I’ve been told that workers have had to step away from the register while checking out paying customers to chase away repeat shoplifters as they hurled all kinds of epithets at them…on top of one elderly worker having a milkshake hurled at her face. As much as middle management f … | Continue reading
Paul Kingsnorth opened his Friday evening talk by remarking that he traveled 4,000 miles to talk with us about localism. The many talks and conversations that followed over the next day addressed more of the ironies and tensions endemic to living well as humans in an age dominate … | Continue reading
Criticizing the ministry-industrial complex does not mean professional resources have no place in ministry. It is not so much their use as their guiding role in congregational life that prevents churches from prioritizing deeper formation. Information and inspiration are good, bu … | Continue reading
“Keep doing what you can to build strong towns”: that’s the motto of Strong Towns, a citizen-driven, localism-minded urbanist group now over 1,000 members nationwide and beyond. But a recent article in Current Affairs by Allison Lirish Dean suggests that we–and the Strong Towns … | Continue reading
We need to love smaller, more energy-efficient houses and cars in order to love people more. We need to give up much of our casual oil consumption for leisure. We need to love being a little hungry now and then to avoid food waste. We need to create ways of leisure that are joyou … | Continue reading
children are inchoately aware of the sadness of the world; it’s another of the human mysteries that they already have access to. Lobel’s genius is in choosing for his subject tragedies that are too small to really qualify as tragedies, and thus by the paradoxes of the spiritual w … | Continue reading
Whether America ever was or is exceptional is a matter for further discussion; but Tocqueville’s own estimate of America in the early nineteenth century was mixed at best and negative at worst. He obviously wished that democracy had produced a more learned and refined culture tha … | Continue reading
My point is not to get lost in conventional debate here. But seeking to heal from the culture war, I want to uncover the bodies of my neighbors, which industrial stories kick in the face, deform, and then at election time bury beneath the red-blue map. Aligned with my neighbors, … | Continue reading
“Macedonia Morning.” Dana Wiser relates an inspiring account of a group of people committed to leading lives in the service of peace, despite the many attendant challenges: “Staughton once told me, ‘I try to live by Matthew 25 to the extent that I am able to do so.’ He understood … | Continue reading
Friendship may also be an art that invites our probing, if also by inviting resists it. Careful study of any great work of art gives way to knowledge, and knowledge, when it is more fully grown, presents to us by way of return a greater mystery than we started with. Our knowing s … | Continue reading
The crumbling liberal democratic order, combined with climate change and various environmental crises, has led to widespread reconsideration of the basics of political thought. Among the strongest forces in this conversation is the attempt to reimagine a human political community … | Continue reading
In her introduction, Hudson calls The Soul of Civility “a humanistic manifesto.” And she’s right: the book is steeped in humanism, in more ways than one. First, Hudson underscores the profound potential of humanistic texts, from a variety of human civilizations, to pinpoint the t … | Continue reading
None of us gets to choose where we land. But if we cannot choose the times in which we live, we can choose how we live in the time we are given. Will we do so thoughtfully or heedlessly? Courageously or cravenly? Honestly and honorably or falsely and deplorably? | Continue reading
Liberal values and institutions have failed, that we now require passionate, extreme activists to accomplish what is necessary to address these failings, and that these radical activists must mount campaigns for new principles, practices, and institutions if we are to survive the … | Continue reading
“The New Colonialist Food Economy.” If you don’t want your blood to boil, then don’t read Alexander Zaitchik’s essay on the colonial efforts of NGOs and seed corporations to take over the seed market in Africa and Central America: “the new generation of agricultural reforms seeks … | Continue reading
Maybe we can just call it something else, like, “Living with family and friends in a neighborhood designed to encourage the building of social capital, relying on them in real and tangible ways (rather than just manufacturing reasons to occasionally interact with them), and overc … | Continue reading
It is not solely (or perhaps even primarily) about there being more hours of work and therefore less time for reading. It is about the possibility of work hovering over every moment of supposed leisure. For me, that is the fundamental distraction, not TikTok. So yes, smartphones … | Continue reading
A good number of Christian scholars draw first and foremost on Thomas Aquinas for their accounts of beauty. Desmond, though he’s aware of and engages with the Thomistic tradition, has spent much of his career interacting with the thought of Hegel, perhaps most directly, as it per … | Continue reading
Daytripper reminds people that you don’t have to go far to see something new. Even small towns have a special local food or watering hole. Every place has history. And it’s fun to swim in a new lake. It’s good to kayak a new river or hike a new hill. Wherever you are, your own st … | Continue reading
The newest book from FPR Books is Brian Miller’s Kayaking with Lambs. Enjoy this excerpt, and then pick up a copy of the book. This life is not what was expected when first I took up farming. Even today it is hard to conjure the farmer I envisioned two decades ago. No doubt he wa … | Continue reading
Barba-Kay argues that we tend to resolve our cognitive dissonance by outsourcing all the choices that do matter and consoling ourselves with a plethora of choices that don't. | Continue reading
The aim is to get young people, of all backgrounds and races, on their feet with as little fuss and expense as we can, regardless of whether their families can afford the usurious colleges, and by doing so, to empower families that are richer in brains and in common moral virtues … | Continue reading
The liberty and justice which republics are erected to safeguard requires, as Milton and the Founders knew, a moral, virtuous, and religious citizenry. Without this moral and virtuous spirit, the citizenry is slothful and servile. Despotism takes hold once the bulwark of liberty … | Continue reading
Bill Kauffman, author of multiple books including Poetry Night at the Ballpark and long the closing speaker at FPR conferences, talks about the origins of Front Porch Republic and his unique life of letters. Host: John Murdock Guest: Bill Kauffman Highlights 1:30 De … | Continue reading
I’ll be out of town the second half of next week for a book launch event in NYC. Since I’ll be on the road, I probably won’t have a chance to post a Water Dipper next weekend, but I’ll plan to be back the following week. “I’ve Always Loved Tech. Now, I’m a Luddite. You […] | Continue reading
This trend is peaking in a small rectangle, the smartphone. As Marc Barnes observes, the smartphone has replaced the TV. The smartphone is portable and personal and has enticed us to enjoy our shows in our private rooms. The ubiquity of the smartphone is an artifact of our own lo … | Continue reading
There are things that a full room can do for us. It can reassure us. It can offer comfort. It can offer luxury and pleasant distractions. A full room can be cozy and a crowded refrigerator reassuring. A room can be full of company. We can be and feel less alone. A full room can t … | Continue reading
It is, I realized, handy to have a proper template handy, ready to use, should my fears come true, and I discover that I really did forget to answer an email for a few months, and then need to send a very thorough and sincere apology. In fact, it is possible that such an email is … | Continue reading
While many recognize the limits of human language and the ways it has sometimes been used to harm, they see language as capable of naming (or, at least, gesturing toward) the dance of matter and spirit that constitutes human existence. | Continue reading
“Inis Cealtra.” Paul Kingsnorth explains—sort of—what he’ll be writing about for the foreseeable future. What makes it challenging to explain is that he’s after something beyond words: “The silence of the hermit, the reality of the well: the faith that is rooted in the rocks, and … | Continue reading
Babbitt and More advocated the study of the humanities as a tool for the shaping of human souls toward virtue, helping confront what Babbitt characterized as the “civil war of the cave” that occurs in every human heart. Babbitt and More’s roughly forty-year friendship produced sc … | Continue reading
Oppenheimer replies to him “Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love.” | Continue reading
I’ve found that in perplexing or challenging circumstances, “why?” is a boring question. We like why. The leadership guru Simon Sinek asks us to start with why. It’s a popular question. I’m not against finding your why. I just think it’s overrated. Particularly in suffering or pa … | Continue reading
You can’t actually get to utopia; it only seems like you can because it looms so large. I think it’s better to start wherever you are, and ask what it needs you to do. | Continue reading
“The Community Community.” Nathan Beacom parses the effects that digital technologies have had on the way we imagine and experience community: “something important has changed about the way we think about community in the internet age. A word that once referred to a group of peop … | Continue reading
The course I am teaching is part of the university’s core curriculum. Core comes from the Latin word for “heart,” I told my students. The same Latin root, cor, gives us the word, courage, I added. Why might the courses at the heart of the university’s curriculum require courage? … | Continue reading
Mr. McNabb recognizes the central passion of Fr. Vincent: his deep love for Christ, expressed through a severe asceticism, a total devotion to traditional Catholic doctrine and social teaching, a commitment to love and serve the poor, a tireless effort to preach and teach the Gos … | Continue reading
Repeatedly, some of the best students I have taught have been homeschooled. What set them apart was precisely the spirit of bold curiosity that I see in my own kids: that bright light in their eyes, an interest in asking questions and in pursuing rabbit trails independently. | Continue reading
The ecomodernist approach of Regenesis relies on a mechanistic understanding of humanity. The presumption is that humans are merely fleshy machines that can adapt to flourish in any environment as long as their basic material needs are met. That doesn’t match with most people’s e … | Continue reading
“The Kind of People We Need at the End of the World.” Elizabeth Oldfield shares her family’s journey into communal living and relates how the humble, daily acts of prayer and cooking and gardening form her response to the forces of despair: “I am gardening because I feel anxious … | Continue reading
When my wife and I started our rural homestead, we were suburbanites with a lot of ideas. For one, we’d do everything organically. No question. Second, we’d endeavor to only use hand tools. Scythe, sickle, spade. We’d become experts in the old ways. And third, we’d limit outside … | Continue reading
Even in our modern age, then, it seems that Trueman’s “modern self” as narcissistic echo chamber, unconstrained by relationships with family and community, has not entirely triumphed after all. | Continue reading
Conjuring makes me think of force and manipulation, which as writers we have to forswear. Readers will either notice they're being manipulated and throw our books aside—or maybe worse, they won't notice, and then we'll be called to account for whatever it is we've irresponsibly d … | Continue reading
We were all, adults and children alike, doing things that really mattered to the whole free world, and we’d better get on with doing them, every day, all the time. Everyone came from somewhere else and was hustling on their way to somewhere more important. Perhaps we were, all of … | Continue reading
“The Death of Conservatism Is Greatly Exaggerated.” In her critical response to Jon Askonas’s essay on how technologies erode traditions, Christine Rosen takes issue with his argument that conservatism has failed to adequately respond to technological disruptions: “In our technol … | Continue reading
But that love for baseball didn’t mean that we organized our lives around the sport, or that any parent with a Little Leaguer had baseball scholarships in mind. It didn’t enter into the picture. A child’s life was not packaged up and dressed for ambition. That meant, too, that th … | Continue reading
Laird Mackintosh is a longtime Broadway actor who had the opportunity and privilege to play the Phantom himself in the final performances of the Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom closed in April after 35 years on Broadway and was Broadway’s longest running show. Laird discusses p … | Continue reading
What comes out is a story of a small group of Reformed Canadian Baptists who are rural, hardworking, self-educated (largely by reading the Bible), and persistent in becoming holy, but not without earning some dry humor along the way. Jeffrey excels at the hard task of publishing … | Continue reading