Life knocks us down. It is the price of this world, however much we may kid ourselves otherwise. Our falls become part of us. | Continue reading
The editor-in-chief of the FPR website discusses the recent conference in Grand Rapids and his latest book, Words for Conviviality. Highlights 1:00 Pacific Northwesterner in western PA 8:00 Prospects for localism and trad wives now 11:00 Bilbro’s obsessive bibliography 17:00 Prin … | Continue reading
If there ever comes a true accounting of the costs we’re racking up for making, using, and discarding our mobile (de)vices, we will be obliged to admit that there has been no net gain. The withdrawals from the account exceed the deposits in both number and in sum. | Continue reading
“The Place of Tides by James Rebanks Review—Ducking Out of a Midlife Crisis.” Helen Davies praises Rebanks’s “quietly profound book. It is a story about a still-essential way of living in the modern world and finding a way to keep going. It is also a deft travelogue to one of the … | Continue reading
We’re announcing a student essay contest! If you’re a student, consider submitting an essay, and if you know any students, encourage them to apply. Students are invited to respond either to Berry’s (in)famous essay “Why I’m Not Going to Buy a Computer” or to his essay “In Defense … | Continue reading
We might at least keep in mind the importance of proximity and presence and real encounters of flesh and blood. For the messy business of politics let us have Chesterton’s quip: “It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.” | Continue reading
Organized community events bring people together and are an integral part of forging strong communal bonds in a place. Like the law, they serve a purpose in a community’s ecosystem of relationships. | Continue reading
You don’t have to be normal. You don’t have to be weird. You just have to be a person – which is a moral ideal, not a fact of nature – and let the chips fall. | Continue reading
To love and learn from each other in our communities is what good gossiping accomplishes. | Continue reading
“Against Killing Children.” In a new essay, Wendell Berry speaks against the violence on which our machine age runs and invites us to imagine an alternative way of relating to one another: “From the beginning, Jews and Christians are given a definition of ourselves—made in the im … | Continue reading
If we choose to befriend our many obligations—to connect with other people, to love, to serve, to create, to borrow, to lend, to repair, to celebrate, to support—instead of buying a product or a service—then we are cultivating fertile ground for a healthy form of gendered coopera … | Continue reading
Maybe, in the end, a home library does what a long-inhabited home does: charts a middle ground between the chaos of the world and the hyper-rationality of modernity. | Continue reading
As we make plans for next year’s conference, we’re inviting input from Porchers regarding what you might value in upcoming gatherings. Whether you’re a regular FPR conference attendee or haven’t yet come to one, please fill out this brief form. Thanks! | Continue reading
It is a reality not frequently enough acknowledged: like so many other things in life, the love of reading is caught, not taught. | Continue reading
Thanks to all who joined us for a wonderful gathering in Grand Rapids last weekend. On Friday evening, Jeff Polet and Ross Douthat conversed about populism, Lasch, and American presidential politics. The discussion may have been a bit more national in scope than is typical for an … | Continue reading
So the core of We Have Never Been Woke is persuasive, and it's hard not to see his thesis in operation in all kinds of fields, once you look at the world his way. | Continue reading
My guest once again is His Imperial and Royal Highness, His Excellency Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and Ambassador of Hungary to The Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta. He is the author of the new book Building a Wholesome Family in a Broken World: Habsburg Lessons … | Continue reading
Joshua Hren’s new novel, Blue Walls Falling Down, releases today. We’re happy to share the following excerpt with FPR readers. | Continue reading
I heard it then, followed by a man’s agonizing cry. I hear it now in every Franco-Norman word we unknowingly pronounce: that arrow piercing King Harold’s eye. | Continue reading
The future of our built environment is in our hands. We can reject the alienation of modernism and instead foster spaces that cultivate connection, celebrate history, and create a sense of belonging. | Continue reading
Like the sonnet, the five-paragraph essay traps investment in truth felt in the heart and forged in the mind by means of its life-respecting limitations. | Continue reading
Christianity is not merely a doctrine to believe but a life to live and embody. East understands this and invites Future Saints into a different imagination and way of life. | Continue reading
When we toast we celebrate our fight against the forces of darkness and evil. | Continue reading
“News from the Berry Center.” The Berry Center fall newsletter provides updates on their ongoing work, and Mary Berry’s opening letter serves as a good reminder of their vision for good farming, good land, and good communities: “Our dominant economy over the last century has made … | Continue reading
If we don’t experience full, unqualified “concrete, historical community,” then we won’t experience full, unqualified “genuine deliberation.” | Continue reading
To find these deeper wells of silence, however, we must seek them out, whether in the woods or the deserts of our own shut doors. | Continue reading
These questions would cause little debate or consternation without the importance of place tethering them. And, despite the erasure of communitarian mindsets and regional identity, place still matters. | Continue reading
Look at what has sometimes happened to Christian architecture in America, for example; tragic declines in quality are matched by the inability of people to even notice how bad it all is. | Continue reading
While it is impossible to be sure what the ultimate cultural importance of this movie will be, I do think Walsh has hit a nerve. | Continue reading
“In Defiance of All Powers.” Peter Mommsen introduces Plough’s new issue on Freedom. It looks quite promising, but my physical copy hasn’t arrived yet, so I’m exercising restraint: “as my teenage son is now tired of hearing because he just wants to go fishing, freedom to play the … | Continue reading
What the Amish understand perhaps more than we do is the necessity of maintaining and protecting domains of embodied human agency in our lives. | Continue reading
Brian Miller (author of Kayaking with Lambs) is hosting a BBQ at his farm outside Philadelphia, TN with some Doomer Optimism friends. They’ll be gathering Sept. 28 from 6-10. Guests are asked to bring a side dish. If you’re interested in joining, RSVP to Brian Miller, and he’ll s … | Continue reading
Contemplating this turn of events in our politics reminds me that we human beings have a strong desire for tidy coherence. Sometimes this desire can be a kind of sickness. | Continue reading
Pastoral ministry in prison can change lives, but it doesn’t magically erase the pain of incarceration. | Continue reading
The AEI scholar and author of American Covenant joins John to talk about a document that he believes could unify we the people, again. Highlights 1:30 Second home 8:15 The national “we” 13:45 A dignified basis for unity 21:00 Changing culture by changing institutions 25:00 Make C … | Continue reading
For the task of understanding the past demands honesty, humility, and respect for all aspects of human nature, from the material to the intellectual and volitional and—above all—the spiritual. | Continue reading
Language is primarily a relational (rather than a representational) technology. Words articulate our relationships to God, other humans, our environment, and even ourselves. | Continue reading
“How a Vermont Cheesemaker Helps Local Farms Thrive.” The essay up on FPR’s front page right now by Lenny Wells describes some possibilities for small farmers to find a “seam” in the global farm market where they can thrive. Jake Price profiles how Jasper Hill Farm has created a … | Continue reading
There are much easier ways to make money than farming. The primary goal of a good farmer is to find success in caring for one’s land, community, and family. | Continue reading
Society needs its most talented individuals to not just dive into the fray of politics and policy but to build the institutions that shape culture. | Continue reading
Nevertheless, if someone of a conservative disposition wishes to produce excellent art that, in a certain sense, supports conservatism, the best thing they can do is to focus simply on producing excellent art. | Continue reading
Chris Arnade writes the Substack ‘Chris Arnade Walks the World,’ which chronicle his wanderings as he literally walks and walks and walks all over the world. He is the author and photographer for the book Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America. Chris and I discuss the value … | Continue reading
Hence this book is something special: a new set of Christian fables on natural law that do more than teach simple morals or seek to modify children’s behavior. | Continue reading
A machine can read books out loud to the baby. A machine can rock the baby to sleep. Smart devices and apps can do these and many other things. But they can do none of them in love. | Continue reading
“Twelve Months to Fall Back in Love with America.” Anarchist, hobo, Coast Guardsman, Catholic, Front Porch Republic conference-goer, and now newlywed A.M. Hickman is traveling America with his wife Keturah and looking for signs of communal vitality: “Everywhere, a rattling juxtap … | Continue reading
Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 Just So Stories are a delightful anomaly—they feel like folk tales but were largely invented by Kipling himself as bedtime stories for his eldest daughter, Josephine. | Continue reading
America is known for its English-Protestant roots, for the pilgrims who settled the Eastern seaboard and the Anglos who descended from them. But America has a French-Catholic history, too, and Northern Michigan is a central location in that history. | Continue reading
As she engages ultimate questions about human life, Little models the pursuit of virtue and the concomitant wrestling with vice involved in this pursuit. | Continue reading