My latest: the rise of digital lectors, in CT

My April 18 Christianity Today column was called “Biblical Literacy in a Postliterate Age.” Last week, on May 8, CT published my follow-up, titled “Digital Lectors for a Postliterate Age.”

I’d always intended a sequel, and later this summer I may write a final column to complete a loose trilogy of reflections on Scripture, literacy, and technology in the church. This latest one covers a range of creative responses to postliterate believers, seekers, and drifters, from the Bible Project to Father Mike’s The Bible in a Year podcast to Jonathan Pageau and the Symbolic World to Alastair Roberts and many others. I call them “digital lectors,” readers and expositors of Scripture for a digital—which is to say, a postliterate—age.

In between the two columns, there were a couple noteworthy interactions with my claims about the state of biblical literacy (and literacy in general) in the church. The first was a conversation on the Holy Post podcast between Skye Jethani and Kaitlyn Schiess; you can find it on video here, starting around minute 33. The second was a response from Jessica Hooten Wilson (whom I quote in the piece), in a piece on her Substack called “The Post-literate Church.” Both engagements are friendly, thoughtful, critical, and worth your time. I’m grateful to all of them for their reflections.

23 thoughts on The Phantom Menace

Twenty-five years ago I saw Episode I with a childhood best friend in the theater that sits at the entrance to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida; last night I saw the re-release with my sons at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. I’ve got thoughts.

1. No matter its potential, no matter the what-might-have-beens, no matter the revisionist reviews or retconning or retrievals, three things were always going to keep TPM from being a great Star Wars film: (a) an eight-year-old Anakin; (b) unnecessary narrative nostalgia; and (c) cutesy cartoon schmaltz. We now have forty years’ worth of evidence that these decisions were not departures from the vision of George Lucas, but part and parcel of it. To change course, he would have had to listen to outside voices suggesting that Anakin be eighteen, not eight; that Anakin not be the original builder of C-3PO; that Jar Jar and Watto and Sebulba and “sleemo” and “doo-doo” and ha-ha neighborhood Tatooine slave children taunting “Ani” are neither funny nor endearing, including to actual children. But Lucas doesn’t believe in listening to others, here in his galaxy above all. So there’s no sliding doors moment where Episode I is truly excellent; it was always going to be hamstrung from the start.

2. A partial addition to this list is Lucas’s obsession with “cutting edge” CGI, which everyone but him knows ceases to be cutting edge the moment the car drives off the lot. On re-watch, though, had the film lacked the above three items of dead weight without cutting the gratuitous CGI, it could have held up. So long as the animated characters weren’t cartoonish or racist(!)—a big “if”—then TPM would have been like Terminator 2 or Jurassic Park or Fellowship of the Ring. The “dated” graphics aren’t dated at all: they’re remarkable testaments to digital artistry. Rather than what they became, which is testaments to Lucas’s softness for silliness.

3. A friend told me years ago that a professor of his ruined The Godfather for him by pointing out Diane Keaton’s acting in it. Allow me to suggest that Natalie Portman is the Kay Adams of The Phantom Menace—indeed, of all three prequel trilogy episodes. She’s not exactly spectacular or awful, the way Hayden Christensen is on screen and going for it and not quite succeeding but still, you know, doing a thing. It’s a void, an absence, a null. She’s a non-presence in every single scene. I’m happy to blame Lucas for this instead of Portman, both for his direction and for his writing of the character. (Portman is, after all, a very accomplished actor outside of Star Wars, which was one reason to be excited about her casting!) Nevertheless one-half of the Skywalker twins’ parentage is a zero in our introduction to her. A lost opportunity.

4. The only time Portman is half-alive is when she “plays” her own double on Tatooine and repeatedly butts heads with Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn. But then, the entire handmaiden/queen ruse and its “reveal” is goofy to begin with. I wonder how it played with adults at the time. I vaguely recall being surprised in 1999, yet minus any payoff. The only narrative logic is that it allows Lucas to put Portman in town with Neeson when they meet and befriend Anakin and his mother Shmi. Otherwise it’s a dead end.

5. Given the furor it caused at the time, I have to admit that, on re-watch these many years later, with so many shows and film and canon filled out, I don’t mind the Midi-chlorians one bit. It’s actually rather elegantly done, I must say. Begone, haters! Hier stehe ich und kann nicht anders.

6. There are other clunky bits, not least just about everything related to the Gungans as well as the deep-sea adventure through the planet’s core, plus some of the Trade Federation politics- and alien-speak (again, those accents are shameful). That said … like all the other revisionists, I can’t hate this movie, and there’s a lot to appreciate, even love. Let me count the ways.

7. Neeson’s Qui-Gon is not only a home run: well conceived, well written, and well executed. He may be one of Lucas’s greatest creations. He commands every scene. He’s always in his own skin, comfortable where others are not. His simultaneous uncertainty, confusion, confidence, and resolve are palpable. The hints at his past and his running conflict with the Council are expertly deployed in their ambiguity. He has chemistry with everyone: with Portman, with Ewan McGregor, with Jake Lloyd, with Pernilla August. Neeson somehow single-handedly elevates this movie from forgettable to memorable, at least when he’s on screen (which is a lot). All this is not even to mention the moral gray that Lucas leans into with Qui-Gon. I lost count how many times Neeson lies to someone’s face without a trace of regret. He gambles without promise of gain and doesn’t even stop to inform the queen. What a character! What a performance!

8. Did I mention that Qui-Gon was dead right about the Jedi and the Republic? About its sclerosis, decay, and internal rot? About its detachment from the common good? About its aristocratic self-regard and blindness to the evil in its midst? Neither Yoda nor Mace Windu could see Palpatine standing right in front of them. Palpatine made sure his apprentice killed the only one who might recognize him before it was too late.

9. (This point and the next two relate also, by the way, to The Last Jedi. Rian Johnson understood that Luke had to come to terms, on screen, with the “intra-Jedi” debate between Palpatine, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Yoda. In a sense, Luke—through Ren—had to mature beyond Yoda and Obi-Wan’s vacillating optimism and despair in favor of something less childish, less binary, less yin and yang, without succumbing to the Dark Side. That maturity goes unspoken in the film, but its name is Qui-Gon. Had Episode IX been made by someone as shrewd as Johnson, Rey’s journey and continuation of the Jedi would have made explicit this callback all the way to Episode I: “a new start” for “a new Jedi,” open to the wisdom and worldly good sense of a Qui-Gon Jinn.)

10. Qui-Gon wasn’t just right about the Jedi; he was also right about Anakin, assuming he was indeed the Chosen One (a contestable proposition, I admit). Even if he was wrong about the prophecy, or rather ensured the truth of the prophecy by tragically ensuring Anakin’s training, he was right to see promise and potential in Anakin and the Council was wrong to treat a third-grade child—to his face—like his sadness and fear, after leaving his home and mother behind, were such a psychological obstacle to his learning the Force that they would rather him suffer humiliating rejection before the highest sages of the land. Hm, I’m sure that would have bode well for the virginally conceived Jesus of Midi-chlorian Force powers. They sealed their fate, and confirmed Qui-Gon’s worst fears about them, in that very room, by that very decision. It’s a miracle that Anakin ever repents at all, given his experiences.

11. Think again about those experiences. He’s conceived without a father’s involvement. He’s a slave from early childhood. He leaves his mother before his tenth birthday. He joins an order that not only keeps him from ever visiting his still-enslaved mother for a full decade but also refuses to use their power, influence, and wealth—not to mention their lightsabers—to liberate her from a slavery that the Republic itself outlaws! Oh, and the Jedi also require lifelong abstinence, forbidding marriage and children. Later, Anakin will return on his own to Tatooine to find his formerly enslaved mother kidnapped, tortured, and raped by Tusken Raiders. He will murder all of them for this. Later still, Anakin’s secret wife, secretly pregnant, will die, in part as a result of his lashing out at her with the Force. Then he will be led to believe that his unborn child died with her. Then he will learn that his son lived, but this knowledge was kept from him both by his current master (Palpatine) and by his old master (Obi-Wan)—all surrogate fathers who failed him. Then he will learn that his son has a twin sister, likewise kept from him. Then he will fight and nearly kill his son. Then he will kill his current master, having “killed” (or defeated) his old master, and ask his son for forgiveness before dying of his wounds. (Note: All three of Anakin’s surrogate fathers died as a result of apprenticing him.) Then he will look on from Force-ghost-world as his grandson turns to the Dark Side and murders his own father and nearly his own mother, even as Luke turns away from the force in despair and self-chosen exile. Then, finally, his grandson will join forces with (former Nabooian Senator) Palpatine’s granddaughter to destroy Palpatine himself—whom Anakin, somehow, failed actually to kill in his one and only good deed in life. Having killed Palpatine once and for all, Anakin’s grandson gives his life to save Palpatine’s granddaughter’s. And so the Skywalker blood line is complete: from Shmi to Anakin (and Padmé) to Luke and Leia (and Han) to Ben. Seven Skywalkers, all special, most Force sensitive, some Jedi, all dead and gone, and for what?

12. No, J. J. Abrams, Rey is not a Skywalker, even if she wants to claim the name. And yes, it occurs to me that one of Freddie deBoer’s best essays is a longer and much funnier version of the previous point. Go read him and weep/laugh.

13. Since I’m mentioning writers on these themes, see also Matt Zoller Seitz and Ross Douthat. And Freddie again, who is correct about The Last Jedi.

14. What else does Lucas get right? The politics, the decadence, the transition from planetary democracy to galactic democracy to galactic republic to galactic emergency to galactic empire. He also understands that the wider cinematic and narrative frame of Star Wars is not itself, his own prior creation, but the larger mythic and movie worlds of both Western and Eastern culture. Granting the moments of eye-rolling nostalgia and point-and-laugh coincidences, Star Wars has not (yet) become solipsistic at this time.

15. The music is flawless. Thank you, John Williams.

16. Lucas also nails multiple scenes and images, to the point that some of them remain iconic. The greatest of these is every single frame of the Darth Maul fight. I dissent from the view that Maul should have lived to fight another day; it was wise to kill him off. What makes the duel with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon so compelling—somehow I’d never realized this—is that none of them ever speaks a word. In just about every climactic fight sequence in any action movie, the leads are in constant conversation: cajoling, insulting, persuading, begging. Not here. There’s nothing to talk about. It’s pure visual poetry. Few things filmed since then can match it.

17. Maul is a singular visual creation. You can’t help but stare. As for other characters, Obi-Wan is well written by Lucas and well acted by McGregor, as are Palpatine by Ian McDiarmid and Shmi Skywalker by Pernilla August. I was surprised how affecting August’s portrayal of Shmi is. The only pathos in the movie, with the possible exception of Obi-Wan’s grief over Qui-Gon, belongs to Shmi. She is worn down by the world, yet oddly hopeful, given her experience with Anakin’s miraculous conception and her love for him. She wants him to leave, even as she registers a moment’s hurt quickly covered over by a mother’s affection when she sees his forgetfulness, then remembrance, then acceptance at her remaining behind (as, the movie won’t let us forget, a slave).

August and Neeson share multiple moments together: knowing glances, light touches of arms and shoulders. Squint and you might see romantic tension. On this viewing I saw instead a kind of shared religious sensibility. They both relate to the Force the way Mary and Joseph relate to God. Like Joseph, Qui-Gon is a surrogate and adoptive father (also like Joseph, Qui-Gon dies before Anakin becomes an adult; unlike Jesus, Anakin has major daddy issues for the rest of his life, as do his son and grandson, Luke and Ben—apparently the only way for sons in Star Wars to exorcise their paternal demons is by slaying their father or dying themselves, or perhaps through handing on the line from multiples generations of failed father figures to an adopted daughter figure: this is the only reading of Rey I will allow). Note well that Shmi isn’t passive before Qui-Gon; rather, her fiat mihi is, like Mary’s, an active consent in response to a higher benign power. In this way Shmi and Qui-Gon alike are responsive to a kind of cosmic momentum sweeping them along. They see it, acquiesce to it, float along with it, even at great cost; in fact, at the cost of both of their lives.

18. I remain struck by the fact that when Lucas sat down to write Darth Vader’s backstory he made the child Anakin Skywalker a slave on a backwater planet. I must have seen The Phantom Menace at least a dozen times since 1999, but I had never registered the brief conversation at the Skywalker dinner table in which Anakin explains that all slaves on Tatooine have a chip implanted beneath their skin that (a) can’t be detected or removed by the slave himself and (b) marks them as a slave for life, lest they attempt to escape. This, in what is otherwise, in Lucas’s hands, a children’s fable! Anakin can’t run away, much less hop aboard starship, because his brutal slaveowners will track him down through the cybernetic chip implanted in his body!

Is this a kind of dark foreboding of Anakin’s eventual bodily disintegration and reintegration via robotic machinery? “More machine than man”? A man enslaved by his own passions, by his unchosen transhuman body, metal and circuitry rather than flesh and blood? A man overmastered by a Force he supposed he could manipulate to save the wife he eventually killed? All of which turned on his receiving freedom from slavery without his mother—a motherless origin at this, the source of the most famous “orphan’s tale” in American pop culture? Recall that, in the next film, Padmé comforts Anakin following his slaughter of men, women, and children among the Tusken Raiders, after they took and abused his mother (once she had herself been freed and married by a good man!). I lay all this out to show what was going on in Lucas’s mind as he sketched out the origins of Darth Vader. As seemingly light and occasionally cartoonish as Episode I can be, it has moments of such darkness it makes you gasp.

19. This is a movie about overconfidence. More than once different characters say, “You assume too much.” Or, “I promise you…” followed by an outlandish vow they can’t be sure they can keep or whose implications they can’t foresee. Even my beloved Qui-Gon comes under judgment here. No one knows anything—the only exception is the Sith, who see all. No one else has sight. Everyone is blind while presuming the indefinite persistence of the status quo. And it’s all about to come crashing down around their ears. This is the tragedy of the beginning of the story of Darth Vader. This is “the phantom menace” haunting the galaxy, haunting the Jedi, haunting the Republic, haunting Anakin and his many would-be fathers.

20. So no, I don’t mind the name, either. It’s both accurate and appropriately apt to the Saturday morning genre B-movie serials that influenced the original film.

21. Three final thoughts, each a missed opportunity. The first concerns slavery. Why not make that issue more prominent in the next two episodes? Why not make Anakin an abolitionist? Why not insinuate the issue into the Senate’s bureaucratic machinations and Padmé’s own frustrations? Why not send Anakin back to Tatooine to liberate the slaves—only to have his hand slapped by Coruscant, even to have the slaves returned to their masters by the august Republican Senate? And why not have Palpatine rise to the occasion, offering the power of emancipation to Anakin and Padmé in return for emergency wartime powers? After all, doesn’t he need the military might of the Republic to stamp down the Hutts and other slave-mongering forces? How did this not write itself?

22. Why not let Anakin lose the pod race? The race is well shot, but there’s no urgency or angst because we know he’ll win. What if he didn’t? What if a loss then put Qui-Gon in the position of stealing Anakin away, refusing to honor his bet with Watto and the Hutts? Qui-Gon would do it. And it would make him a hero in Anakin’s eyes, even as it made Anakin resentful and ashamed for having lost and furious at the now-villainous Council and Senate, which would politely instruct Qui-Gon to return Anakin to Tatooine. This plot line, too, writes itself.

23. Oh, Jar Jar. By which I mean: Darth Jar Jar. Do I buy the theory? I want to. And man, there really are odd aspects of TPM if Lucas truly had nothing up his sleeve with this character. His banishment, the fear he inspires in fellow Gungans, the suggestion that he will be punished or even killed once Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan depart, his occasional physical prowess and grace, his crucial role at key moments to catalyze the plot (such as hinting in Padmé’s ear that she should return to Naboo—moments after Palpatine whispers diabolical suggestions in her ear in the Senate—not to mention his fateful vote to make Palpatine Emperor in Episode III). Remember, too, that Palpatine is a Senator from Naboo, so it’s absolutely plausible that he and Jar Jar have had prior contact. He just “happens” to run into the Jedi and incur a life debt. Oh, and how does Darth Maul track Padmé’s ship to Tatooine if they never sent a transmission off world, but only received one? One option: Jar Jar himself found a way to send a transmission, alerting the Sith to their whereabouts.

The notion of doubles (“Always two there are”)—co-equal/rival pairs or even a kind of surreptitious self-doubling—is pronounced in TPM: Republic and Trade Federation, Senate and Council, Amidala and Padmé, Palpatine and Sidious, Sidious and Maul, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and Anakin. Why not Jar Jar and Darth Jar Jar?

As others have detailed, this would also explain Maul’s death and Count Dooku’s random appearance in his place; it was meant to be Count Jar Jar all along. Had the JJB character not been such a fantastic fiasco and embarrassment from day one, he might have been the Gollum of Star Wars: the first true and truly momentous CGI character, and a secret villain to boot. Was he? Was that the plan?

Maybe. Who knows. On this re-watch, aside from some of the narrative holes, it didn’t seem particularly likely. And it sure seems like we would have heard some leak from Lucasfilm in the last three decades spoiling the secret.

Chalk it up as one more might-have-been in this remarkable might-have-been of a movie.

NBA thoughts

I don’t have a single original thought about the NBA. Either I’m cribbing on what I’ve heard others say or making observations so obvious I guarantee you there are dozens of columns, podcasts, and tweets making the same point.

But I’m in NBA playoffs mode, so indulge me.

• The NBA has never been so flush with sheer talent. It’s astonishing.

• This season + the playoffs are so clearly a passing of the torch from the previous generation of stars to the next that you’d think they scripted it. Steph didn’t make it, KD got swept, Kawhi’s injured, Jimmy’s injured, Harden and PG are in danger, Westbrook’s washed and pressing, Dame’s not the same, LeBron is on the verge—even as SGA and Chet and Ant and Tatum and Jalen and Paolo and Isaac and Luka and Jamal and Jokic and Haliburton and Brunson are all cookin’. Not to mention my man Wemby waiting in the wings.

• Guys somewhere in the middle, in between the old and the new: Kyrie, who’s still got it; Anthony Davis, who’s killing it; Embiid, who’s pushing himself through injuries; Giannis, who’s still the best on the court when he’s well; Zion, who is a force of nature but can’t stay on the court.

• Did I mention LeBron? Turns forty in December and there are still stretches where he can impose his will on the offensive end. Even as I write he’s everywhere on defense, willing his team to survive. TBD.

• Good for New York, betting on Jalen Brunson and reaping the dividends. A pox on Dallas for failing to realize what they had. And yet, they gambled on Kyrie and it’s somehow paid off!

• The league has got to figure out the replay rules. Allowing coaches to call for a reply indefinitely unless and until they’re unsuccessful makes no sense at all. Just like the NFL, there needs to be a finite number of replays per team. Perhaps one per half, a second if your first is successful. But stop the hoarding and stop the rewarding random, low-stakes replays that function as timeouts with an upside—if the replay is successful, they’ll just grind the game to a halt on the next play! Oh, and no coach replays in the final two minutes. The point of sports officiating isn’t to get everything perfect. In fact, bad or sketchy or doubtful or questionable calls are part of the game. Let the game breathe, let it flow, let it move, even with the tradeoff of fewer replays and corrections of bang-bang plays. We can do this. [Update: Apparently my cursory knowledge of the replay rules was inaccurate. Most of this they’re already doing. My only addendum now: No coach challenges in the final 2-3 minutes of the game, just like in football; everything comes from above, and it’s got to be obvious, airtight, and game-affecting.]

• Back to the next generation: They. Are. So. Fun. And they’re confident! They’re not afraid! Anthony Edwards isn’t intimidated by Durant, nor is Jamal Murray by LeBron, nor was Sabonis by Steph and Draymond. These guys play with joy and abandon. The future is bright for the NBA.

• That said, we need some competition in the East. Absent injuries, it’s the Celtics to lose, even granting the Brunson/Knicks factor. In the West, though, it’s another story entirely. I could see the Nuggets, the Thunder, the Wolves, even the Mavs or (if I squint) the Clips making the Finals, or at least legitimately competing for it. The competition is so fierce. Every single night there’s a great game or a duel between old and new stars. It’s must-see TV!

• That said, the injuries are such a bummer. Zion, Giannis, Dame, Randle, Kawhi, and Jimmy. Not to mention Porzingis, Murray, Davis, KCP, Luka, Haliburton, and Embiid all hobbled or less than one hundred percent. It would be a truly historic playoffs if none of these guys was hurt.

• That said, I’ll take it. I don’t have the time or margin during the regular season to watch much if any NBA. But with the semester waning and the summer approaching, I can find the time for a playoffs like this. See you in June.

A.I., TikTok, and saying “I would prefer not to”

Two technology pieces from last week have stuck with me.

Both were at The New York Times. The first was titled “How TikTok Changed America,” a sort of image/video essay about the platform’s popularity and influence in the U.S. The second was a podcast with Ezra Klein called “How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now?,” an interview with Ethan Mollick.

To be clear, I skimmed the first and did not listen to the second; I only read Klein’s framing description for the pod (my emphases):

There’s something of a paradox that has defined my experience with artificial intelligence in this particular moment. It’s clear we’re witnessing the advent of a wildly powerful technology, one that could transform the economy and the way we think about art and creativity and the value of human work itself. At the same time, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to use it in my own day-to-day job.

So I wanted to understand what I’m missing and get some tips for how I could incorporate A.I. better into my life right now. And Ethan Mollick is the perfect guide…

This conversation covers the basics, including which chatbot to choose and techniques for how to get the most useful results. But the conversation goes far beyond that, too — to some of the strange, delightful and slightly unnerving ways that A.I. responds to us, and how you’ll get more out of any chatbot if you think of it as a relationship rather than a tool.

These two pieces brought to mind two things I’ve written recently about social media and digital technology more broadly. The first comes from my New Atlantic essay, published two years ago, reviewing Andy Crouch’s book The Life We’re Looking For (my emphases again):

What we need is a recommitment to public argument about purpose, both ours and that of our tools. What we need, further, is a recoupling of our beliefs about the one to our beliefs about the other. What we need, finally, is the resolve to make hard decisions about our technologies. If an invention does not serve the human good, then we should neither sell it nor use it, and we should make a public case against it. If we can’t do that — if we lack the will or fortitude to say, with Bartleby, We would prefer not to — then it is clear that we are no longer makers or users. We are being used and remade.

The other comes late in my Commonweal review, published last summer, of Tara Isabella Burton’s book Self Made:

It may feel to some of us that “everyone,” for example, is on Instagram. Only about 15 percent of the world is on the platform, however. That’s a lot of people. Yet the truth is that most of the world is not on it. The same goes for other social media. Influencer culture may be ubiquitous in the sense that most people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five are affected by it in some way. But that’s a far cry from digitally mediated self-creation being a universal mandate.

Even for those of us on these apps, moreover, it’s possible to opt out. You don’t have to sell yourself on the internet. You really don’t. I would have liked Burton to show us why the dismal story she tells isn’t deterministic—why, for example, not every young woman is fated to sell her image on OnlyFans sooner or later.

The two relevant phrases from these essay reviews: You really don’t and Bartleby’s I would prefer not to. They are quite simply all you need in your toolkit for responding to new technologies like TikTok and generative A.I.

For example, the TikTok piece states that half of Americans are on the app. That’s a lot! Plenty to justify the NYT treatment. I don’t deny it. But do you know what that claim also means? That half of us aren’t on it. Fifty percent. One out of every two souls. Which is the more relevant statistic, then? Can I get a follow-up NYT essay about the half of us who not only aren’t tempted to download TikTok but actively reject it, can’t stand it, renounce it and all its pomp?

The piece goes further: “Even if you’ve never opened the app, you’ve lived in a culture that exists downstream of what happens there.” Again, I don’t deny it or doubt it. It’s true, to my chagrin. And yet, the power of such a claim is not quite what it seems on first glance.

The downstream-influence of TikTok works primarily if and as one is also or instead an active user of other social media platforms (as well as, perhaps, cable news programs focused on politics and entertainment). I’m told you can’t get on YouTube or Instagram or Twitter or Facebook without encountering “imported” content from TikTok, or “local” content that’s just Meta or Google cribbing on TikTok. But what if, like me, you don’t have an account on any of these platforms? What if you abstain completely from all social media? And what if you don’t watch Fox News or MSNBC or CNN or entertainment shows or reality TV?

I was prepared, reading the NYT piece, to discover all the ways TikTok had invaded my life without my even realizing it. It turns out, though, that I don’t get my news from TikTok, or my movie recommendations, or my cooking recipes, or my fashion advice(!), or my politics, or my Swiftie hits, or my mental health self-diagnoses, or my water bottle, or my nightly entertainment before bed—or anything else. Nothing. Nada. Apparently I have been immune to the fifteen “hottest trends” on TikTok, the way it invaded “all of our lives.”

How? Not because I made it a daily goal to avoid TikTok. Not because I’m a digital ascetic living on a compound free of wireless internet, smart phones, streaming TV, and (most important) Gen Z kiddos. No, it’s because, and more or less only because, I’m not on social media. Turns out it isn’t hard to get away from this stuff. You just don’t download it. You just don’t create an account. If you don’t, you can live as if it doesn’t exist, because for all intents and purposes, for your actual life, it doesn’t.

As I said: You really don’t have to, because you can just say I would prefer not to. All told, that’s enough. It’s adequate all on its own. No one is forcing you to do anything.

Which brings us to Ezra Klein.

Sometimes Klein seems like he genuinely “gets” the scale of the threat, the nature of the digital monstrosity, the power of these devices to shape and rewire our brains and habits and hearts. Yet other times he sounds like just another tech bro who wants to maximize his digital efficiencies, to get ahead of the masses, to get a silicon leg up on the competition, to be as early an adopter as possible. I honestly don’t get it. Does he really believe the hype? Or does he not. At least someone like Tyler Cowen picks a lane. Come join the alarmist train, Ezra! There’s plenty of room! All aboard!

Seriously though, I’m trying to understand the mindset of a person who asks aloud with complete sincerity, “How should I incorporate A.I. into my life ‘better’?” It’s the “should” that gets me. Somehow this is simultaneously a social obligation and a moral duty. Whence the ought? Can someone draw a line for me from this particular “is” to Klein’s technological ought?

In any case, the question presumes at least two things. First, that prior to A.I. my life was somehow lacking. Second, that just because A.I. exists, I need to “find a place for it” in my daily habits.

But why? Why would we ever grant either of these premises?

My life wasn’t lacking anything before ChatGPT made its big splash. I wasn’t feeling an absence that Sam Altman could step in to fill. There is no Google-shaped hole in my heart. As a matter of fact, my life is already full enough: both in the happy sense that I have a fulfilling life and in the stressful sense that I have too much going on in my life. As John Mark Comer has rightly pointed out, the only way to have more of the former is through having less of the latter. Have more by having less; increase happiness by jettisoning junk, filler, hurry, hoarding, much-ness.

Am I really supposed to believe that A.I.—not to mention an A.I. duplicate of myself in order (hold gag reflex) to know myself more deeply (I said hold it!) in ways I couldn’t before—is not just one more damn thing to add to my already too-full life? That it holds the secrets of self-knowledge, maximal efficiency, work flow, work–life balance, relational intimacy, personal creativity, and labor productivity? Like, I’m supposed to type these words one after another and not snort laugh with derision but instead take them seriously, very seriously, pondering how my life was falling short until literally moments ago, when A.I. entered my life?

It goes without saying that, just because the technology exists, I don’t “need” to adopt or incorporate it into my life. There is no technological imperative, and if there were it wouldn’t be categorical. The mere existence of technology is neither self-justifying nor self-recommending. And must I add that devoting endless hours of time, energy, and attention to learning this latest invention, besides stealing those hours from other, infinitely more meaningful pursuits, will undeniably be superseded and almost immediately made redundant by the fact that this invention is nowhere near completion? Even if A.I. were going to improve daily individual human flourishing by a hundredfold, the best thing to do, right now, would be absolutely nothing. Give it another year or ten or fifty and they’ll iron out the kinks, I’m sure of it.

What this way of approaching A.I. has brought home to me is the unalterably religious dimension of technological innovation, and this in two respects. On one side, tech adepts and true believers approach innovation not only as one more glorious step in the march of progress but also as a kind of transcendent or spiritual moment in human growth. Hence the imperative. How should I incorporate this newfangled thing into my already tech-addled life? becomes not just a meaningful question but an urgent, obvious, and existential one.

On the other side, those of us who are members of actual religious traditions approach new technology with, at a minimum, an essentially skeptical eye. More to the point, we do not approach it expecting it to do anything for our actual well-being, in the sense of deep happiness or lasting satisfaction or final fulfillment or ultimate salvation. Technology can and does contribute to human flourishing but only in its earthly, temporal, or penultimate aspects. It has nothing to do with, cannot touch, never can and never will intersect with eternity, with the soul, with the Source and End of all things. Technology is not, in short, a means of communion with God. And for those of us (not all religious people, but many) who believe that God has himself already reached out to us, extending the promise and perhaps a partial taste of final beatitude, then it would never occur to us—it would present as laughably naive, foolish, silly, self-deceived, idolatrous—to suppose that some brand new man-made tool might fix what ails us; might right our wrongs; might make us happy, once and for all.

It’s this that’s at issue in the technological “ought”: the “religion of technology.” It’s why I can’t make heads of tails of stories or interviews like the ones I cited above. We belong to different religions. It may be that there are critical questions one can ask about mine. But at least I admit to belonging to one. And, if I’m being honest, mine has a defensible morality and metaphysics. If I weren’t a Christian, I’d rather be just about anything than a true believing techno-optimist. Of all religions on offer today, it is surely the most self-evidently false.

My latest: on incarnation, Theotokos, and abortion, in Commonweal

I have an essay in the newest issue of Commonweal called “Mother of the Unborn God.” It’s something of a sequel or peer to previous essays in The Christian Century on similar themes: “Birth on a Cross” and “Jewish Jesus, Black Christ.” This one takes conciliar confession of Mary as Theotokos as the metaphysical starting point for theological and moral reflection on Christian teaching about abortion—a topic, if memory serves, that I’ve never written about before. I hope I do justice to it, or at least to the confluence of theological questions raised by faith in Him who was conceived by the Holy Spirit / and born of the Virgin Mary.

Click here to read the full essay.

Letters to a Future Saint: cover, blurbs, pub date, and more!

I’m pleased to announce that my next book, Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry, has an official publication date, a cover, blurbs galore, and more. It’s due October 1. Now feast your eyes:

Isn’t that lovely? The theme continues on the inside, too; I can’t wait for folks to see how it’s designed.

Here’s the official book description:

An invitation to the Christian faith for the bored, the distracted, and the spiritually hungry 

Dear future saint, 

Why is the gospel worth living for? 

Why is it worth dying for? 

In these letters, a fellow pilgrim addresses future saints: the bored and the distracted, the skeptical and the curious, the young and the spiritually hungry. Lively and readable, these bite-sized letters explain the basics of Christian life, including orthodox doctrine, the story of Scripture, the way of discipleship, and more.

Interweaving Scripture, poetry, and theological writings, Letters to a Future Saint educates readers in the richness of the Christian tradition. But beyond that, this earnest and approachable volume offers young people— who may be largely uninformed of the depths of faith despite having been raised in Christian homes —an invitation into the life of the church and into a deeper relationship with God.

And here are the endorsements, which—well, just read on:

“Rule number one in sharing the Christian faith with young people: don’t patronise. Assume they are morally serious and intellectually curious; that they are in search of a structure that will carry the weight of their anxieties, passions and imaginative energy. And if you start from that sort of point, the book you might well want to put into their hands is something very like this one—clear, respectful, challenging, candid, gracious.” 
—Rowan Williams, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury 

“In this little book, East teaches about the gospel—he catechizes. But its epistolary format allows what could seem tiresome or didactic to become conversational and approachable. These letters tell the story of Jesus in many ways, from many different angles, and with a lightness of touch. They also convey what it might feel like to be a Christian and to think about the world in light of the story of Jesus. If you are someone who cares about young people or those of any age finding their way in the spiritual life—if you care about future saints—read this book and share it with others.” 
—Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

“The letters that Brad East writes here are signed, ‘Yours in Christ, a fellow pilgrim,’ and that tells you most of what you need to know about this wonderful book. It’s a warmhearted, clear-sighted account of life ‘in Christ,’ not pronounced from on high, but narrated by someone a little farther along the Way than the young people it’s addressed to. This is a book to give to many of those pilgrims near the outset of their journey.” 
—Alan Jacobs, Jim and Sharon Harrod Chair of Christian Thought, Baylor University   

“Sometimes catechisms seem to emphasize truth at the expense of life. The parroting back of doctrinal answers to posed questions, while often valuable, can be dangerous for those tempted to think of Christianity as the mastery of syllogisms rather than as the Way of the Cross. In this book, Brad East takes us along as he guides a young pilgrim in the path that is Jesus. Reading this will help you see your own faith with fresh eyes and will prompt you to be not just a disciple but a discipler.” 
—Russell Moore, editor in chief, Christianity Today   

“Brad East does not cease to astound. This book is both spiritual meditation and pocket catechism—it instructs as it inspires, and its contents explain Christianity in a way both simple and profound. This is the kind of book to spread around everywhere: airports, homes, churches, used bookstores, universities, and so on. Professor East has something important to teach each one of us!” 
—Matthew Levering, James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary  

“In this time of widespread unclarity, Brad East’s insightful letters help us see what being a Christian might look like. A fascinating book that helps us see the fascinating character of our faith.” 
—Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law, Duke University 

“A personal, readable, informed, and confident exposition of the Christian faith—so confident, in fact, that it starts and ends with an invitation to martyrdom in the service of Christ! East’s unwillingness to make Christ into a founder of a ‘religion of comfortableness’ (Nietzsche) is admirable.” 
—Miroslav Volf, Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale Divinity School

I have no words. I swung for the fences, and somehow managed multiple grand slams. I’m speechless. I’ve been reading these writers since seminary, some for going on two decades. It’s such an honor to have their endorsements for this book. Thanks to them and to all who decide to give the book a chance based on their recommendation.

Letters to a Future Saint is out in just over five months. (Three weeks later my other new book, The Church: A Guide to the People of God, will be published. When it rains, it pours!) You can pre-order it wherever you prefer: Eerdmans, Christianbook, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. Or pre-order a copy from each just to be safe! Your call.

This book’s publication is a dream come true, in more ways than one. I’m beyond excited to share it with readers. I hope you’ll be one, and will share it with others.

Un-paywalled: me in Hedgehog Review on Slow Horses

Back on March 1, I shared a link to my essay in the latest issue of The Hedgehog Review on Mick Herron’s spy novels (now turned into a TV series) called Slow Horses (or Slough House, as you please). But for those without a subscription it’s been behind a paywall for the last seven weeks, which means almost no one could click on the link and actually read the essay!

As of today, however, it’s out from behind the paywall and available for reading by any and all comers. You should still subscribe to a wonderful magazine. Let my essay be the nudge you needed…

My latest: on Volf/McAnnally-Linz’s Home of God, for Syndicate

Over the last month Syndicate has been hosting a symposium on Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s book The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything. My response to the book is the very last in the sequence, and it’s up today. It’s called “The Home of God in the Body of Christ” and here’s how it starts:

The Home of God is stuffed to the brim. Or better, it is overflowing, like its vision of human flourishing. For starters, it is a systematic theology. It is also part of a larger multivolume project. It consists of an extended commentary on not one but three major biblical texts (the Exodus from Egypt, Saint John’s Gospel, and the Revelation of Saint John the Seer). It is an intervention in numerous moral, political, philosophical, biblical, and theological conversations. It is a proposal of what makes for the good life, here and now. It is, in short, just what its subtitle promises: a brief story of everything.

Its ambitious aims are commendable. Theology isn’t good for much when it narrows its gaze from everything—God and all things in God—to something less. As Robert Jenson writes, “theology must be either a universal and founding discipline or a delusion.” Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz agree. Not for them the false humility of modern theology, which John Milbank once called “a fatal disease.” To be true to itself, theology must function, in Milbank’s words, as a “meta-discourse.” In this book Volf and McAnnally-Linz engage in meta-discourse via meta-narrative, that ineradicably Christian scourge of postmodernity. They are right to do so.

The venture of the book is to narrate cosmic reality through the metaphor of “home.” How? By running the metaphor through three climactic points in the canonical story: YHWH’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in the house of Pharaoh; the advent and exodus of Israel’s Messiah in his death and resurrection; and the same Lord’s descent from heaven at the End of all things to make all things new: “Behold, the home of God is among humans!” (Rev 21:3). The dwelling of God not only with or alongside but in and among his people and, ultimately, all of creation constitutes the theme as well as the aim of each episode and the story as a whole. The world is a homemaking project. God is the homemaker. His epiphany is a homecoming. It is a home for Creator and creature alike, which is to say, it must become a home apt for each and each in relation to the other. Glimpsing this vision of the End, Christians—following Volf and McAnnally-Linz—are able to see where the story was always heading and thereby glimpse anticipations of its finale at key moments along the way.

Click here to keep reading. Following my piece, Miroslav and Ryan—the one my former teacher, the other my former fellow doctoral student at Yale—offer a reply of their own. Things get a teensy spicy but mostly it’s a love fest among friends.

My latest: biblical literacy in a postliterate age, for CT

My latest column for Christianity Today is called “Biblical Literacy in a Postliterate Age.” Here’s how it opens:

Christians are readers. We are “people of the book.” We own personal Bibles, translated into our mother tongues, and read them daily. Picture “quiet time” and you’ll see a table, a cup of coffee, and a Bible spread open to dog-eared, highlighted, annotated pages. For Christians, daily Bible reading is the minimum standard for the life of faith. What kind of Christian, some of us may think, doesn’t meet this low bar?

This vision of our faith resonates for many. It certainly describes the way I was raised. As a snapshot of a slice of the church at a certain time in history—20th-century American evangelicals—it checks out. But as a timeless vision of what it means to follow Christ, it falls short, and it does so in a way that will seriously impinge on our ability to make disciples in an increasingly postliterate culture, a culture in which most people still understand the bare mechanics of reading but overwhelmingly consume audio and visual media instead.

This is a theme I’ve reflected on before here on the blog. Eventually I engage with recent writing on Gen Z literacy among college students by folks like Adam Kotsko, Jean Twenge, and Alan Jacobs. And I try to be tentative and non-despairing in the final turn. See what you think.

Civil War

I don’t yet know what I think about Civil War, Alex Garland’s latest. I’ve not read a word from others, though I have a vague sense that there are already battle lines drawn, strong readings offered, etc. I have nothing to say about that.

I do know that Garland is smart and makes smart films. I’m hesitant to trust either my or others’ knee-jerk reaction to a film that’s clearly got things on its mind, a film that is surely not what many of us supposed it would be based on trailers and ads.

I also care not one whit what Garland himself thinks about the film. He may have thought he was making a movie about X, intending to say Y, when in fact he made a movie about A, which happens to say B and C.

Like I said, I don’t have a strong take yet. I do have one possible interpretation, which may turn out to be a strong misreading. Here goes.

Civil War is not about American politics, American polarization, impending American secession, or even Trump. It’s not a post–January 6 fever dream/allegory/parable. It’s not a liberal fable or a conservative one.

Instead, Civil War is a film about the press—about the soul of the press, or rather, about what happens when the press loses its soul. In that sense it is about Trump, but not Trump per se. It’s about what happens to the press (what happened to the press) under someone like Trump; what the reaction to Trump does (did) to journalism; how the heart of a free polity turns to rot when it begins to mirror the heartless nihilism it purports to “cover.” Words become images; images become form without content; violence becomes a “story”; an assassination becomes a “scoop.”

It doesn’t matter what Nick Offerman’s president says seconds before he’s executed. It matters that he say something and that someone was there—first—to get “the quote.” The newsroom lifers and war-time photographers documenting propaganda, unable to listen to one more canned speech spouting lies on the radio, themselves become agents of propaganda. They become what they oppose, a photo negative of what they’re so desperate to capture for their audience. (What audience? Who’s watching? There’s no evidence anybody is reading, listening, or watching anymore. Outside of the soldiers and the press, everybody else appears to be pretending the war isn’t happening at all.)

The urban warfare Garland so expertly displays in the film—better than almost anything I’ve ever seen attempting to embed the viewer on the streets and in the cramped rooms of military units breaching fortified gates and buildings, made all the more surreal by its being set in downtown Washington, D.C.—is therefore not about itself, not about the images it seems to be showing, but is instead a Trojan horse for us to observe the “PRESS” who are along for the ride. And what happens between the three leads in the closing moments tells us all we need to know. One gets his quote. One gets her shot. And one loses her shot, as she does her life, having slowly awakened across the arc of the film to the intolerable inhumanity required of (or generated by) her profession. Another propagandist, though, rises to take her place. There’s always someone else waiting in the wings, ready to snap the picture that will make her name.

There, in the Oval Office, staring through a camera lens, a star is born.

No true cessationist

I’ve never in my life knowingly met a bona fide cessationist. Cessationism, recall, is the doctrine that the signs and wonders performed by the Holy Spirit through baptized believers in the first century ceased with the passing of the apostles (whether gradually or abruptly, either way they stopped). So that, from about the year 100 to the present, the supernatural gifts of the Spirit—his charismata bestowed upon the faithful—no longer occur and/or have not occurred. These include:

1. Speaking in tongues (whether natural or angelic languages)

2. Healings of the sick (through inexplicable, divinely wrought means)

3. Exorcisms (casting out demons from those possessed by them)

4. Dreams/visions from God (e.g., Saint Paul’s vision of the Macedonian man)

5. Foretellings of the future (whether prophecies, “words,” images, visions, or dreams)

6. Ecstatic heavenly rapture (e.g., Paul’s experience in the “third heaven”)

7. Suspension of natural laws (e.g., walking on water; levitation)

8. Spectacular miracles (e.g., feeding the five thousand; blood spilling from a consecrated host)

9. Relics of saints/martyrs charged with spiritual power (e.g., Paul in Ephesus)

10. Communication with or visions of the dead (e.g., Samuel and the witch of Endor; the souls of the martyrs beneath the altar in Revelation)

That’s far from an authoritative list; I can imagine alternative taxonomies. The point is that none of them are “natural” occurrences; all of them are “supernatural” happenings. The biblical point is that they are the work of God; that God’s word attests them; that no Christian disputes their occurrence in the first century; and that some or all of them were understood to be special gifts of the Holy Spirit, “signs and wonders” performed by him through the baptized as evidence of the power of Christ and the truth of the gospel.

Testimony of such “signs and wonders” continues throughout the church’s history. So far as I can tell, nobody disputes this either (with the possible exception of tongues). The question is whether the testimony is true.

As I understand it, cessationism rose to modest prominence in and after the Protestant Reformation and has been a durable minority strand of Christian teaching and practice since then, particularly in the last two or three centuries—before Pentecostalism, as a check on Roman superstition; after Pentecostalism, as an additional brake on charismatic enthusiasm run rampant.

Here’s the thing. I grew up in a (sometimes tacitly, sometimes overtly) cessationist tradition. I know plenty of others who have similar experiences. I’m well aware that I can Google “arguments for cessationism” or “are tongues still spoken” and find plenty of websites and writers selling me on the doctrine.

And yet. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for: a flesh-and-blood cessationist. By which I mean, a Christian who is willing and able to defend actual cessationism as a principled and consistent doctrine.

Sure, I know plenty of folks who are put off by glossolalia, not to mention the peculiarities and sometime abuses of hyper-charismatic or fraudulent or prosperity preachers. But the moment I ask about the other nine signs and wonders listed above, they quickly fall into one of the following seven categories:

1. “Sure, I may not attend a charismatic church, but obviously some/all of those things have happened since the apostles’ passing and/or still happen today.”

2. “Well, I’ve not personally experienced/witnessed such things, but I don’t doubt they still happen.”

3. “Granted, I have trouble believing such things, but I’ll also admit that I have good friends whom I would trust with my life who swear that they have seen/experienced such things, and I can’t deny their credibility or honesty.”

4. “For myself, I’m extremely wary of any and all claims regarding miracles and supernatural happenings, and I take for granted that many (perhaps most) claims about them are false … but if I’m honest, since I believe they happened in the Bible, and the same God alive then is alive now, then yes, sometimes they really do happen here and now.”

5. “I’m a functioning cessationist, but I don’t actually have very good reasons to support it besides my own skepticism and disenchantment; in other words, I realize how weak my grounds are for disbelieving in any signs and wonders whatsoever performed through special gifts of the Spirit in the last two millennia—so I basically shrug my shoulders and admit that I’m probably wrong, though I wish I wasn’t and live that way too.”

6. “God is God and I am not; who am I to tell him that he’s not allowed to work wonders since the apostles? or that I know without a doubt that he hasn’t? or that it’s impossible?”

7. “You’d think I’m a cessationist, and yeah, I attend a cessationist church, and sure, I’m not evangelistic about this, but … [begins to whisper] … I’ve never told anyone this … [whispering quickens] … I’ve actually [seen/experienced/performed] a miracle, and I’ll go to my grave knowing in my bones that [X supernatural event] happened; you could never convince me otherwise.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say I have never encountered another type of response from a purported cessationist, at least not “in real life.” I’ve also known plenty of non-cessationists—there are a lot of Pentecostals and Catholics in the world!—and it’s a given that their response to this conversation is one long eye-roll.

So where are they hiding? Or why does it seem like once you start poking and prodding, the cessationist shell is hiding an inner charismatic—or, to be more precise, a thoughtful Christian unwilling to deny either charismatic gifts or signs and wonders in the present? I’ve speculated elsewhere that this is part of a broader American evangelical loosening. I’ve also seen, more and more, both pastors and normies falling back on one of four things:

1. awareness of miracles in Christian history;

2. awareness of miracles in the contemporary global south;

3. awareness of the paucity of biblical arguments for hard cessationism;

4. a profound respect for divine power and freedom.

Put those together, and they form a strong allergy to anything like doctrinaire denial of signs and wonders. And in the decline or absence of thick denominational identity with recognized teachers who authoritatively denounce charismatic belief, you can see why cessationism would be on the wane—if it is.

Screentopia

I’m grateful to Alan for writing this post so I didn’t have to. A few additional thoughts, though. (And by “a few thoughts” I mean rant imminent.)

Let me begin by giving a term to describe, not just smartphones or social media, but the entire ecosystem of the internet, ubiquitous screens, smartphones, and social media. We could call it Technopoly or the Matrix or just Digital. I’ll call it Screentopia. A place-that-is-no-place in which just about everything in our lives—friendship, education, finance, sex, news, entertainment, work, communication, worship—is mediated by omnipresent interlinked personal and public devices as well as screens of every size and type, through which we access the “all” of the aforementioned aspects of our common life.

Screentopia is an ecosystem, a habitat, an environment; it’s not one thing, and it didn’t arrive fully formed at a single point in time. It achieved a kind of comprehensive reach and maturity sometime in the last dozen years.

Like Alan, I’m utterly mystified by people who aren’t worried about this new social reality. Or who need the rest of us to calm down. Or who think the kids are all right. Or who think the kids aren’t all right, but nevertheless insist that the kids’ dis-ease has little to nothing to do with being born and raised in Screentopia. Or who must needs concern-troll those of us who are alarmed for being too alarmed; for ascribing monocausal agency to screens and smartphones when what we’re dealing with is complex, multicausal, inscrutable, and therefore impossible to fix. (The speed with which the writer adverts to “can’t roll back the clock” or “the toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube” is inversely proportional to how seriously you have to take him.)

After all, our concern troll asks insouciantly, aren’t we—shouldn’t we be—worried about other things, too? About low birth rates? And low marriage rates? And kids not playing outside? And kids presided over by low-flying helicopter parents? And kids not reading? And kids not dating or driving or experimenting with risky behaviors? And kids so sunk in lethargy that they can’t be bothered to do anything for themselves?

Well—yes! We should be worried about all that; we are worried about it. These aren’t independent phenomena about which we must parcel out percentages of our worry. It’s all interrelated! Nor is anyone—not one person—claiming a totality of causal explanatory power for the invention of the iPhone followed immediately by mass immiseration. Nor still is anyone denying that parents and teachers and schools and churches are the problem here. It’s not a “gotcha” to counter that kids don’t have an issue with phones, parents do. Yes! Duh! Exactly! We all do! Bonnie Kristian is absolutely right: parents want their elementary and middle school–aged kids to have smartphones; it’s them you have to convince, not the kids. We are the problem. We have to change. That’s literally what Haidt et al are saying. No one’s “blaming the kids.” We’re blaming what should have been the adults in the room—whether the board room, the PTA meeting, the faculty lounge, or the household. Having made a mistake in imposing this dystopia of screens on an unsuspecting generation, we would like, kindly and thank you please, to fix the problem we ourselves made (or, at least, woke up to, some of us, having not been given a vote at the time).

Here’s what I want to ask the tech concern trolls.

How many hours per day of private scrolling on a small glowing rectangle would concern you? How many hours per day indoors? How many hours per day on social media? How many hours per day on video games? How many pills to get to sleep? How many hours per night not sleeping? How many books per year not read? How many friends not made, how many driver’s licenses not acquired, how many dates and hangouts not held in person would finally raise a red flag?

Christopher Hitchens once wrote, “The North Korean state was born at about the same time that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, and one could almost believe that the holy father of the state, Kim Il Sung, was given a copy of the novel and asked if he could make it work in practice.” A friend of mine says the same about our society and Brave New World. I expect people have read their Orwell. Have they read their Huxley, too? (And their Bradbury? And Walter M. Miller Jr.? And…?) Drugs and mindless entertainment to numb the emotions, babies engineered and produced in factories, sex and procreation absolutely severed, male and female locked in perpetual sedated combat, books either censored or an anachronistic bore, screens on every wall of one’s home featuring a kind of continuous interactive reality TV (as if Real Housewives, TikTok, and Zoom were combined into a single VR platform)—it’s all there. Is that the society we want? On purpose? It seems we’re bound for it like our lives depended on it. Indeed, we’re partway there already. “Alarmists” and “Luddites” are merely the ones who see the cliff’s edge ahead and are frantically pointing at it, trying to catch everyone’s attention.

But apparently everyone else is having too much fun. Who invited these killjoys along anyway?

“Real” movies

There are movies and there are movies. There have always been hacks for hire, but these days it’s less hack directors than hack IP that you’ve got to be on the lookout for. Hack IP is prefab by definition. Not so much too many cooks in the kitchen as no cooks at all: pull off the plastic, nuke it, and you’ve got yourself a movie. The next step, namely eliminating directors altogether in favor of A.I.-generated “content,” is only logical.

Sometimes, though, you’re in the mood for a crowd-pleaser. So the other day, when I had a couple nights to myself, I watched the second and third Equalizer films. The trilogy stars Denzel Washington and all three entries were written by Richard Wenk and directed by Antoine Fuqua. I vaguely remembered the first one, and thought it would be a pleasant, if undemanding, way to pass the time. I thought, in other words, that this was a bit of hack IP, brought to life by a hack writer and a hack director.

To my shame! There are movies and there are movies: some are fake, prefab, assembled by committee, produced by a factory, mindless, visionless, voiceless, toneless; and some are not. The Equalizer 2 & 3 are not classics; they didn’t deserve an Oscar. But they’re not fake. They’re not prefab. They’re “real” movies. And I wasn’t expecting that. Fuqua, Wenk, and Denzel surprised me.

The action in both films is well-executed. It’s what happens in between, though, that upended my expectations. Long stretches of “down time” with seemingly stock characters who, all of a sudden, are shown to have an inner life. What appears to be a minor detour is actually a bona fide B plot pulling the A plot into itself.

Wenk and Fuqua care about characters who, in any other Hollywood blockbuster, would be throwaways and caricatures. Ashton Sanders, fresh off his Moonlight turn, plays a teenage boy in the second film drawn into drugs and violence. Through Denzel’s eyes, Wenk and Fuqua train the audience—many of whom might not identify with Sanders’s character; might dismiss him as a problem; might think they already know his fate—to see him as Denzel’s character does: a sweet young boy, full of promise, caught between worlds. I sort of wanted the action movie to stop entirely and just become about this kid’s future.

Anyway. As I say, these films aren’t all-time greats. But “real” movies, however flawed, are always preferable to fake movies, however technically expertly wrought. And these two made me want to take a second look at Fuqua’s filmography especially. I’ve always dismissed him as merely competent, a professional who can work well with stars for big-budget manly movies. That was a mistake on my part. At a minimum, it turns out that professionalism—not to mention perspective and patience—go a long way in a landscape dominated by hack IP.

All together now: social media is bad for reading

We don’t have to mince words. We don’t have to pretend. We don’t have to qualify our claims. We don’t have to worry about insulting the youths. We don’t have to keep mum until the latest data comes in.

Social media, in all its forms, is bad for reading.

It’s bad for reading habits, meaning when you’re on social media you’re not reading a book. It’s bad for reading attention, meaning it shrinks your ability to focus for sustained periods of time while reading. It’s bad for reading desires, meaning it makes the idea of sitting down with a book, away from screens and images and videos and sounds, seem dreadfully boring. It’s bad for reading style, meaning what literacy you retain while living on social media is trained to like all the wrong things and to seek more of the same. It’s bad for reading ends, meaning you’re less likely to read for pleasure and more likely to read for strictly utilitarian reasons (including, for example, promotional deals and influencer prizes and so on). It’s bad for reading reinforcement, meaning like begets like, and inserting social media into the feedback loop of reading means ever more of the former and ever less of the latter. It’s bad for reading learning, meaning your inability to focus on dense, lengthy reading is an educational handicap: you quite literally will know less as a result. It’s bad for reading horizons, meaning the scope of what you do read, if you read at all, will not stretch across continents, cultures, and centuries but will be limited to the here and now, (at most) the latest faux highbrow novel or self-help bilge promoted by the newest hip influencers; social media–inflected “reading” is definitionally myopic: anti-“diverse” on principle. Finally, social media is bad for reading imitation, meaning it is bad for writing, because reading good writing is the only sure path to learning to write well oneself. Every single writing tic learned from social media is bad, and you can spot all of them a mile away.

None of this is new. None of it is groundbreaking. None of it is rocket science. We all know it. Educators do. Academics do. Parents do. As do members of Gen Z. My students don’t defend themselves to me; they don’t stick up for digital nativity and the wisdom and character produced by TikTok or Instagram over reading books. I’ve had students who tell me, approaching graduation, that they have never read a single book for pleasure in their lives. Others have confessed that they found a way to avoid reading a book cover to cover entirely, even as they got B’s in high school and college. They’re not proud of this. Neither are they embarrassed. It just is what it is.

Those of us who see this and are concerned by it do not have to apologize for it. We don’t have to worry about being, or being accused of being, Luddites. We’re not making this up. We’re not shaking our canes at the kids on the lawn. We’re not ageist or classist or generation-ist or any other nonsensical application of actual prejudices.

The problem is real. It’s not the only one, but it’s pressing. Social media is bad in general, it’s certainly bad for young people, and it’s unquestionably, demonstrably, and devastatingly bad for reading.

The question is not whether it’s a problem. The question is what to do about it.

My latest: how (not) to talk about Christian nationalism, in CT

This morning Christianity Today published my column. Titled “How (Not) to Talk About ‘Christian Nationalism,’” it argues we should retire the term entirely, because it has ceased to refer to anything concrete while functioning in our discourse as a slander term for “politics and people to my right I dislike.” It’s true, though, that there are things worth worrying about that go under the label, like racism and lawlessness; we should just talk about those things instead of a huge umbrella term that no longer picks out anything specific in the world (or picks out far too much). Here’s how the piece starts:

Some years ago, the Reformed philosopher Alvin Plantinga gave a useful definition of fundamentalist. He noted that, in academic settings, it served as little more than a smear word; he offered an expletive I can’t print here, so let’s just substitute son of a gun.

Where it retained any content beyond the smear, Plantinga argued that fundamentalist meant “considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.” Thus did academics, journalists, and many Christians come to deploy fundie to mean a “stupid [son of a gun] whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of” their own. And because there’s always someone to one’s right, the F-word is essentially relative: It has no stable reference, but it certainly can never refer to me.

These days we might say the same about Christian nationalism. The phrase has lost all substantive content. In nearly every conversation, it has little reference beyond those “stupid [sons of guns] whose political opinions are considerably to the right of mine.” Allegations of Christian nationalism can mean almost anything: Maybe the accused is a literal Nazi. Or maybe he’s just a lifelong Republican whose big issues are abortion and tax rates.

Click here to read the rest.

My latest: on Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis in LARB

This morning The Los Angeles Review of Books published my review of Marilynne Robinson’s new book, Reading Genesis. Here are the opening two paragraphs:

MARILYNNE ROBINSON HAS always been a theologian at heart. It’s merely convention that theology today is one among dozens of specialized academic subdisciplines. If that’s what theology is, Robinson doesn’t write like it—and thank God for that. Theology’s mother tongue is prayer and confession, the language of the liturgy, but these aren’t genres so much as modes that transform disparate genres into vehicles of divine discourse. Like Jacob’s Ladder, the traffic runs both ways.

It just so happens that Robinson’s theology has taken shape in essays, novels, and prose so patient and unpatronizing that it’s embarrassing how long one sometimes takes to catch the point. She has been doing this for almost half a century. She has won all the awards, sold all the books, chatted with presidents, and garnered every laurel and medal. She has nothing to prove. And so, having just turned 80, she has chosen to mark the occasion by publishing a commentary on Genesis, the first book of the Torah.

Click here to rest the rest. (See also Francis Spufford’s review and Ezra Klein’s interview with Robinson.)

The metaphysics of historical criticism

1. I, the historical critic, exist.

2. That is to say, my mind exists.

3. My mind is not deceived by a demon.

4. My mind is not self-deceived.

5. My mind has access to external reality.

6. External reality exists.

7. External reality is apt to be known by a mind like mine (and by other rational beings, should they exist).

8. I am a rational being, in virtue of my mind’s existence and capacity to know external reality.

9. My mind’s access to external reality via my rational nature is epistemically reliable.

10. Natural languages are, likewise, a reliable vehicle of rational pursuit of knowledge of external reality.

11. Natural languages are a reliable vehicle of communication between rational beings.

12. At least, that is, between rational beings of a shared nature.

13. There are rational beings of a shared nature; other minds exist besides my own.

14. (I can know this—I am in a position to know it, with something like certainty or at least confidence—just as I can know the foregoing propositions and many others like them.)

15. Mental life is linguistic and vice versa; human minds, or rational persons, communicate through natural languages.

16. I can (come to) know what other persons think, believe, intend, hope, or love.

17. I can (come to) know such things through many means, one of which is the use of a natural language.

18. Natural languages can be translated without substantial loss of meaning.

19. Rational users of natural languages are capable of mastering more than one such language.

20. Such mastery is possible not only of living languages but of dead languages.

21. Such mastery is possible not only through speaking but also through reading and writing.

22. Written language is not different in kind than spoken language.

23. The living word can be written down and understood through the eyes alone, without use of the ears or of spoken language.

24. The written word offers reliable access to the life—norms, beliefs, hopes, fears, behaviors, expectations, habits, virtues, vices, and more—of a culture or civilization.

25. This truth obtains for ancient, or long dead, cultures as for living, or contemporary, ones.

26. (“Truth” is a meaningful category.)

27. (Truth is objective, knowable, and not reducible merely to the perspective of a particular person’s mind or thought.)

28. (There are truths that both antedate my mind’s existence and exist independently of it.)

29. (The principle of non-contradiction is itself true.)

30. (The prior four propositions are true irrespective of any one individual’s affirmation or awareness of them, including my own.)

31. Records of ancient peoples’ and regions’ artifacts offer a limited but nevertheless reliable window onto their respective cultures.

32. Through accumulation, comparison, and interpretation of evidence, probabilities of likelihood regarding both historical events and certain cultural beliefs and practices can be reliably achieved.

33. The space-time continuum in which ancient peoples lived (“then and there”) is one and the same as mine (“here and now”).

34. The sort of events, experiences, and happenings that mark my life or the life of my culture (“here and now”) likewise marked theirs (“then and there”).

35. These include occurrences commonly labeled “religious” or “spiritual” or “numinous.”

36. Such occurrences, however labeled, are knowable and thus (re)describable without remainder in wholly natural terms.

37. They can be so described because religion is, without remainder, a natural phenomenon.

38. That is to say, as an artifact of human social life, religion is “natural” inasmuch as it is a thing that humans do, just as dancing, gambling, and wrestling are natural, inasmuch as they are things humans do.

39. In a second sense, too, religion is “natural”: it is a thing wholly constructed by human beings and thus without “reference” beyond the human lives that give rise to it.

40. There are, in a word, no gods; God does not exist.

41. Neither are there spirits, angels, demons, ghosts, jinn, souls, astral beings, or any other entities, living or dead, beyond this universe or however many universes there may be.

42. Accordingly, there are no interactions with or experiences of such beings, divine or celestial or otherwise.

43. Accordingly, such “beings” do not act in the world at all, for what does not exist cannot act; a nonexistent cause has nonexistent effects.

44. Accordingly, miracles, signs, and wonders are a figment of human imagination or an error of human memory and experience.

45. What happens, happens in accordance with the laws of nature recognized and tested by contemporary scientific methods and experiments.

46. Claims to the contrary are knowable as false in advance, prior to investigation; they are rightly ruled out without discussion.

47. There are always, therefore, alternative explanations in natural terms.

48. This principle applies to every other form of mystical or transcendent experience, whether dreams or visions or foreknowledge or prophecy or glossolalia.

49. The fact that many contemporary people continue both to believe in religious/spiritual realities and to claim to experience them is immaterial.

50. Any attempt to undertake any form of epistemic inquiry based on any other set of principles besides the foregoing ones is ipso facto unserious, unscientific, irrational, and to be dismissed with prejudice as unnecessarily metaphysical, unduly influenced by philosophical commitments, biased by metaphysics, prejudiced by religious belief, and ultimately built on unprovable assumptions rather than common sense, natural reason, and truths self-evident to all.

My latest: on Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels, in Hedgehog Review

I’m in the latest issue of The Hedgehog Review with an essay called “Beating Slow Horses.” It’s about Mick Herron’s spy novels, which have been adapted for TV on AppleTV+. Here’s how the essay opens:

The conceit at the heart of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels is simple. There is a house in London for misfit spies. When MI5 is unable, for one reason or another, to fire failed employees, it opts to send them there. The exile is permanent, though the losers who suffer it do their best to pretend it isn’t. It’s a win-win for the service, in any case. No one gets sued. HR is pacified. And banishment proves either so unbearably dull and humiliating that the misfit spies voluntarily quit, or they remain there forever, whiling away the hours without hope of redemption. It is said of the souls in Dante’s purgatorio that the unhappiest are happier than the happiest on earth. Conversely, the happiest in Herron’s inferno are unhappier than the unhappiest outside its walls.

After all, there is no garden atop this mount and certainly no Virgil or Beatrice. Only a hulking demon, pitchfork in hand, keeping the drudges circling beneath him. The paradiso of Regent’s Park is lost forever. Only after some time does it dawn on the damned that their perpetual expulsion means they’re in hell.

Hell’s name is Slough House.

Unfortunately, the essay is paywalled at present. I imagine it’ll unlock here in the next few weeks. All the more reason to subscribe to a wonderful magazine!

Biblicism can’t get you where you want to go

Update (29 Feb 2024): I’m not going to revise what I’ve written below, but Matt rightly brought to my attention an ambiguity in the post; namely, that while I don’t accuse Matt of himself being biblicist, I strongly imply it. For the record, he’s not a biblicist! The running argument between us—a friendly one, I should add—is more about what one can reasonably expect to persuade evangelical Protestants of, given their prior commitments about Scripture, tradition, reason, and ecclesial authority. Nor, I might add, am I necessarily endorsing either the bundle of sexual ethics I lay out or the Roman procedure for affirming them. I’m intending, instead, to note a fundamental difficulty in evangelical and biblicist treatment of issues, particularly neuralgic issues related to sexual ethics, that are not addressed directly and explicitly in the Bible. I hope that still comes through. Apologies for the confusion.

*

I have a running argument with my friend Matt Anderson. My side in the argument is simple: You can’t get to Matt’s moral-theological positions via biblicism. You need more. In particular, you need three additional components.

But let me back up. Consider Catholic doctrine on sexual and procreative ethics. What Rome teaches is quite clear:

• No abortion.

• No cloning.

• No IVF.

• No artificial contraception of any kind.

• No self-abuse.

• No sexual activity whatsoever besides intercourse between one man and one woman who are married to each other, an action that (by definition, given the above) is intrinsically and necessarily open to new life.

Unless I’m mistaken, Matt affirms each of these six components of Catholic teaching, albeit on different grounds (partially shared with Rome, partially not). Further, he believes this teaching as a whole is simply and clearly biblical. It’s biblical teaching, not “Roman” or “magisterial” teaching.

I’m not going to argue with Matt about whether that’s true. What I’d like to share instead is an anecdote. Here it is:

I have never once, in my entire life, met a single person who believes (much less practices) the foregoing six propositions except (a) Roman Catholic Christians, (b) Christians with a theological graduate degree, and/or (c) Christian writers who cover sexual ethics and public policy.

In the case of (b) and (c), it’s worth adding that such persons, who are occasionally Protestant or Orthodox, have always and without exception been exposed in a direct and sustained manner to historic Roman magisterial teaching on sexual ethics.

What this tells me is that arriving at Catholic doctrine on these matters via “the Bible alone” may not be literally impossible (I suppose someone, somewhere, may have done it) but that it is, at the lived level of biblicist evangelical Christianity, so unlikely as to be impossible in practice.

What, then, is missing in biblicist attempts to arrive at these teachings? Three things.

First, a high view of the potential and power of natural human reason, however fallen, to draw accurate moral conclusions from the nature of created human existence regarding the essential character and divinely willed purposes of sexual activity.

Second, a living and authoritative sacred tradition developed and maintained in and by the church for the sake of instructing the faithful on new and pressing challenges to following Christ, including challenges unaddressed directly by the letter of Holy Scripture.

Third, a living and authoritative teaching office, or magisterium, governed and guided by the Holy Spirit and vested by him with the power to address, in real time, pressing challenges faced by the faithful in their daily commitment to following Christ.

It seems to me that all three are necessary and that together they are sufficient, alongside and in service to the supreme divine authority of Scripture, to do what needs doing in the moral life of the church. To do, that is, what Matt and other Protestant ethicists want to be done and see needs doing.

I should add why I believe the first two elements—which, one might argue, are found in certain Protestant communions, whether Anglican or Reformed or Wesleyan—are inadequate without the third. The reason is this. Biblicist Christians will never agree, for example, that the Bible forbids contraception, for the simple reason that there is no chapter or verse that clearly and explicitly does so. But even if some Christians were to argue that both tradition and reason likewise prohibit contraception, it remains the case that, in the absence of an ecclesial office with the authority to teach the faithful, other Christians would argue in turn (and in good faith) that their reading of Scripture, tradition, and reason differs in this respect, and that no church law, however venerable, has the power to bind their conscience on a disputed matter such as this one.

In short, Roman teaching requires Roman polity; catholic doctrine depends on and is inseparable from catholic tradition. It’s a feature, not a bug. You can’t get there otherwise, at least not in a definitive way, and not in a way that could ever command assent from other Protestants, evangelicals, or biblicists.

My latest: on faith and doubt in CT

I’ve got a column in Christianity Today this morning called “Doubt is a Ladder, Not a Home.” About a third of the way into it, I write the following:

I’m not describing atheists, apostates, or “exvangelicals” here. This is how many ordinary Christians feel. Or at least, it’s the water they swim in, the intrusive thought in the back of the mind, the semi-conscious source of inertia they feel when the alarm blares on Sunday morning. American Christians face no Colosseum, but this emotional and intellectual pressure is very real. The doubts add up.

It doesn’t help that doubt is in vogue. Doubt is sexy, and not only in the wider culture. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been told by a pastor or Christian professor that doubt is a sign of spiritual maturity. That faith without doubt is superficial, a mere honeymoon period. That doubt is the flip side of faith, a kind of friend to fidelity. That the presence of doubt is a sign of a healthy theological mind, and its absence—well, you can fill in the rest.

The pro-doubt crowd gets two important things entirely right. First, they want space to ask honest questions. Second, they want to remove the stigma of doubt.

I go on to elaborate what they get right, but also to point out four ways they go too far. Click here to read the whole thing.