reading
“If Mr. Kristof Is Taking Names, Apple Should Be Next.” Anthony Barr points out the profit-generated blind spot that permits Apple, Disney, and other American companies from profiting off of slave labor in Xinjiang. “Barry Lopez, Acclaimed Author And Traveler Beyond Many Horizons … | Continue reading
The enduring value of adding Jane Austen to my disciplines was not beholden to my expectation of enjoyment from a happy wedding nor was it dependent on my recognition that vice and virtue are at war in me and in the world. She won me by shaping a vision of joy built on virtue and … | Continue reading
Men are fallen creatures who think they’re perfectible when in fact they’re hardly improvable. | Continue reading
In this season for making resolutions, perhaps this opportunity might help those of you who want to read more books in 2021. I’m delighted to pass along this invitation from Porchers Bernard Franceschi and Zac Blanchard. “In the long run, exchange without reciprocity destroys the … | Continue reading
2020 has certainly had real trials and tribulations, but our approach to it is also reflective of a culture in which everything disliked has long been “the worst.” | Continue reading
George offers his joyful holiday greetings to these institutions as if they were persons, bodies that saw his town through good and bad, through war and peace. | Continue reading
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The departure of Donald Trump from the White House [crosses fingers] will assuredly not mean the departure of Trumpism from American life. The collection of grifters, paranoiacs, and devout (and, I think, devoutly misinformed) Christians who embrac … | Continue reading
Merry Christmas, Porchers! Thanks for joining us in this virtual space throughout what has certainly been an interesting year. While we missed our yearly conference, we’ve hosted a lively set of essays here on the website, published several new books, and sent out two rich issues … | Continue reading
There is nothing morally wrong with being poor, and the stigmatization that affects the poor probably only adds more to their burden. | Continue reading
When we see that beauty and imagination, rightly understood, are intellectual as well as affective, we no longer have to try to bridge some gap between imagination and reality. | Continue reading
Supportive efforts can steer this ingenious workforce toward better stewardship and environmental integrity by reclaiming that awe that life on the land should inspire. | Continue reading
The Cult of Smart is deeply entrenched in most modern systems of public education around the world, and the increasingly clear reality of cognitive and genetic differences between different human beings poses a sharp challenge to liberals whose membership in the Cult makes them w … | Continue reading
We all want students to think critically and to reflect on what they have encountered in the course of their education. In order to do that, however, they must have something to reflect upon. | Continue reading
The pandemic has provided an opportunity to recenter our lives around home and family | Continue reading
"In order to implement vital system updates, you must install the Trans-Mog-Z Facilitator, available at any Big Horizon Automotive Intervention Center. This has been your first notice.” | Continue reading
By deciding to farm, I was unwittingly leaving the progressive dominion of my college’s campus, and sidestepping that of the urban centers to which most of my peers were destined. | Continue reading
The Bruderhof do not blindly follow the status quo but have chosen to organize their life around simplicity, self-sacrifice, and peace. | Continue reading
Hillbilly Elegy is indeed political, but in a deeper sense, entangled as it is in the webs of broken promises and repeated forgiveness. | Continue reading
Jackson, MI. As a college professor and reader of Wendell Berry, I’ve long been concerned about the dominant narrative of “upward (and lateral) mobility” that draws students to higher education. These concerns led Jack Baker and me to write a book that tries to re-imagine these n … | Continue reading
Family-centered trades are not only the most durable throughout history; they are also the ideal context by which parents can pass their values, faith and culture on to the next generation. | Continue reading
Hall’s elegiac poetry and prose teach grim lessons that are worth heeding, but there is also a sort of unsentimental, necessary hope—a hope for continuity and unexpected rebirth, a hope that keeps open a sense of possibility—that shines obscurely beneath their grief. | Continue reading
Perhaps, without silence for a reference point—something out there that reminds us of our place in the big order of things—the masters of information feel free to shade, obscure, or otherwise manipulate their messages. | Continue reading
With the hope that the self-promotion involved doesn’t obviate whatever potential value the words written may convey, here is something I wrote, which I’d like to believe will be of interest to at least some of the Front Porch Republic audience, on the theme of civic friendship a … | Continue reading
I’ll be taking a break from compiling these weekly roundups during the Advent season. See you all after Christmas! “The Trappists’ Coffins.” In a moving essay, Leah Libresco Sargeant writes about the loving care with which a group of Trappist monks craft coffins, many of which ar … | Continue reading
This book at least provides a compelling diagnostic starting point, calling us back to our own networks of dependence and encouraging us to pursue friendship, particularly in the most challenging and vulnerable contexts. | Continue reading
Ordinary and unrefined, Kooser's poems suggest the steady hand of a craftsman who doesn’t need to go looking for the next big thing. | Continue reading
If Dolly Parton left the Smoky Mountains, it seems to have been on a hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell would have recognized. She came back, bearing gifts. | Continue reading
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Gillian Brockell, a talented writer and researcher for The Washington Post‘s history blog Retropolis, interviewed four esteemed historians and scholars of the Constitution, about what, if anything, the Founders had to say about the possibility of a … | Continue reading
“What are Families For?” The new issue of Plough is out, and it looks excellent. I am trying to avoid reading these essays, though, until my print copy arrives in the mail. Waiting won’t be easy. “Tending to the World’s Problems, One City and Town at a Time.” Richard Doster draws … | Continue reading
On the heels of a consequential election, and the accompanying commentary demonstrating the continued pervasiveness of race-thinking, Barzun’s message of honoring each human individual’s value while recognizing our shared common humanity is a timely and timeless message. | Continue reading
The idea that “no arguments or reasons have to be given to enable the experience of beauty” is dearly hopeful in a time when arguments and reasons are largely impotent in reaching people. | Continue reading
Amidst the ongoing chaos and conflict over the 2020 presidential election, and vote tabulating methodologies in particular, let’s remember—and celebrate—that so far it is really only federalism that has won the day. | Continue reading
“How to Protect America From the Next Donald Trump.” While proposals to abolish the Electoral College are popular at the moment, Bryan Garsten recommends strengthening the constitutional culture and local institutions designed to restrain demagogues: The college-educated elite an … | Continue reading
You can leave your corner of the country without escaping it. And these memoirs testify to the importance of bringing something back. | Continue reading
Many religions understand suffering to be laden with the potential for spiritual awakening through a reduction of worldly attachments. But Christianity has a unique understanding of suffering that offers a particular kind of solace. | Continue reading
If you’ve ever wanted to see Jason Peters via a livestream video feed, this is your chance. On Wednesday, November 11, from 1:30 – 2:30 pm (ET), the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture at Seton Hall University is hosting an online conference on the theme of “Driving Wi … | Continue reading
Even in the midst of this sad era of cold, objective ambition, the possibility of grateful participation in the cosmic life of creation remains for each of us. | Continue reading
“Magic in the Dirt.” Julia Turshen visits three small farms to talk with the farmers about their philosophy and the bounty of this strange year. Brian Dawson’s videos and photos compose an immersive account of these three harvests. “Everyone Loses the Culture Wars.” Elizabeth Cor … | Continue reading
In the Wine Press gathers together a host of rough-edged stories of American Christians living in the rise and fall of both Evangelical Catholic and Protestant American Christianity, which arose in the twilight of the Clinton era and peaked during the confluence of religious ferv … | Continue reading
Whatever our color or life or place of origin, we can all sing of our longing for home, our love of the natural world, our delight in children, and our loss. | Continue reading