Three types of Christian higher ed

There isn’t only one kind of Christian higher education; there are three.

This, I confess with some embarrassment, has proved something of a revelation to me. Both the types of Christian ed and their manifestations in concrete institutions have always blended together in my experience. But recently I’ve had occasion to reflect with some better informed colleagues on these things, and combined with some visits to other campuses, I found some clarity on the subject. Perhaps you can relate. See if my mini-typology resonates.

First, there is theological education. This is the now two-centuries-long project of, broadly speaking, white American liberal Protestant seminaries and divinity schools to educate (eventually ordained) pastors in theology, ethics, history, ministry, and biblical studies, with the overarching aim of making them learned professionals alongside lawyers and doctors. These institutions could be extensions of ecclesial bodies or independent thereof; they could expand their demographics by race, gender, region, nationality, denomination, and even religion; they could focus more or less on academic standards and prestige; they could hire faculty with stronger or weaker connections to historic Christian commitments; and so on. But it is this project, however malleable, that “theological education” names, a project that is now coming to an end but persists in weakened and ever more rapidly declining form.

(NB: “Religious studies” is not a form of theological education, nor of Christian higher ed, though like all such disciplinary branches in the American academy, it is not unrelated to either.)

The second type is Christian higher education in the classical liberal arts tradition. At first glance you might think this group encompasses the rest, so let me be clear about what I mean.

Not every postsecondary institution that includes the humanities belongs to the classical liberal arts tradition. The kinds of institution I have in mind have deep ties to classical schools, offer a robust Great Books program, feature long-standing and well-funded Honors Colleges, and/or require every entering undergraduate student to undertake a “core” curriculum. This curriculum is typically highly theorized—it constitutes a shared mission that faculty of every kind understand, believe in, and sign on to—and it tends to be designed (and revised over time) by liberal arts faculty with the goal of familiarizing students with great literature, thinkers, and ideas across the millennia. This work of familiarization is usually interwoven with attention to religious thinkers in the West, especially Church Fathers, medieval doctors, and Protestant Reformers, albeit placed in close connection to Jewish, Greek, and Roman culture, art, and politics.

Sometimes the aim is something like “citizenship” or “membership” in “the Western heritage”; sometimes it is indexed to the American story, and thus to the blessings of the Enlightenment (downplaying its downsides); and sometimes the emphasis is not at all regional or national but simply Christian: a global patrimony to which all educated believers are both subject and heir.

Schools in this category come in both Catholic and Protestant varieties, though it is worth noting how difficult it is to be root-and-branch anti-Catholic when most of the history and texts you cover precede 1517. The result is often a gentle, if subtle, ecumenism, which in turn drafts off and encourages a cultural and chronological catholicity: so many centuries, continents, peoples, and languages!

Or so it seems from afar, since I have never been a part of one of these institutions. I had never even heard of one until I was in my doctoral studies. Part of the reason for this is that they are popular with families that home school or send their children to private classical Christian academies, whereas I went to public school and, growing up, knew almost no one who fit either of these categories. I certainly didn’t know what “classical academies” were. And I just assumed that private Christian schools were smaller public schools plus uniforms and prayer.

As I’ve written before, had I known about Great Books programs as a high school senior, I think it likely I would have applied to one. Heck, I’d apply to one today. They sound like heaven on earth for this under-read bookish nerd.

Okay. So that’s only two out of three. What’s the other type?

The third kind is higher education that is also Christian. Here’s what I mean. On one hand, these are collegiate institutions, founded sometime between the middle of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth, that are explicit about their Christian beliefs and their behavioral expectations and spiritual goals for students. They may have chapel; they may require courses in religion, theology, or Bible; the faculty, staff, and admin will all be Christian; and there will certainly be a code of conduct.

On the other hand, these institutions have no formal, explicit, or organic connection to the tradition of classical liberal education outlined above: no Core, no Western Civ, no Great Books, no Honors College, no humanities-forward vision of “inheriting the patrimony of ancient literature and ideas” animating the curriculum. For some, the reason is that the school was founded with an outright animus against such things—a sort of anti-intellectual educational institution. For others, the reason is an intense, even rigorous commitment to biblicism; nuda scriptura entailed, at the founding, a self-conscious uncoupling from so much in Western civilization that either corrupted the gospel or was seen inevitably to distract from focusing on the Bible alone. For still others, the reason isn’t so much the presence of a conscious choice as its lack: a simple disconnection from and perhaps even ignorance of the classical liberal arts tradition and the texts, ideas, habits, and aims at its heart.

In addition to these reasons, this third type of Christian higher ed is, to put it bluntly, just less lofty in its rhetoric and self-understanding than the second type. More often than not this is the result of the denomination with which it is associated. It goes without saying that small, marginal, or socially downscale denominations will not have the capital or the hubris to found schools that cast themselves in grand, world-historical terms; they merely want to provide a space for their children to go to school in a Christian environment.

By definition, these schools are not especially prestigious. They’re also less pretentious than their peers. In a word, they are not meant for elites. They’re meant for normies. They aren’t a ladder to D.C. or Wall Street. They’re a pathway to a stable job, a middle-class life, and a Christian family. The aspirations might be lower, but they’re also more realistic. They’re not trying to ape the Ivies; they’re offering an oasis to families who want their children to remain believers while receiving the benefits of a college degree. At their best, that’s exactly what these schools do. At their worst, the function like trade schools with a spiritual facade. Probably, for most institutions, the reality is somewhere in the middle.

What’s important to see is that this third category is distinct from the second, even though the former will often drape itself in the trappings of the latter. In retrospect, this is what kept the two fused in my mind for so long.

In any case, neither is the same as “theological education,” which was an embarrassing confusion for a theology professor to have made for so long. Perhaps there are other distinctions worth adding, but these are the three that made the most sense to me.

The ten-plus authors club

This week I finished my tenth book by P. D. James: eight novels, a memoir, and a reflection on writing detective fiction. I hope to read every other book by her before I die.

That number got me thinking: with which other authors have I hit the “ten-plus club”? These are the writers I have loved, studied, or learned the most from. Some of them, like James, I hope to “complete” by the end of my life. Others I read in a certain season, for a specific reason. Still others were for work, i.e., they were at one point (and perhaps still are) important to my scholarship.

Who are yours? Here are mine, in alphabetical order:

1. Karl Barth

2. Wendell Berry

3. G. K. Chesterton

4. David Bentley Hart

5. Stanley Hauerwas

6. Mick Herron

7. Christopher Hitchens

8. P. D. James

9. Robert Jenson

10. Mary Karr

11. John le Carré

12. C. S. Lewis

13. Cormac McCarthy

14. Marilynne Robinson

15. J. K. Rowling

16. Kathryn Tanner

17. R. S. Thomas

18. John Webster

19. Rowan Williams

20. Tad Williams

21. Franz Wright

22. N. T. Wright

23. John Howard Yoder

A few comments:

• I’m sure I’ve missed some authors.

• I count an author if they’ve written at least seven books but fewer than ten and I’ve read them all.

• Poets are tricky, so I’ve just gone with my gut.

• Book length matters: if I’ve read nine 1,000-page books by one author, I’m going to count that alongside ten 200-page books by another.

• Fewer novelists than I’d like. Currently trying to rectify that.

• The nonfiction writers here are the ones who live rent-free in my head. Even if I don’t regularly return to their writing—even if I adamantly disagree with or dislike their ideas—their voice, their very words and phrases, resound in my skull whenever I’m thinking, reading, writing, and teaching.

Drawing up this list also got me thinking about which authors are on their way to being added to it. The following list—surely incomplete—includes those who are on my personal “five-book club,” most of whom will very likely be on the above list eventually, in some cases sooner rather than later:

1. Saint Augustine

2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

3. Albert Borgmann

4. Walter Brueggemann

5. William Cavanaugh

6. Ta-Nehisi Coates

7. Ross Douthat

8. Terry Eagleton

9. Richard Foster

10. Stephen Fowl

11. Paul Griffiths

12. Richard Hays

13. Wesley Hill

14. Alan Jacobs

15. Luke Timothy Johnson

16. Tony Judt

17. Immanuel Kant

18. Søren Kierkegaard

19. Peter Leithart

20. Mark Lilla

21. Ian McFarland

22. George R.R. Martin

23. Ephraim Radner

24. Joseph Ratzinger

25. George Scialabba

26. Roger Scruton

27. James K. A. Smith

28. Charles Taylor

29. Miroslav Volf

30. Ben Witherington

Two final thoughts:

First, these lists remind me how many novelists there are of whose books I have read exactly one. That’s true for most people, obviously, but in my case it’s increased by my habit of reading the first entry in as many long-running genre series as I can: e.g., Hammett, Cain, Chandler, Macdonald, McBain, Himes, Stark, MacDonald, Higgins, Block, Burke, Mosley, Connelly, Pelecanos, Lehane … I’ve read no more than one book by each of them, because I have a list of renowned crime novelists I periodically check off for fun. Whereas, at least in my mind, a proper crime aficionado would read each series in its entirety before moving on to another.

Second, the above lists are not exhaustive of authors or books that are important to me. For example, I have read one book by Mary Midgley, no more; but The Myths We Live By and, more important, her intelligence, style, wit, and clarity of thought left a lasting impact on me. And, God willing, I will return to her, though I have no plans at present of making good on that hope. I could say the same about Tolkien, Susanna Clarke, Wallace Stegner, and many others. Some authors write the one great classic that imprints itself on your mind; others write dozens of works that, within the limits of work and marriage and parenting, you just never get around to.

Such is the reading life: here, at least, finitum non capax infiniti.

My latest: why baptism isn’t optional, in CT

This week Christianity Today published a long column from me—more than 3,000 words!—on baptism. It’s called “Baptism Is Not Optional,” which pretty much cuts to the heart of the matter. I texted a link to a friend and said, “I’ve never been more CoC … or catholic.” And that’s the truth.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

We don’t, thank God, burn or drown fellow Christians over baptism anymore. In fact, talking about baptism today—about getting it right in doctrine and practice and hence about ways of getting it wrong—feels like breaking a ceasefire. Our present ecumenical peace is hard won and fragile. Why threaten to disturb it?

My answer is simple: The truth matters, baptism matters, and too many churches handle baptism in the lackadaisical, emotive, and diminishing way I see in my classroom. So, let’s actually talk about what baptism is, what it isn’t, and what Scripture and tradition teach about it.

Cards on the table: I hold a full-blown, whole-hog “high sacramental” view of baptism. It’s a visible word of the gospel; it’s a means of grace; it’s an effective sign. By the power of God’s Word and Spirit, baptism does what baptism says: It washes you clean. It gives you Christ; it gives you his Spirit; it gives you his saving grace. “Baptism,” as the apostle Peter succinctly puts it, “saves you” (1 Pet. 3:21, RSV throughout).

Read the whole thing here.

Robert Farrar Capon on God, matter, wine, and things

Yesterday I wrote more than 4,000 words in response to Nicholas Carr’s response to L. M. Sacasas on the topic of attention, enchantment, creation, and “things.” A friend wrote to remind me that, nearly sixty years ago, Robert Farrar Capon had already addressed all this in a much more adequate and beautiful way than I could muster. He was right.

The source is Capon’s classic book, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection. The following excerpt comes from pages 19-21 then 84-90 in the Modern Library Food edition (2002). I’ve bolded passages especially relevant to the discussion yesterday.

If you’ve not read Capon before, consider this a taste to whet the appetite for more.

*

Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences. It can cost him time and effort, but it pays handsomely. If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil's Cathedral. Or how much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the insides of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses and the juice of pine trees to realize he could turn them all into the first fiddle. No doubt his wife urged him to get up and do something useful. I am sure that he was a stalwart enough lover of things to pay no attention at all to her nagging; but how wonderful it would have been if he had known what we know now about his dawdling. He could have silenced her with the greatest riposte of all time: Don't bother me; I am creating the possibility of the Bach unaccompanied sonatas.

But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him—every time he substitutes a conceit for a fact—he gets grease all over the kitchen of the world. Reality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods—to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things.

They made a calf in Horeb; thus they turned their Glory into the similitude of a calf that eateth hay. Bad enough, you say. Ah, but it was worse than that. Whatever good may have resided in the Golden Calf—whatever loveliness of gold or beauty of line—went begging the minute the Israelites got the idea that it was their savior out of the bondage of Egypt. In making the statue a matter of the greatest point, they missed the point of its matter altogether.

Berate me not therefore for carrying on about slicing onions in a world under the sentence of nuclear overkill. The heaviest weight on the shoulders of the earth is still the age-old idolatry by which man has cheated himself of both Creator and creation. And this age is no exception. If you prefer to address yourself to graver matters, well and good: Idolatry needs all the enemies it can get. But if I choose to break images in the kitchen, I cannot be faulted. We are both good men, in a day when good men are hard to find. Let us join hands and get on with our iconoclasm.

There is a Russian story about an old woman whose vices were so numerous that no one could name even one of her virtues. She was slothful, spiteful, envious, deceitful, greedy, foul-mouthed, and proud. She lived by herself and in herself; she loved no one and no thing. One day a beggar came to her door. She upbraided him, abused him, and sent him away. As he left, however, she unaccountably threw an onion after him. He picked it up and ran away. In time the woman died and was dragged down to her due reward in hell. But just as she was about to slip over the edge of the bottomless pit, she looked up. Above her, descending from the infinite distances of heaven, was a great archangel, and in his hand was an onion. “Grasp this,” he said. “If you hold it, it will lift you up to heaven.”

One real thing is closer to God than all the diagrams in the world.

* * *

One honest look at any real thing—one minute's contemplation of process on earth—leads straight into the conundrum of the relationship of God to the world. The solution is hardly obvious. For something that could not be at all without God, creation seems to do rather well without Him. Only miracles are simple; nature is a mystery. Autumn by autumn, He makes wine upon a thousand hills, but He does it without tipping His hand. Glucose, fructose, and Saccharomyces ellipsoideus apparently manage very nicely on their own. So much so that the resolving of the conflict between the sacred and the secular (or, better said, the repairing of the damage done by divorcing them) has been billed as the major problem of modern theology. Permit me, therefore, glass in hand and cooking Sherry within easy reach, the world's most interrupted discourse on the subject. In vino veritas.

Take the largest part of that truth first. God makes wine. For all its difficulties, there is no way around the doctrine of creation. But notice the tense: He makes; not made. He did not create once upon a time, only to find himself saddled now with the unavoidable and embarrassing result of that first rash decision. That is only to welsh on the idea of an unnecessary world, to make creation a self-perpetuating pool game which is contingent only at the start—which needs only the first push on the cue ball to keep it going forever. It will not do: The world is more unnecessary than that. It is unnecessary now; it cries in this moment for a cause to hold it in being. It was St. Thomas, I think, who pointed out long that if God wanted to get rid of the universe, He would not have to do anything; He would have to stop doing something. Wine is—the fruit of the vine stands in act, outside of nothing—because it is His very present pleasure to have it so. The creative act is contemporary, intimate, and immediate to each part, parcel and period of the world.

Do you see what that means? In a general way we concede that God made the world out of joy: He didn't need it; He just thought it was a good thing. But if you confine His activity in creation to the beginning only, you lose most of the joy in the subsequent shuffle of history. Sure, it was good back then, you say, but since then, we've been eating leftovers. How much better a world it becomes when you see Him creating at all times and at every time; when you see that the preserving of the old in being is just as much creation as the bringing of the new out of nothing. Each thing, at every moment, becomes the delight of His hand, the apple of His eye. The bloom of yeast lies upon the grapeskins year after year because He likes it; C8H12O6=2C2H5OH+2CO2 is a dependable process because, every September, He says, That was nice; do it again.

Let us pause and drink to that.

To a radically, perpetually unnecessary world; to the restoration of astonishment to the heart and mystery to the mind; to wine, because it is a gift we never expected; to mushroom and artichoke, for they are incredible legacies; to improbable acids and high alcohols, since we would hardly have thought of them ourselves; and to all being, because it is superfluous: to the hairs on Harry's ear, and to the seven hundred and sixty-eighth cell from the upper attachment of the right gluteus maximus in the last girl on the chorus line. Prosit, Dear Hearts. Cheers, Men and Brethren. We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy. Let the bookkeepers struggle with their balance sheets; it is the tippler who sees the untipped Hand. God is eccentric; He has loves, not reasons. Salute!

But there is more. He creates in a mystery. What He holds intimately and contemporaneously in being, acts, nonetheless, for itself. The secular is not the sacred. Creation exists in its own right, is no parable, no front, no Punch and Judy show in which God plays all the parts, but a vast and raucous meeting where each thing acts out its nature, shouts I am I, as if no other thing had being. The world exists, not for what it means but for what it is. The purpose of mushrooms is to be mushrooms; wine is in order to wine: Things are precious before they are contributory. It is a false piety that walks through creation looking only for lessons which can be applied somewhere else. To be sure, God remains the greatest good, but, for all that, the world is still good in itself. Indeed, since He does not need it, its whole reason for being must lie in its own goodness; He has no use for it; only delight.

Just think what that means. We were not made in God's image for nothing. The child's preference for sweets over spinach, mankind's universal love of the toothsome rather than the nutritious is the mark of our greatness, the proof that we love the secular as He does—for its secularity. We have eyes which see what He sees, lips which praise what He praises, and mouths which relish things, because He first pronounced them tov. The world is no disposable ladder to heaven. Earth is not convenient, it is good; it is, by God's design, our lawful love.

Another toast then.

To Da Vinci's notebooks; to Einstein's preoccupations; to Mozart and to Bach, and to the child who hears a canon for the first time in “Frère Jacques”; to the singularities of chalk and cheese and to the delectabilities of all things, visible and in- visible; l'chaim because it is good; to health, for no reason but itself; to men because they are men, to women without explanation, and to the good company of every secular thing in saecula saeculorum. Toast them with their own watchword: Here's how!

So far, so good then. God intimately creative; but things uniquely themselves. The paradox of being, by which the secular stands gloriously free of the sacred—on which it utterly depends. What next?

Ah, mischief. Man is not always content to take reality at such widths and depths. He cuts the wine of paradox with the water of consistency: The mystery of God and things is tamed to the simplicity of God or things; he builds himself a duller, skimpier world.

If he is a pagan, he abolishes the secular in favor of the sacred. The world becomes filled with gods. To improve his wine, he searches, not for purer strains of yeast, but for better incantations, friendlier gods. He spends his time in shrines and caves, not chemistry. Things, for him, become pawns in the chess game of heaven. Religion devours life.

On the other hand, if he is a secularist, he insists that God must have no part in the world at all. That God has made Saccharomyces ellipsoideus competent enough to ferment sugar on its own, becomes, for him, a proof that He never made it at all. Poor man! To be so nearly right, and so devastatingly wrong! To hit so close, yet miss the mark completely. Yeast, without God to give it as a gift, ceases to be good company. It becomes merely useful—a mechanism contributory to other mechanisms. And those, in turn, to the vast mechanism of the whole. And that, at last, to—well, he is hard put to say just what. He has found the sewing machine and lost the thread of delight. Unique goodnesses are swallowed up in process.

Worse yet, if he is a contemporary theologian, he acquires an irrational fear of natural theology. He distrusts people who claim to see the vestigia Dei, the footprints of God, in creation; he blames them for being pagans, filling the world with gods. Poor man, again! The vestigia Dei are not irrelevant divinities ruffling the surface of a matter for which they have no sympathy. They are rather the tracks of God's figure skating upon the ice of the world. They are evidences of play, not pilgrimage. He cuts them, not to make a point, but because ice cries out for such virtuosity. They prove He knows what the world is for.

So with all things. Creation is God's living room, the place where He sits down and relishes the exquisite taste of His decoration. Things, therefore, as things, are inseparable from God, as God. Separate the secular from the sacred, and the world becomes an idol shrouded in interpretations; creation becomes too meaningful to make love to. As religion devoured life for the pagan, so significance consumes the world of the secularist. Delectability goes by the boards, dullness reigns, and earth becomes a sitting duck for confidence men and tin-fiddle manufacturers of all sorts. Poor earth, poor stars, poor flesh. Without a Giver, they never become themselves.

We have arrived at an untoastable condition. Turn your glass upside down for a moment. There are demons to be exorcized.

Omnes dii gentium daemonia sunt; Dominus autem coelos fecit. Deliver us, O Lord, from religiosity and Godlessness alike, lest we wander in fakery or die of boredom. Restore to us Thyself as Giver and the secular as Thy gift. Let idols perish and con jobs cease. Give repentance and better minds to all pagans and secularists; in the meantime, of Thy mercy, keep them out of our cellars.

Now we may drink.

To the world, which belongs to those with tongues to taste it: Na Zdrovie! To God who gives the world to those with tongues: Er lebe hoch! And to the vast paradox by which the One enjoys the other: Bottoms up! Creation deserves the most resounding slap we can give it. Min skål, din skål, alla vackra flickors skål. He fathers forth whose beauty is past change. Praise Him!

One might have hoped that, with so gracious a creature as wine, even the most ardent religionists and secularists would have made an exception to their universal custom of missing the point of things. But alas, between teetotalism on the one hand and the habit of classifying it as an alcoholic beverage on the other, they have both lost the thread of delight.

Consider first the teetotalers. They began, no doubt, by observing that some men use wine to excess—to the point at which, though the wine remains true to itself, the drinker does not. That much, I give them: Drunks are a nuisance. But they went too far. Only the ungrateful or the purblind can fail to see that sugar in the grape and yeast on the skins is a divine idea, not a human one. Man's part in the process consists of honest and prudent management of the work that God has begun. Something underhanded has to be done to grape juice to keep it from running its appointed course.

Witness the teetotaling communion service. Most Protestants, I suppose, imagine that it is part of the true Reformed religion. But have they considered that, for nineteen centuries after the institution of the Eucharist, wine was the only element available for the sacrament? Do they seriously envision St. Paul or Calvin or Luther opening bottles of Welch's Grape Juice in the sacristy before the service? Luther, at least, would turn over in his grave. The WCTU version of the Lord's Supper is a bare 100 years old. Grape juice was not commercially viable until the discovery of pasteurization; and, unless I am mistaken, it was Mr. Welch himself (an ardent total abstainer) who persuaded American Protestantism to abandon what the Lord obviously thought rather kindly of.

Carr, Sacasas, and eloquent reality

In a list of the best living writers on technology in the English language, the top ten would include Nicholas Carr and L. M. Sacasas. Yesterday the two came together in an essay I can’t get out of my head.

The essay in question is the third in a series called “Seeing Things” on Carr’s Substack “New Cartographies.” Titled “Contemplation as Rebellion,” it continues Carr’s reflections on the nature of perception in a digital age. Perception is both neurological and social; it is a mediated phenomenon; it can be done well or poorly, deeply or cheaply. And works of art, especially visual art like paintings and engravings, have the power to call forth the kind of attention that repays time, energy, focus, and affection.

Interwoven with these reflections is Carr’s intervention in the “enchantment” discourse, one I have myself dipped into more than a few times (especially in conversation with Alan Jacobs). In yesterday’s essay, following meditations on Heaney and Hawthorne, Carr turns to something Sacasas wrote last August titled “If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You're Not Paying Attention.” He begins with an excerpt from Sacasas:

This form of attention and the knowledge it yields not only elicits more of the world, it elicits more of us. In waiting on the world in this way, applying time and strategic patience in the spirit of invitation, we draw out and are drawn out in turn. As the Latin root of attention suggests, as we extend ourselves into the world by attending to it, we may also find that we ourselves are also extended, that is to say that our consciousness is stretched and deepened.

Here is Carr’s response, which ends his own essay and which I quote at length:

Even as I find Sacasas’s essay inspiring, I find it troubling. The way he frames the contemplative gaze as a means of re-enchantment makes me uncomfortable. An enchanted world is, by definition, a world that presents a false front to us — a front composed of what Sacasas terms, at the end of his essay, “mere things.” To see what’s really there in an enchanted world, you need to see beyond or through the surface. You need to discover what’s hidden, what’s concealed, by the merely material form, and that requires something more than sensory perception. It requires extrasensory perception. In this framing, the contemplative gaze is not just unlocking what lies untapped within us — the powers of perception, imagination, interpretation — but also exposing some spiritual essence that lies hidden within the object of the gaze.

The issue I take with Sacasas’s essay is not a matter of sense — I’m pretty sure we’re talking about the same perceptual phenomenon — but of wording. When he suggests that “enchantment is just the measure of the quality of our attention,” he’s muddying the waters. When we look at the quality of attention demonstrated by Heaney, Muñoz, and Hawthorne, we’re not seeing enchantment. We’re seeing an exquisite openness to the real. A sense of wonder does not require a world infused with spirit. The world as it is is sufficient. The reason the wording matters here is simple. What bedevils our perceptions today isn’t a lack of enchantment. It’s a lack of reality.

“Things change according to the stance we adopt towards them, the type of attention we pay to them,” Iain McGilchrist wrote in The Master and His Emissary. He’s right, but it’s important to recognize that the changes take place in the mind of the observer not in the things themselves. The things, whether works of art or of nature, have a material integrity that’s independent of our own thoughts and desires, and the stance we adopt toward them should entail a respect for that integrity.

The desire to re-enchant the world may seem like an act of humility, a way of paying tribute to the world’s unseen powers, but really it’s the opposite, an act of hubris. In demanding that the world hold greater meaning for us, that it be a reservoir for the fulfillment of our own spiritual yearnings, we are attempting yet again to impose our will on the world, to turn its myriad material forms to our own purposes, to make it our mirror. Whatever enchantment may once have been, re-enchantment is a power play.

It’s interesting that, in the English language, we have enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment. What we don’t have is unenchantment. A state of disenchantment is by definition a state of loss, one that begs to be remedied by a process of re-enchantment. A state of unenchantment presumes no loss and requires no remedy. It is a state that is entirely happy with the thinginess of things. So let me, by fiat, introduce unenchantment into the language. And let me suggest that the contemplative gaze is best when it is an unenchanted gaze.

There is much to unpack here. Before I respond, let me be clear that nothing whatsoever hangs on the use, retention, or recovery of the term “enchantment” and its many variations. This entire conversation could be held, and all that technologists, philosophers, critics, and theologians want to say about it could be said, without Weber’s Entzauberung or any of its translations. Weber, for his part, was seeking to offer a sociological description of an epochal cultural change. Whatever the merit of his description, neither the concept nor the term nor its denial bears on the substance of the arguments that Sacasas and Carr make above.

I take Carr to be taking issue with a spiritually charged material reality for at least five reasons. First, it is reductive; things become “mere” things. Second, it is narcissistic; things must be what I want or need them to be to have value, in themselves or for me. Third, it is coercive; it imposes upon things what they evidently lack. Fourth, it is ungrateful; it fails to receive things as they are and thus to attend to them with the care they deserve. Finally, it is unreal; it substitutes my subjectivity for the stubborn objectivity of the thing before me. No longer am I interacting with some material item of the phenomenal world; instead, I am playing with projections upon the screen of my mind.

These are all valid and useful worries; no doubt they have a legitimate target. I don’t think Carr’s comments are an adequate response to Sacasas, however, or a successful critique of the broader view of enchanted perception that Sacasas is seeking to represent. In part there seem to be some misunderstandings between them. But perhaps more than any serious misunderstanding there is simple, unbridgeable disagreement. That disagreement, in turn, reverses the terms of the reproach: it is Carr, not Sacasas, who makes the world into a mirror.

More on that later; for now, consider definitions.

Carr opens by saying that an “enchanted world is, by definition, a world that presents a false front to us.” This is an unfortunate way to begin. Let me offer an alternative. At a minimum, an enchanted world is one that is full of life, intelligence, events, experiences, agents, and phenomena that exceed the capacity of secular, instrumental reason—especially the “hard” sciences—to measure, name, calculate, contain, control, or grasp. For Christians, the word for such a world is simply “creation.” But creation is not a false front. There may be more than what you or I can measure or glimpse, but there is not less. Creation is artifice in the sense that there is an artificer; it is not artifice in the sense that it is a façade.

Carr writes: “When we look at the quality of attention demonstrated by Heaney, Muñoz, and Hawthorne, we’re not seeing enchantment. We’re seeing an exquisite openness to the real. A sense of wonder does not require a world infused with spirit. The world as it is is sufficient.” These claims are all question-begging. What if openness to the real discloses to one’s awareness a deeper reality than one previously supposed to be true or possible—a reality not limited to one’s consciousness but objectively existent in the very thing one is contemplating, antecedent to one’s act of contemplation? Whether wonder requires a world infused with spirit is beside the point; it’s a hypothetical we aren’t in a position to answer. The question instead is whether this world is in fact suffused with spirit. To call a spirit-less world “the world as it is” begs the question, therefore, because we cannot and do not know a priori that the world lacks spirit, or that the spirit it manifests to so many in such a variety of ways is contained without remainder in the mind.

Carr is right to insist on respecting the integrity of the things of the world and of the world itself. Things aren’t playthings, and when we reduce the former to the latter both we and they are diminished as a result. So let me avoid the generic and embrace the particular. What follows is a specifically Christian account of why, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words, seeing the world as charged with the grandeur of God is not a failure to attend to the thisness of things.

Hopkins is a good person to start with, as it happens, given his emphasis on “inscape” or the proper “thisness” of created things, drawing on John Duns Scotus’s haecceitas. Each thing is just what it is; it isn’t anything else. It is the particular thing God made it to be, and it is this precisely in virtue of its relation to God the Creator, to his creative power and good pleasure. To, in a word, his delight.

The doctrine of creation extends this notion to anything and everything in existence. Material objects, then, are not windows we will one day raise (much less smash) in order to see “true” reality more clearly. Nor are they akin to Wittgenstein’s ladder, necessary to climb but kicked over once used. Nor still are they masks donned to deceive us or allegories that, in pointing to what they are not, exhaust themselves in their reference (somewhat like the self-destructing tapes of Mission: Impossible fame).

No, the Christian doctrine of creation teaches that the surfaces of the world contain depths and that seemingly silent things have a voice. They speak. They sing, in fact. Reality, in the words of Albert Borgmann, is eloquent. Significance in the broadest sense is therefore not only a product or property of the conscious human mind; it belongs to the things of the world prior to my contemplating them and emerge, intelligibly and fittingly, in the encounter between us.

Two concepts govern this theological perspective, each centered on the incarnation. The reason why is straightforward: the man Jesus is fully and utterly human without being merely human. He is more than human, but he is not less. Nothing in one’s phenomenal experience of Jesus’s humanity—nothing measurable by observation, analysis, or a thousand scientific tests—would tell you anything about who he is, only what he is: namely, a human being and, in that respect, like any other. Yet this man is God. Who he is is thus hidden from view.

Are we back, then, to the “false front” of Carr’s worries? By no means.

On one hand, Jesus’s humanity is not a fiction; it is not like the façades of Petra, which appear to be exteriors of magnificent temples yet contain nothing on the inside. Jesus’s humanity is, apart from sin, like yours and mine in every way. He really is a human being, and his humanity is not a temporary meat-suit he sloughs off at the Ascension. Jesus is human forever.

On the other hand, Jesus’s divinity is not opposed to his humanity. He is neither a hybrid nor a shell in which two competing principles vie for space. In all his actions, in all he says and suffers, he does so as God and man, divinely and humanly. Indeed, part of the revelation of the God-man is that God can be man without contradiction. Contra John Hick, the incarnation is not a square circle.

The most common patristic image for this reality comes from Scripture: the burning bush. The divinity of Jesus suffuses and saturates the humanity of Jesus without consuming it. This in turn came to govern the fathers’ view of the sacraments, the Eucharist above all. Anthony Domestico draws this out in a review of Paul Mariani’s biography of Hopkins:

Mariani is most affecting when describing what he calls Hopkins’s idea of “thisness—the dappled distinctiveness of everything kept in Creation.” He links Hopkins’s concept of inscape and instress to the poet’s abiding devotion to the Eucharist. Hopkins was drawn to Catholicism, Mariani suggests, through the doctrine of the Real Presence, “God dwelling in things as simple as bread and wine … the logical extension of God’s indwelling among us.” His poetry and his religion are necessary to one another: Hopkins was the poet he was because of his Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, and he was the Catholic he was because of his poetic apprehension of reality.

To be sure, the world is not a sacrament per se; a sacramental logic applies to creation in virtue of its status as created. In this way the sacraments help to explain how creation can be just what it is and, in the language of Alexander Schmemann, an epiphany of its Creator. It seems to me that Carr and other critics of (at least a certain Christian style of) enchantment substitute an “or” for the “and,” seeing the former as necessary and the latter as impossible. For Christians, it is the incarnation that demonstrates the truth and thus the possibility of the “and.”

The second concept that enters here is typology, or the use of “figure” in reading Scripture. The most famous study is Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis. He rightly argues there that the “types” or “figures” of the biblical narrative are not extinguished by their trans-local, trans-personal, trans-temporal signification. The fact that David figures Christ, or somehow mysteriously points forward to him, confirms and upholds his unique historicity; it does not obliterate it. Here is how Paul Griffiths puts it:

One event or utterance figures another when, while remaining unalterably what it is, it announces or communicates something other than itself. Eve’s assent to the tempter and her consequent taking of the forbidden fruit from the tree figures, in this sense, Mary’s fiat mihi in response to the annunciation and the consequent incarnation of the Lord in her womb. The second event—the figured—encompasses and includes the first, without removing its reality. The first—the figuring—has its reality, however, by way of participation in the second. This is in the order of being. Ontological figuration may, however, be replicated at the level of the text, and in scripture it inevitably is.

Put bluntly, figuralism falls apart if the human figures of history recorded by Scripture are neither truly human nor truly historical. It is exactly in their three-dimensional, irreducible humanity and historicity—their personal haecceity—that they “figure” Christ in advance of his advent. Saint Augustine writes in De Doctrina Christiana that humans signify with signs but God signifies with both signs and things. Salvation history, inscribed in Scripture, is thus the grand narrative of all creation, at once told by humans through written signs and told by God through created things—including the lives of human beings themselves, both their words and their deeds.

In sum, both typology and sacramentology manifest the logic embodied in the incarnation: a simultaneous affirmation of the goodness and thisness of creation in all its parts and of creation’s capacity to communicate, signify, or otherwise mediate depths of reality not immediately evident on the surface of things. “Re-enchantment,” as I see it, is one way to describe a Christian reassertion or recovery of this way of understanding and inhabiting the world. Carr acknowledges that such re-enchantment “may seem like an act of humility, a way of paying tribute to the world’s unseen powers, but really it’s the opposite, an act of hubris.” Why? “In demanding that the world hold greater meaning for us, that it be a reservoir for the fulfillment of our own spiritual yearnings, we are attempting yet again to impose our will on the world, to turn its myriad material forms to our own purposes, to make it our mirror. Whatever enchantment may once have been, re-enchantment is a power play.”

Whatever the truth of this critique applied to other types of (re-)enchantment, I hope I’ve made clear by now why it doesn’t apply to the Christian variety. Christian attention to the world and to things as the creation of God makes no demands, imposes no extrinsic meaning, bends nothing to our will to power or pleasure. It is a response (bottom up) to what we discover the world and its things to be, in themselves apart from and prior to us, just as it is a quest (top down) to see the world and its things as we have been told by God they in fact are. In the words of Psalm 19:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world. (vv. 1-4)

The claim of the psalmist is that, in reality, the voice-that-is-no-voice and the words-that-are-no-words speak—are speaking, at all times, even now—whether or not we have ears to hear them. We do not imagine or construct what they say; we hearken to what they have to say to us. This is why Wendell Berry is so obstinate in his unfashionable insistence that the meaning humans find, whether in art or in the natural world, is just that: discovered, not created. Franz Wright captures the point well in his poem, “The Maker”:

The listening voice, the speaking ear

And the way, always, being
a maker
reminds:

you were made.

Berry himself puts it this way in a 1987 essay:

[Consider the concept] of artistic primacy or autonomy, in which it is assumed that no value is inherent in subjects, but that value is conferred upon subjects by the art and the attention of the artist. The subjects of world are only “raw material.” As William Matthews writes in a recent article: “A poet beginning to make something need raw material, something to transform.” For Marianne Moore, he says,

subject matter is not in itself important, except that it gives her the opportunity to speak about something that engages her passions. What is important instead is what she can discover to say.

And he concludes:

It is not, of course, the subject that is or isn't dull, but the quality of attention we do or do not pay to it, and the strength of our will to transform. Dull subjects are those we have failed.

This apparently assumes that for the animals and humans who are not fine artists, who have discovered nothing to say, the world is dull, which of course is not true. It assumes also that attention is of interest in itself, which is not true either. In fact, attention is of value only insofar as it is paid in the proper discharge of an obligation. To pay attention is to come into the presence of a subject. In one of its root senses, it is to “stretch toward” a subject, in a kind of aspiration. We speak of “paying attention” because of a correct perception that attention is owed—that, without our attention and our attending, our subjects, including ourselves, are endangered.

Mr. Matthews’ trivializing of subjects in the interest of poetry industrializes the art. He is talking about an art oriented exclusively to production, like coal mining. Like an industrial entrepreneur, he regards the places and creatures and experiences of the world as “raw material,” valueless until exploited.

Such an approach to “things” is, I recognize, just what Carr opposes. But the irony, and therefore the danger, is that Carr’s approach threatens to join hands with Matthews against Berry—as well as against Borgmann, Schmemann, Augustine, Wright, Hopkins, and Sacasas. (A formidable crew!)

Recall Carr’s modification of McGilchrist’s claim, “Things change according to the stance we adopt towards them, the type of attention we pay to them.” Carr writes, “He’s right, but it’s important to recognize that the changes take place in the mind of the observer not in the things themselves. The things, whether works of art or of nature, have a material integrity that’s independent of our own thoughts and desires, and the stance we adopt toward them should entail a respect for that integrity” (emphasis mine). It is crucial to see that the last sentence is a non sequitur. Enchanted, disenchanted, and unenchanted alike agree that all things possess a certain integrity (material and otherwise) independent of our thoughts and desires and that our relation to things ought to show respect for that integrity.

As a result, however, does Carr’s proposal not end up throwing us back into the cage of consciousness? Are not things thereby reduced to a mirror, in which we see not things but our thoughts about things? Are not things now become playthings in the inner theater of the imagination? So that I am no longer contemplating the thisness of what lies before me, but projecting it from a variety of angles—with countless filters and settings tried and tested—on the screen of my mind?

Consider Carr’s own words:

To see what’s really there in an enchanted world, you need to see beyond or through the surface. You need to discover what’s hidden, what’s concealed, by the merely material form, and that requires something more than sensory perception. It requires extrasensory perception. In this framing, the contemplative gaze is not just unlocking what lies untapped within us — the powers of perception, imagination, interpretation — but also exposing some spiritual essence that lies hidden within the object of the gaze. (emphasis mine)

So far as I can tell, the last sentence puts the shoe on the other foot. With respect to the contemplative gaze, what Carr seems to want is not for the conscious human mind to encounter an object as it is, much less to penetrate to its inexhaustible depths, but to double back on itself, thereby “unlocking what lies untapped within us—the powers of perception, imagination, interpretation” (emphasis, again, mine). It follows that, for Carr, “unenchanted” contemplation is not finally about the object in its independent objectivity but about the subject exercising his unfathomably creative subjective powers. Perception is turned inside out. Attention transforms into solipsism, even narcissism. What I see is ultimately about me, the one seeing, and what I choose or want to see. What is important is no longer the object interpreted but the change induced in the interpreter by his powers of interpretation.

This epistemic loop is just what Sacasas was worried about in his original essay. Following the work of Jane Bennett, Sacasas writes that we find ourselves “trapped in a vicious circle. Habituated against attending to the world with patience and care, we are more likely to experience the world as a mute accumulation of inert things to be merely used or consumed as our needs dictate.” He goes on:

And this experience in turn reinforces the disinclination to attend to the world with appropriate patience and care. Looking and failing to see, we mistakenly conclude there was nothing to see.

What is there to do, then, except to look again, and with care, almost as a matter of faith, although a faith encouraged by each fleeting encounter with beauty we have been graced to experience. To stare awkwardly at things in the world until they cease to be mere things. To risk the appearance of foolishness by being prepared to believe that world might yet be enchanted. Or, better yet, to play with the notion that we might cast our attention into the world in the spirit of casting a spell. We may very well conjure up surprising depths of experience, awaken long dormant desires, and rekindle our wonder in the process. What that will avail, only time would tell.

Carr is understandably worried that the “mere” in “mere things” suggests that things as they are are inadequate unless and until we impose on them a higher meaning suited to our needs, a weightier significance than they themselves can bear. Such an imposition both weighs them down and occludes their actual significance. What Sacasas has in mind, though, is the “raw material” of “industrial art,” the instrumental reason that sees things as nothing more than what they appear to be, nothing more, therefore, than their constituent elements. On such a view, what a thing is is what it is made of, which is only one step away from the constructivist view that what a thing is is whatever I make of it. In the words of David Graeber, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.”

Sacasas is right to delineate an alternative. I don’t know whether he’d called it the Christian alternative, but I will. I’ve spent many words outlining it in detail, so let me close here by summarizing it by contrast to both Graeber and Carr.

Regarding Graeber, his radical constructivism fails to approach and attend to the world in its thisness, in its independence and integrity apart from and prior to us, and for this reason fails to receive it as the gift that it is. With this critique I think Carr is in agreement.

As for Carr, however, his own view falls between two stools. Theoretically, it lacks sufficient metaphysical grounding to anchor reality—both its thisness and its givenness—while practically, it terminates in a contemplation that is curved in on itself. Whether the result is modern in a Kantian mode or postmodern in a Graeberian mode matters little.

To be clear, my claim is not that Christians alone can or do attend to the world as it is or that Christian enchantment (what I’m calling the church’s doctrine of creation) is the only viable, coherent, or dominant version on offer. It is instead that Carr’s critique falls short in relation to a properly Christian account of creation, contemplation, and haecceity. And it is this account that I understand Sacasas to be explicating and defending in his recommendation of seeing the world as always already enchanted, if only we take the time to pay it the attention it deserves.

On the phone with Google

Me: I can't sign in to my account.
Them: Go [here].
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Them: Sign in.
Me: Yes, I did. It’s asking to verify my identity.
Them: Click to verify.
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Them: Which options?
Me: "Open the Gmail app in your phone."
Them: Yes, verify on your Gmail app.
Me: I don't have the Gmail app on my phone.
Them:
Me: And I don't want to download it either.
Them:
Me:
Them: Click for another option.
Me: Yes, that's why I called. The only other option is "Click 'Yes' on your iPhone or tablet."
Them: Yes, click that.
Me: But there is nothing to click. I don't have a tablet and there is no "Yes" on my phone; I don't have a Google app downloaded on my phone.
Them:
Me: And I don't want to download it either.​
Them:
Me:
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Me: Yes, that's why I'm calling. When I click for another option, the only other option is "Open the Gmail app on your phone."
Them: Yes, ​verify on your Gmail app.
Me: Remember, I don't have the Gmail app on my phone.
Them:
Me: And I don't want to.
Them:
Me:
Them: Click for another option.
Me: Remember, the only options both involve an app on my phone.
Them: What about your Google email address?
Me: Yes, I have one of those. I'm currently signed in on this browser. But even though I'm signed in, it's asking me to verify my identity because I need to update my payment preferences.
Them: Good. Now use your email to log in.
Me: I can't, because my browser is asking me verify on my phone, and I don't have email on my phone.
Them: You don't have email on your phone?
Me: I don't have email on my phone.
Them:
Me:
Them:
Me:
Them: Please hold the line while I transfer your call.

My latest: on generation autodidact, in Mockingbird

This morning I’ve got an essay in Mockingbird called “Generation Autodidact.” It’s about bookworms like me who are constantly trying to fill in the gaps in their reading, and about Gen Z kids who don’t read books at all, and how they seek out learning anyway, and what they might do when they reach their thirties and forties, and how we should all think about autodidacticism in a postliterate age. Here are the first four paragraphs:

Every bookworm knows the rule: don’t roll your eyes at mispronunciation of big words or foreign names; the speaker is probably a voracious reader who learned the term not from speech but from the page. For instance, growing up I thought segue was spelled “segway,” like the scooter. When I saw the word in writing I mentally rhymed it with league, having no idea what it meant.

I don’t recall who set me straight on that one, but I’m forever grateful to my boss at the library where I worked during seminary. Barth, Rahner, and Schleiermacher no longer twitch in their graves when I say their names. I now try to recall this blessed ignorance when my students rhyme “Barth” with hearth, or when they give me funny looks when I refer to “Saint Augustine,” with emphasis apparently on the wrong syllable. Isn’t he the one the grass is named for?

I’d like to propose an analogue to the bookworm rule: don’t roll your eyes at personalized lists of Important Books to read in a year, or earnest admissions of having read and enjoyed Wrong Authors. The reason is simple: everyone has to begin somewhere. Someone ignorant of the classics is wise to begin there, with canonical titles she’s heard countless times but never tried for herself. Whether the titles thus heard are in fact classics is one of the things that, by definition, she cannot know in advance of reading them.

With literature, the only way to make a judgment about quality is by developing it through continuous exposure to, well, all of it — the good, the bad, and the middling. Criticizing an ill-read person’s unwitting plan to take up Ayn Rand, given how many times he’s seen her name pop up over the years, is an exercise in missing the point. Not only could our enterprising upstart not know Rand is bad before reading her, but spending time with her may well be the start of a search for beauty, not having found it in the dim dungeons of objectivism.

Click here to read the whole thing.

Biblicist churches that don’t read the Bible

Over at Plough Bonnie Kristian (my editor at CT and the very very best) has written a wonderfully incisive review of the newly published Anabaptist Community Bible. Here are the final three paragraphs of her piece (bolded emphasis mine):

One big reason I’m no longer a member of a Mennonite church is that I moved to another state. But another big reason is that I saw firsthand how unsteady Anabaptism becomes if it is not solidly grounded in [a] foundation of scriptural knowledge and authority. Other Christian traditions – those that also catechize with creed and liturgy and tend to concentrate instructional authority in ordained, seminary-educated ministers – may more reliably hold on to their convictions without intensive, universal lay Bible study.

But Anabaptism doesn’t work that way. It requires understanding, as Roth writes, that “Scripture – and especially the teachings of Jesus – [are] a road map for living,” a map to be constantly consulted because it is always “relevant and authoritative for the Christian life.” It requires us to read the Bible, in Roth’s words, “with the expectation that it will change our lives.” Anabaptism requires the hunger for and submission to Scripture that, five centuries ago, its progenitors modeled to the death.

If the Anabaptist Community Bible can encourage that hunger, enticing Christians to consume Scripture like a community feast, its makers have done well indeed. That would not only commemorate Anabaptism but extend its legacy for generations to come.

Something clicked for me here, especially this: “…without intensive, universal lay Bible study.” That phrase is a useful descriptor for a cross-denominational phenomenon common to any number of low-church biblicist (even “primitivist”) traditions that arose particularly on the American frontier in the nineteenth century.

Intensive, universal lay Bible study: if anything is a desideratum of non-creedal, non-liturgical, congregationalist churches, that is it. Yet what happens when local churches or whole traditions that remain non-creedal, non-liturgical, and congregationalist—biblicist, in a word—no longer practice intensive, universal lay Bible study? It’s not indulging nostalgia to say that there was a time when biblicist churches were full to the brim of adults (and young adults, and teenagers, and children) who read the Bible every day, to the point where they had whole swaths of it memorized or rehearsable by paraphrase. I’m just old enough to remember those days, and I caught only the tail end.

I recall, while serving at a shelter north of Atlanta circa 2010, a homeless man in his 50s reciting whole paragraphs of arcane scriptural passages to me in perfect KJV. This guy had been raised in a bona fide biblicist church that practiced—nay, enforced—intensive, universal lay Bible study.

Yet today, as I have documented almost obsessively, biblicist churches are moving in a post-biblicist direction while younger generations have utterly lost even the rudiments of biblical literacy, along with literal literacy. (Translation: They don’t read, period.)

Beyond such literacy—beyond intensive, universal lay Bible study (should we call it IULBS?)—there is nothing left; at least, not if you remain, on the surface or even beneath the skin, biblicist-primitivist-congregationalist in polity, doctrine, and practice. The rug has been pulled out beneath your feet, the branch you were sitting on has been sawed off, the pillars have all been thrown down: there is nothing left.

Besides, that is, the Zeitgeist. But discerning the spirits is no longer possible when the word of the Lord in Holy Scripture is no longer known, cherished, prized, read. Where else is there to turn? Either to tradition or to the culture. I see no third option.

Update (Feb 13): There is another option, one I’ve mentioned before but had forgotten to include here, which is the singular authority of a charismatic, entrepreneurial, popular pastor. I take it for granted that this is a bad option, but it’s not only a live one; it’s one many churches and believers have chosen and even sought out.

I should add, too, that for the kind of post-biblicist traditions I write about in this post, the “charismatic option” is a nonstarter. Not because it’s unattractive or unthinkable, but because the Spirit without the Word is as rudderless as the Word without the Spirit is lifeless. Hence my reference to discerning the spirits by the gospel of the incarnate Word, which is just what Saint John commends to us in his First Epistle. Modern-day Montanism is just as undesirable as it was in Tertullian’s day.

My latest: a review of Ross Douthat’s new book, in CT

This morning I’m in Christianity Today with a review of Ross Douthat’s new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. I set the table with the changing fortunes of religion in the public square, then turn to Pascal:

Ross Douthat, a Catholic columnist for The New York Times, has written a new book in response to this moment and to the readers he’s trying to reach. In Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, Douthat makes a Pascalian pitch to the curious among the post-secular crowd.

Blaise Pascal was a French thinker who lived 400 years ago. His too was a time of religious and technological upheaval, one straddling the end of the Middle Ages, the Reformation’s fresh divisions of Christendom, and the beginnings of “enlightened” modernity. In such a time, and in response especially to religion’s cultured despisers, Pascal wrote that the first task for Christian thinkers is “to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect.” This is just what Douthat sets out to do, and he likewise follows Pascal in stressing the existential urgency of religious questions and the necessity of placing one’s wager.

“It affects our whole life to know whether the soul is mortal or immortal,” as Pascal put it. “Anyone with only a week to live will not find it in his interest to believe that all this is just a matter of chance.” And though we may (or may not!) have more than a week to live, inaction is impossible. You cannot choose not to choose. Your life is your seat at the table, and you must play the cards you were dealt. Declining to play is not an option; folding is itself a play.

Pascal famously chose to wager: “I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of being mistaken in believing it to be true.” Douthat doesn’t quite take this tack, but Pascal’s confidence and resolution, his unwillingness to let the reader off the hook, are present on every page. 

From there I turn to the book itself. Click here to read the whole thing.

My latest: a review of Wesley Hill’s new book on the resurrection

On Tuesday Christianity Today published my review of Wesley Hill’s new book, Easter: The Season of the Resurrection of Jesus. Titled “A Little Book About a Little Word That Contains the World,” it starts this way:

Only 25 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, Paul wrote to some new believers that “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Cor. 15:14). The Resurrection is not the conclusion of the gospel; it is its beginning and center. Had Jesus remained dead, had the tomb not been empty, there would be no Good News to proclaim. In fact, there would be no news at all—corpses stay dead every day. One more wouldn’t muster interest.

For the apostles, theologian Michael Ramsey once wrote, “the Gospel without the Resurrection was not merely a Gospel without its final chapter: It was not a Gospel at all.” Put simply, “Christian theism is Resurrection-theism.”

It is passing strange, then, that so many people have tried so diligently to wrench Jesus away from the Resurrection—without, that is, accepting the consequences. Philosophers tried their hand at it during the Enlightenment, then skeptical biblical scholars took the baton and have been running with it since. 

When Ramsey published his little book The Resurrection of Christ about 80 years ago, he was responding to Protestant liberals who wanted to retain Jesus’ life and teachings but not his living presence. “The modern mind cannot accept the idea of a bodily resurrection for humanity,” he quotes from H. K. Luce’s commentary on Luke. (Ah yes, we meet again: the modern mind, that infallible fortress of scholarly prejudice. When you see its towers looming on the horizon, turn and run as fast as you can in the other direction.)

Click here to read the rest. Add Wes’s book to your reading list for the Lenten and Easter seasons this spring!

My latest: how to raise readers, in Front Porch Republic

This morning Front Porch Republic published an essay of mine called “How to Raise Readers, in Thirty-Five Steps.” It’s a list of, as the title suggests, thirty-five things for parents to do to raise their children to be readers, with running commentary. It’s fun and light-hearted in tone, certainly the most “advice-y” piece I’ve ever written. Here are the first four paragraphs, before the list proper gets going:

It is not too much to say that everything in our culture pushes against habits of deep reading. Our ears are filled with noise, our eyes are stuck on screens, and our attention is scattered and distracted by a thousand entertainments.

Parents and teachers are worried; I’m both a dad and a professor, and I’m very worried. My worry increases when I think about handing on the faith. Not every believer needs to be literate, much less a casual reader of Dante or Milton. But Christian faith is irreducibly wordy, its details and contours forever fixed in the complex texts of Holy Scripture and sacred tradition. Readers are interpreters, if not by their eyes then by their ears, and bad interpreters can do a lot of damage.

Indeed, the very habits that sustain deep reading are crucial for sustaining prayer. If I lack the attention to keep my eyes on a page I can see, how can I have the attention to keep my heart on a God I cannot see? Reading is not necessary for prayer, but it is one helpful training ground for it.

Is it possible, then, to raise readers in a digital age? I think so. I’ve got four kids, two boys then two girls, who range from sixth grade to first. I can’t say I’ve done much well, but I have raised readers. Every child is different, and aptitude and opportunity both matter greatly. Nevertheless, within varying limits, there are certain things parents can do to make it more likely that their children will learn good reading habits—even become lifelong readers themselves. Here are the ones that have worked well for our family.

Click here to read the rest. I welcome other suggestions!

Read together or die alone

Probably the most famous sentence Alexander Campbell ever wrote was this: “I have endeavored to read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me.”

Which of the following is possible to do, without logical contradiction?

1. To read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me.

2. To read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me, following the personal example of Alexander Campbell.

3. To read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me, following the exegetical method of Alexander Campbell.

4. To read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me, following the theological vision of Alexander Campbell.

5. To read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me, following the hermeneutical tradition begun by Alexander Campbell.

Answer: None of the above.

My latest: on Houellebecq (in Mere O) and Forgiveness (in Comment)

Two new essays for y’all.

The first was published last week at Mere Orthodoxy, on January 7, the ten-year anniversary of the publication of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, which came out the same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. Jake Meador was kind enough to get it up in time for the anniversary—I was surprised not to see any other outlets noting the date—and gave it the title, “A Future Worthy of Life: Houellebecq, Decadence, and Sacraments.” It’s about the insights and shortcomings of Houellebecq’s critique of the West, parallels in other recent novels, and the superior vision (and prescription) found in P. D. James’s Children of Men. (The lesson, as always: James is the queen.)

The other essay came out last month in the print issue of Comment, but it’s been behind a paywall until today. In the magazine it has the title “Promise, Gift, Command”; online it goes by “The Theological Terrain of Forgiveness,” which tracks with the issue’s overarching theme of forgiveness. It’s my attempt at locating, delimiting, and unpacking the Christian doctrine of God’s forgiveness of our sins in Christ, by the Spirit, through the sacraments—and the implications for our own call to imitate this divine action in our daily lives.

Thanks for reading. More soon.

2024: blogging

Counting this one, I published a total of eighty-three posts on the blog this year. At least half were themselves just news, updates, or links to pieces published elsewhere. In other words, not a lot of original writing in this space. Which makes sense, since any half-baked ideas I would have blogged about in the past became columns for Christianity Today.

In any case, here is a rundown, loosely categorized, of what I did write on the blog in 2024.

10. I annotated an old-fashioned blogroll of one hundred writers I follow.

9. I wrote about Antoine Fuqua’s “real movies” and Alex Garland’s seriously misunderstood Civil War.

8. I wrote altogether too much about Star Wars: three posts on The Acolyte, another comparing Catholic Jedi to Protestant wizards, and a long series of twenty-three thoughts on The Phantom Menace.

7. I loved Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem and thought Percival Everett’s James powerful but flawed.

6. I fell in love with Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia, but noted the absence of religion and imagined a similar book called Theological Amnesia.

5. I wrote about the church and the Eucharist and the desire and search for both.

4. I wrote about disenchantment and reenchantment and the search for both.

3. Theologically, I wondered what idols promise; I argued what biblicism can’t get you; I outlined the metaphysics of historical criticism; discussed the unspoken Name; elaborated Protestant subtraction; and proposed a sort of fallacy: “no true cessationist.”

2. In terms of miscellany, I wrote about the NBA, ancient illiteracy, second naivete in biblical scholarship, the reception of C. S. Lewis among American evangelicals, and forty examples of my “tiers” of writing.

1. This year on the blog I wrote the most about digital technology: how it’s the greatest threat facing the church today; why I changed my mind on podcasts; what it costs not to be on social media; what it means to write with or without a “platform”; how boys are affected by video games; the simple principle governing screens and distractions; the dangers of screentopia; how social media is bad for reading (and we all know it); what unites the best books about technology; a taxonomy of tech attitudes; and the Bartleby rule for the “necessity” or “inevitability” of adopting new technologies.

2024: reading

I read fewer books in 2024 than any year in the last decade, and I can’t quite figure out why. I didn’t teach a class for the final eight months of the year, for goodness’ sake. What else did I have to do?

I did read some fairly fat books. And we had a busy summer of travel (including two weddings I performed). And I published at least thirty essays, in addition to two books and a number of lectures and dozens of podcasts. So I was busy.

But still. I’m disappointed. The truth is, I am the slowest reader I know and a terrible skimmer. In 2011 I read 150 books and the closest I’ve come since is 120. In 2025, to take full advantage of my sabbatical, even granting that I’ll be drafting a book manuscript, I should end the year with at least 150 books read, ideally closer to 175. It probably won’t happen, but a man can dream.

This year may not have been a success in terms of quantity, but it was in terms of quality. Below I’ve listed below my favorite reads of the year, organized loosely by category. The only one not listed, since it lacks a category and since now I’m a biased judge, is Gavin Ortlund’s What It Means to be Protestant, which won Christianity Today’s Book of the Year. A few of the following were re-reads, or at least deeper reads following prior skims, but most were first-time reads, however old the book.

Classics

With some friends, this year I read both The Iliad and The Odyssey. We’re currently reading Virgil. Later in the year we’re turning to Dante and Milton. Everyone in the group has different prior experiences with Homer et al. I’ve got an essay under consideration right now that’s partly about (re)reading these classics. We’ll see if someone goes for it.

Poetry

I did my usual re-read of Franz Wright, Mary Karr, and Marie Howe, followed by Malcolm Guite’s Sounding the Seasons and Charles Wright’s Scar Tissue. I confess that, at first, I thought the latter was James Wright, i.e., father to Franz. All three won the Pulitzer and share the same surname, so I think the mistake wasn’t entirely unjustified.

Fiction

10. Daniel Silva, The Kill Artist & The English Assassin. Ideal airport reading.

9. John le Carré, Call for the Dead; A Murder of Quality; Single & Single. Getting closer and closer to le Carré completion.

8. Michael Bond, A Bear Called Paddington & P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins.

7. William Gibson, Neuromancer. This is a “successful” book, and its influence and prescience cannot be overstated, but it is not a pleasant read. The snaggletooth prose had me bleeding, confused, and and even bored. I’m still glad I read it, but I doubt I’ll go on to the sequels.

6. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn + Percival Everett, James. Thoughts here. Rereading Twain did give me a greater appreciation of his achievement.

5. Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. As promised, a delight. On to Moonbound.

4. Michel Houellebecq, Submission. Far different than I expected, based on its reputation. I’ve got a long essay on the novel I hope will be published soon.

3. Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem. Thoughts here.

2. Tad Williams, The Navigator’s Children. Thoughts here. The apocalypse of Osten Ard. Worth the wait.

1. Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener.

Academic Theology

7. Matthew Lee Anderson, Confidence in Life: A Barthian Account of Procreation. Turns out this Anderson guy knows his stuff!

6. Kendall Soulen, Irrevocable: The Name of God and the Unity of the Christian Bible. Some thoughts here.

5. Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper & (with Michael Barber and John Kincaid) Paul: A New Covenant Jew. I’m something of a Pitre super-fan; these books did not disappoint.

4. Ephraim Radner, The End of the Church; Leviticus; Hope Among the Fragments; Time and the Word. More here.

3. William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration.

2. Ian McFarland, The Hope of Glory: A Theology of Redemption. A former teacher of mine and arguably the proper successor to Hauerwas’s moniker for Joe Jones: “the best unknown theologian in America.” This book completes a loose trilogy, following books on creation from nothing and the incarnation. Earlier works also address theological anthropology, the image of God, and original sin. Next up is ethics. The lesson: Read McFarland, people!

1. Paul DeHart, Unspeakable Cults: An Essay in Christology. This book is a riddle, a provocation, a tour de force, and designed alternately to thrill and to madden. If I’d read it closer to its publication date, I would have pitched a review essay to an academic journal. I love Paul’s work, even when we disagree profoundly, and this is him at the peak of his powers.

Spiritual (older)

5. Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy.

4. François Mauriac, The Eucharist: The Mystery of Holy Thursday.

3. Saint Isaac of Nineveh, On Ascetical Life.

2. Simone Weil, Waiting for God. Is Weil having a moment? It seems I can’t go one week without seeing a new essay or podcast about her. Or maybe she’s always having a moment, as seems to have been true from very early in her life.

1. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath. A perfect book. Perhaps the best book about technology, because it’s not about technology, that you’ll ever read.

Technology

8. Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech.

7. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation & Abigail Shrier, Bad Therapy. They go together.

6. Albert Borgmann, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology.

5. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

4. Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.

3. Byung-Chul Han, Infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy. My second Han, and not the last.

2. D. W. Pasulka, American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. A shot in the arm. Pasulka’s star is rising with reason. Hoping to read her latest soon.

1. Sara Hendren, What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World. In contention for my favorite book I read this year. Certainly the best book-about-technology I read this year. Sara is a rock star.

Nonfiction

12. Ryan P. Burge, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going & Stephen Bullivant, Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America & Isabella Kasselstrand, Phil Zuckerman, and Ryan T. Cragun, Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society. These folks keep me honest, Zuckerman especially.

11. John le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life. Opt for the audiobook; as read by the late author, you might as well be by the fireside with the master storyteller himself.

10. Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis. More here.

9. Albert Borgmann, Real American Ethics & Crossing the Postmodern Divide. The latter is outstanding; the former is not, in my view, Borgmann’s finest work. More here, in any case.

8. Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectual in Politics.

7. Jennifer Banks, Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth. Beautiful. I still can’t quite believe she pulled it off, given the thin ice all around.

6. Carlos Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible. Scholarly cheek in the best way.

5. Joseph Bottum, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America. Ten years later, it remains a vital “explainer” for our times. And beautifully written to boot.

4. Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity. A classic for a reason. As informative as it is distressing and even depressing. Let the reader understand.

3. Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. A one of one. Nothing like it. The sections on therapy and suicide read like they were written yesterday, in direct response to current events. There is nothing new under the sun.

2. Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays. I’m late to Davenport, but better—far, far better—late than never. What a joy.

1. Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time. This book rocked my world this summer. I couldn’t put it down. I’ll never be one-tenth the writer as James, or one-hundredth the reader, or one-thousandth the linguist—but I can try. Reading James doesn’t make you want to give up: it, he, makes you want to persevere. More thoughts here and here.

2024: writing

This was a banner year for my writing in more ways that one.

First, I had two books published in October. These were my first true “popular” books, i.e., not written for an academic audience. I have no idea whether or how well they are selling. But I am happy with them; the reviews have all been quite positive; and the podcasts I did for my little digital publicity tour were a blast. I couldn’t be more grateful.

Second, I began in January as something of a part-time columnist with Christianity Today. Every three weeks I send my editor an essay or book review, if I have one written, if it’s worthy to be published. In total, this year CT published eighteen pieces with my byline, one of which came out in the final print issue of the magazine.

This experience was entirely new for me: new in terms of audience and certainly new in terms of the speed and regularity of a deadline. I think I’ve gotten the hang of it, though I still write far too many words in the first draft. (Thank my editor for trimming it down and cleaning it up.) The “pitch” or “level” (or “tier”) of assumed readership at CT is very, very helpful for this logorrheic academic.

In addition to the books and columns, I published one journal article, one academic review, and eleven mid-to-highbrow essays in other venues. All in all, my estimate is that I published around 60,000 words this year, not counting the books or the blog. I’ve got plenty in the works for next year, but my number one hope is to have one or more places that have repeatedly turned me down finally give me the green light on a submission. Come twelve months from now, I guess we’ll see whether I’ve met my goal.

Here are the links.

Books

Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry (Eerdmans, 1 October 2024).

The Church: A Guide to the People of God (Lexham, 23 October 2024).

Academic

Review of Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture, in Interpretation 78:1 (2024): 69–71.

“Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical” and “Response to the Responses,” Restoration Quarterly 66:3 (2024): 133–43, 163–69.

Essays

How to Read Paul (Commonweal, 31 January 2024). A review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul.

A Poet’s Faith Against Despair (Comment, 15 February 2024). A review essay of Christian Wiman’s Zero at the Bone. One of the better things I wrote this year, I think.

Beating Slow Horses (The Hedgehog Review, 1 March 2024). An aesthetic appreciation and political critique of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels (not the Apple show).

The Genesis of Grace (The Los Angeles Review of Books, 12 March 2024). A review of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis.

The Home of God in the Body of Christ (Syndicate, 18 April 2024). Part of a symposium of responses to Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s The Home of God.

Mother of the Unborn God (Commonweal, 25 April 2024). A theological reflection on Mary, the incarnation, and abortion.

The Gift of Reality (The Hedgehog Review, 5 September 2024). A review of Albert Borgmann’s final (posthumously published) book, doubling as an introduction to and exploration of his work and thought as a whole.

The Reading Lives of Pastors (Sapientia, 20 August 2024). A vision for the role of reading in the vocation of ministry.

Gods Who Make Worlds (The Christian Century, 16 September 2024). An essay review of the final book in Tad Williams’ “four book trilogy,” The Last King of Osten Ard, itself a sequel to his original, 35-year old trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I use Williams as a springboard for thinking about fantasy, tragedy, and the divine comedy of grace.

The Knowledge of God (The Raised Hand, 30 October 2024). An answer in reply to the question: “What do all college students need to know?”

Promise, Gift, Command (Comment, December 2024). An essay on “The Theological Terrain of Forgiveness” (its online title). In the December print issue, and paywalled until January.

Christianity Today

All Hail the Power of … Stage Lighting? (6 February 2024). On liturgy and technology.

My Students Are Reading John Mark Comer, and Now I Know Why (14 February 2024). A review of Comer’s latest book, Practicing the Way; the most-read CT book review of the year, and one of the top-ten most read pieces published on the site period. Checks out, because my inbox exploded at the time, and the stream of emails continues unabated.

Doubt is a Ladder, Not a Home (20 February 2024). Against the sexiness of doubt.

How (Not) to Talk About Christian Nationalism (13 March 2024). What the title says. A good piece, in my opinion, that seemed to fly under the radar.

Biblical Literacy in a Postliterate Age (18 April 2024). A word of lament.

Digital Lectors for a Postliterate Age (8 May 2024). A word of hope.

The Loosening of American Evangelicalism (20 May 2024). An elaboration of a long-running thesis of mine. This one resonated!

Faithful Fathers (14 June 2024). An ode to my dad and to other faithful dads like him.

Two Cheers for the Wedding Industrial Complex (25 June 2024). Weddings are good because marriage is good! Even the over-fancy ones.

Penalty or No, Athletes Talk Faith (25 July 2024). In which I talk about LeBron and the Spurs and the Olympics and God.

Worship Together or Bowl Alone (11 September 2024). The very things our non-Christian pundits and academics are noticing our society most needs today turn out to be the byproducts of belonging to a local congregation. Coincidence or divine providence?

Make Christianity Spooky Again (22 October 2024). A review of Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder; the sixth-most read CT book review of the year.

A Vision for Screen-Free Church (28 October 2024). A sort of third entry in my loose trilogy of postliterate digital commentary.

Saints Are Strange. Martin Scorsese Gets It. (15 November 2024). A review of the new Scorsese-produced docuseries The Saints.

Jordan Peterson Loves God’s Word. But What About God? (19 November 2024). A review of Peterson’s We Who Wrestle With God; the second-most read CT book review of the year, behind Comer.

Our Strength and Consolation (November/December 2024). My first print piece for CT. The online title is “The Consolation of Providence.”

Why Christians Oppose Euthanasia (11 December 2024). Self-explanatory.

The Blood Cries Out at Christmastime (19 December 2024). A reflection on three feast days of Christmastide: Saint Stephen, the Holy Innocents, and the circumcision of Jesus.

An old-fashioned (annotated) blogroll

“Navigating the vastness of the Internet can feel like getting marooned in the middle of the ocean, both terrifying and sublime in its overwhelmingness.” That’s Franklin Foer in World Without Mind. He’s right. But if there’s too much to read on the internet, how to triage for the best?

One way is social media. Another is Substack. Still another is print magazines (not dead yet!).

Alongside these, my preferred mechanism is the RSS feed, which is basically a personal blogroll: a live feed, perpetually updated, of the authors and publications one wants to be sure never to miss. In principle infinite, in practice finite. Years ago a colleague asked me how I decide what to read and who my favorite contemporary writers are, and ever since then I’ve meant to draw up an old-fashioned blogroll in response to her request. Better late than never. At least it’s annotated!

To be sure, stellar newsletters with links to the best stuff are not hard to find: Arts & Letters Daily, The Browser, Prufrock. If I don’t know a writer by name or don’t keep up with a given publication, resources like these are usually how I happen upon new things, in addition to friends sharing links.

Short of grab-bags and random links, though, it’s nice to have a list of one’s own. Below I’ve drawn up a list of the writers whose work I make it a point to keep up with. I limited myself to one hundred names. Initially I organized them by category, but I opted just to run them in alphabetical order. Bios and links are meant to be helpful but, as will be clear, are sometimes tongue-in-cheek.

A few ground rules first. The listed names fit the following criteria: (a) living writers whose publishing output is (b) regular, (c) popular, and (d) accessible online. These aren’t academics whose primary work is found in scholarly journals. Nor do they mainly write books while occasionally putting out an essay. Nor still is the following list exhaustive, as if I didn’t enjoy, appreciate, respect, or follow those unnamed.

For example, Wendell Berry and Marilynne Robinson aren’t here, but their age is advanced enough and their essay output minimal enough that it wouldn’t make sense to include them. (They’re not exactly “online,” either.) My friend Ross McCullough is my favorite theological writer going, but I can’t induce him to write anything popular more than once every few years. I used to read Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher but slowly drifted away, even as I continue to keep an eye on their work. I’m delighted when Abigail Favale and Erika Bachiochi emerge from their scholarly dens to write popular essays, but lately it’s too rare an event by my calculation to add their names to the list. I subscribe to Robin Sloan’s monthly newsletter, but he’s a novelist with the best newsletter around, not an essayist pumping out regular pieces. I laugh whenever I read Andrew Ferguson and learn whenever I read Noah Millman, but I’d be lying if I said I keep up with everything they write. Maybe I should and maybe I will, but time is short and you can’t read everything.

That’s not even to mention friends and acquaintances whom I try to read as much as I’m able but don’t (yet) read enough of, like Matt Milliner and Kirsten Sanders and Chris Green and Kyle Williams and Ian Olsen and Alex Sosler and Alan Noble and Ben Crosby and James Wood. Or ballers like Onsi Kamel and Matt Burdette and Justin Hawkins and Rachel Roth Aldhizer who need to write more, more, more. Or once-yearly bangers like Matthew Rose and Patricia Snow and Zena Hitz. Or writers I hugely enjoy but can’t quite keep track of, like Ian Marcus Corbin and Matt Feeney and Samuel Goldman and David Samuels and David Polansky and Park MacDougald and Sebastian Milbank and Derek Thompson. Or old standbys I guiltily don’t read enough of, like Nicholas Carr and Mary Eberstardt and Jamelle Bouie and Oren Cass and Niall Ferguson. Or old lovable know-it-all academics like Philip Jenkins. Or old souls like Joseph Epstein and Stanley Fish, Peter Brown and Jackson Lears who’ve written so much for so long that I could barely make a dint in it. Or Ben Thompson and Jesse Singal and Ed West, who seem to write more daily than I can read in a week.

For those names that are on the list, therefore, their inclusion means that their author page is in my RSS feed, that I subscribe to their Substack, that I constantly scour the internet for their latest publication, and/or that I crack open a magazine the moment I see their name on the cover. To be clear, I don’t love or agree with all of them. A few might qualify as hate-reading, or at least facepalm-reading. Nevertheless I do find myself reading them—to see what they have to say, or to see how they say it. Everyone on this list has either style or substance, and many have both.

One last way to put it: These are the writers I’ve learned to read because the editors I trust continue to commission and publish them—Matthew Walther at The Lamp, Ari Schulman at The New Atlantis, Jay Tolson at The Hedgehog Review, Jon Baskin at The Point, Matthew Schmitz at Compact, Rusty Reno at First Things, Matthew Boudway at Commonweal, Anne Snyder at Comment, Peter Mommsen at Plough (all of which, by the way, arrive in my mailbox). These are the gatekeepers, together with their many fellow editors; they know what’s what, and most of what follows is just picking favorites from the murderer’s row of writers they have the regular pleasure of publishing.

Oh: And I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone. If your name is missing, I’m sure that someone is you.

1. Sam Adler-Bell – leftist journalist and freelance writer, hate-hate relationship with the Right, co-host of Know Your Enemy podcast, bylines at the New York Times and New York Magazine and The New Republic

2. Sohrab Ahmari – co-founder of Compact, author of Tyranny, Inc., bylines at First Things and The American Conservative

3. Matthew Lee Anderson – ethics prof at Baylor, founder of Mere Orthodoxy, writes The Path Before Us newsletter, author of Called Into Questions, former co-host of the Mere Fidelity podcast, bylines at Vox and First Things and The Dispatch

4. Helen Andrews – conservative journalist, former editor at The American Conservative, author of Boomers, bylines at First Things and The Lamp and Compact

5. Jon Askonas – politics profs at CUA, winner of the Emerging Public Intellectual award, bylines at Comment and Compact and The New Atlantis

6. Jon Baskin – founding editor of The Point, former editor at Harper’s, author of Ordinary Unhappiness

7. Richard Beck – psychology prof at ACU, long-time daily blogger at Experimental Theology, author of Hunting Magic Eels

8. Jeff Bilbro – English prof at Grove City College, editor of Front Porch Republic, author of Words for Conviviality

9. David Brooks – come on, let’s not pretend you don’t know who he is

10. Joseph Bottum – man of letters, poet, onetime editor of all the magazines, Catholic and conservative intellectual, author of An Anxious Age (a masterly book but criminally under-read), bylines at The Washington Free Beacon and First Things and Commonweal

11. Josh Brake – engineering prof at Harvey Mudd, wise guide to all things A.I., author of The Absent-Minded Professor newsletter

12. Elizabeth Bruenig – staff writer at The Atlantic, formerly at the New York Times and The Washington Post

13. Matt Bruenig – wife guy, lefty data policy guru, fellow Texan, righteously angry, founder of the People’s Policy Project, blogs at his website, bylines at Jacobin and The Nation

14. Sonny Bunch – film critic for The Bulwark, writes the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood newsletter

15. Timothy Burke – history prof at Swarthmore, author of Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women, writes the Eight by Seven newsletter

16. Tara Isabella Burton – novelist and essayist, former religion reporter for Vox, author of Strange Rites, co-writes The Line of Beauty newsletter, bylines at Comment and Commonweal and Plough and the New York Times and The New Atlantis

17. Christopher Caldwell – polyglot monarch of conservative intellectual journalism, contributing editor at the Claremont Review of Books, contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, author of The Age of Entitlement, bylines at Compact and The New Statesman and The New Republic and National Review and The American Conservative and Financial Times and The Spectator

18. Isaac Chotiner – interrogative journalist at The New Yorker, author of the Q&A column, formerly of Slate

19. Phil Christman – marvelous essayist, equally(!) midwestern and leftist and Christian, English prof at the University of Michigan, author of How to Be Normal, writes The Tourist newsletter, bylines at Plough and Commonweal and Slate

20. Clare Coffey – freelance writer, bylines at The New Atlantis and The Hedgehog Review and Plough and The Bulwark

21. Tyler Cowen – economics prof at George Mason, columnist at Bloomberg, author of The Complacent Class, blogs at The Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations With Tyler podcast

22. Matthew B. Crawford – research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft, writes the Archedelia newsletter, bylines at First Things and The New Atlantis and The Hedgehog Review

23. Theodore Dalrymple – retired doctor, conservative essayist and novelist, author of Our Culture, What’s Left Of It, bylines at The Lamp and First Things and City Journal

24. Freddie deBoer – last true Marxist, disbeliever in word counts, freelance writer on everything under the sun, author of The Cult of Smart, writes the Freddie deBoer newsletter, bylines at Compact and the New York Times and Harper’s and n+1

25. Michael Brendan Dougherty – writer at National Review, author of My Father Left Me Ireland, regular on The Editors podcast, bylines at The Week and the New York Times

26. Ross Douthat – my own personal op-ed spirit animal, columnist at the New York Times, film critic at National Review, author of Bad Religion, co-host of the Matter of Opinion podcast

27. Christine Emba – staff writer at The Atlantic, author of Rethinking Sex, formerly at The Washington Post

28. Edward Feser – philosophy prof at Pasadena City College, long-time blogger, author of Philosophy of Mind, writes for First Things

29. Angela Franks – theology prof at St. John’s Seminary, author of Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy, bylines at First Things and Church Life Journal and Catholic World Report

30. John Ganz – lefty interpreter of the Right, author of When the Clock Broke, writes the Unpopular Front newsletter, bylines at The Nation and The New Statesman and The New Republic

31. David P. Goldman – right-Hegelian journalist of economics and China, writer at Asia Times, author of You Will Be Assimilated, bylines at Law & Liberty and First Things and Claremont Review of Books

32. Ruth Graham – religion journalist for the New York Times

33. John Gray – intellectual virtuoso and prolific analyst of the post-Christian West, author of Two Faces of Liberalism, bylines at The New Statesman and The Guardian

34. Emma Green – religion journalist at The New Yorker, formerly at The Atlantic

35. Paul Griffiths – retired theology prof at Duke, author of Decreation, bylines at Commonweal and (once upon a time) First Things

36. Allen Guelzo – historian at Princeton, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, author of Fateful Lightning, bylines at First Things and The New Criterion and Claremont Review of Books

37. Jonathan Haidt – psych prof at NYU, author of The Anxious Generation, writes the After Babel newsletter, bylines at The Atlantic and the New York Times

38. Shadi Hamid – columnist at the Washington Post, formerly at The Atlantic, author of Islamic Exceptionalism, co-founder of the Wisdom of Crowds website and podcast, co-host of the Zealots at the Gates podcast, bylines galore

39. Mary Harrington – reactionary feminist, author of Feminism Against Progress, writes the Mary Harrington newsletter, bylines at First Things and UnHerd

40. David Bentley Hart – irascible genius unbound by institutional shackles, Eastern Orthodox theologian, essayist, and translator, author of The Experience of God, writes the Leaves in the Wind newsletter, bylines wherever he damn well sees fit

41. Sara Hendren – design prof at Northeastern, author of What Can a Body Do? (an all-timer), blogs at her website, microblogs at ablerism, write (wrote?!) the undefended / undefeated newsletter, bylines at the intersection of the built and the physical environment

42. Wesley Hill – NT prof at Western seminary, author of Spiritual Friendship, bylines at The Living Church and First Things and Comment

43. Dan Hitchens – editor at First Things, sharp-tongued and unsentimental observer of all things Catholic, bylines at The Spectator and The Critic

44. Peter Hitchens – surviving brother of Christopher, irascible conservative scribbler, columnist at the Daily Mail, author of The Rage Against God, bylines at The Lamp and First Things and Compact

45. Alan Jacobs – English prof at Baylor, OG uber-blogger, my self-assigned mentor and archegos, author of The Narnian, blogs at The Homebound Symphony, bylines at The Atlantic and Comment and The New Yorker and The New Atlantis and First Things and Harper’s

46. Samuel James – editor at Crossway, author of Digital Liturgies, writes The Digital Liturgies newsletter

47. Paul Kingsnorth – ex-pagan novelist, poet, and essayist, my favorite convert to Orthodoxy outside of my brother, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, writes The Abbey of Misrule newsletter, bylines at First Things and elsewhere

48. Phil Klay – Iraq veteran, novelist and essayist, author of Redeployment, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic and Commonweal

49. Ezra Klein – columnist at the New York Times, founder of Vox, author of Why We’re Polarized, host of The Ezra Klein Show

50. Austin Kleon – fellow Austinite and thief, author of Steal Like an Artist, super-duper blogger, also writes a glorious newsletter

51. Sam Kriss – unclassifiable essayist, logorrheic in a good way, writes the Numb at the Lodge newsletter, bylines at Compact and First Things and The Lamp and the New York Times

52. Bonnie Kristian – editor extraordinaire at Christianity Today, author of Untrustworthy, writes the Bonnie Kristian newsletter, bylines at The Week and The American Conservative

53. Peter Leithart – president of Theopolis, author of The End of Protestantism, writes for First Things

54. David Leonhardt – pandemic worldbeater, writer at the New York Times, author of Ours Was the Shining Future, writes The Morning newsletter

55. Yuval Levin – everyone’s favorite level-headed institutionalist conservative, senior fellow at AEI, editor of National Affairs, author of A Time to Build, bylines at the New York Times and National Review

56. Mark Lilla – humanities prof at Columbia, author of The Once and Future Liberal, bylines at the New York Review of Books and the New York Times

57. Michael Lind – grumpy gumshoe pro-labor conservative, author of Hell to Pay, bylines at Tablet and Compact and The Free Press

58. Damon Linker – radical moderate, poli-sci prof at UPenn, onetime editor of First Things, author of The Theocons, writes the Notes From the Middleground newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic

59. Matthew Loftus – doctor in Kenya via Baltimore, bylines at Mere Orthodoxy and Plough and Christianity Today and the New York Times

60. Zach Lowe – NBA journalist, formerly of Grantland and ESPN, former host of The Lowe Post podcast, currently and unjustly a free agent

61. Kate Lucky – editor at Christianity Today, bylines at The Point and Commonweal

62. Tim Markatos – film critic, writes the Movie Enthusiast newsletter

63. Eugene McCarraher – humanities prof at Villanova, author of The Enchantments of Mammon, byline at Commonweal

64. Daniel McCarthy – omnicompetent conservatism-explainer, editor of Modern Age, columnist at The Spectator, bylines at the New York Times and The American Conservative

65. Esau McCaulley – NT prof at Wheaton, author of Reading While Black, writes a New York Times newsletter, byline at Christianity Today, host of the Esau McCaulley podcast

66. B. D. McClay – simply one of the best essayists around, Swiftie explainer, lover of perfume and anime, has the world eagerly awaiting a book, writes the Notebook newsletter, bylines at The Hedgehog Review and the New York Times and The Lamp and The New Yorker and The Paris Review

67. Jake Meador – editor of Mere Orthodoxy, author of In Search of the Common Good, bylines at Plough and The Atlantic and First Things

68. Russell Moore – editor of Christianity Today, author of Losing Our Religion, bylines at The Atlantic and the New York Times, host of the Russell Moore Podcast

69. Wesley Morris – film critic (the best when he wants to be), formerly at The Boston Globe and Grantland, now art and culture critic for the New York Times, former co-host of various podcasts

70. Gary Saul Morson – literature prof at Northwestern, master of all things Russian, author of Wonder Confronts Certainty, bylines at First Things and The New Criterion and The New York Review of Books

71. Samuel Moyn – law prof at Yale, author of Liberalism Against Itself, bylines at the New York Times and Compact and The New Republic

72. Adam Nayman – film critic for The Ringer, author of The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together

73. Grace Olmstead – journalist, localist, memoirist, author of Uprooted, writes the Granola newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and Mere Orthodoxy and Plough

74. Louise Perry – journalist, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, writes the Maiden Mother Matriarch newsletter, bylines at First Things and The New Statesman

75. Brian Phillips – staff writer at The Ringer, formerly at Grantland, author of Impossible Owls, bylines all over

76. Jeff Reimer – editor nonpareil at Comment, bylines at Plough and The Bulwark

77. Adam Roberts – best SF writer alive, supposedly moonlights as a lit prof in London, author of The Thing Itself, writes the (new!) Substack-ships On Fire, Off The Shoulder Of Orion newsletter, byline the Internet

78. Alastair Roberts – digital lector, adjunct senior fellow at Theopolis, co-author of Echoes of Exodus, blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria, co-writes The Anchored Argosy newsletter, co-host of the Mere Fidelity podcast

79. Becca Rothfeld – book review critic at The Washington Post, editor at The Point, contributing editor at Boston Review, author of All Things Are Too Small, writes the a fête worse than death newsletter

80. L. M. Sacasas – best tech writer alive, associate director of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, FL, author of 41 Questions: Technology and the Moral Life (forthcoming), writes The Convivial Society newsletter, writes elsewhere but really just subscribe ASAP

81. Fred Sanders – humbly wry polymath, theology prof at Biola, author of The Triune God, blogs at fredfredfred.com

82. Leah Libresco Sargeant – journalist and freelance writer, author of Arriving at Amen, writes the Other Feminisms newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and First Things and The Lamp and The New Atlantis

83. Matthew Schmitz – co-founder and editor of Compact, former editor at First Things, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic and The American Conservative

84. Ari Schulman – editor of The New Atlantis, steady hand at the scientism-critical ship, bylines at National Review and the New York Times

85. George Scialabba – my favorite living lefty essayist, author of Only a Voice, bylines everywhere but especially Commonweal and The Baffler and The New Statesman

86. Matt Zoller Seitz – film and TV critic for New York Magazine, editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, my first-read for all things cinematic, co-author of TV (The Book)

87. Alan Sepinwall – TV critic for Rolling Stone, co-author of TV (The Book)

88. James K. A. Smith – philosophy prof at Calvin, former editor of Comment and Image, author of Desiring the Kingdom, bylines at First Things and The Christian Century

89. Justin Smith-Ruiu – the artist formerly known as Justin E. H. Smith, everything prof somewhere in Paris, author of The Internet is Not What You Think It Is, meta-writes The Hinternet newsletter, bylines at The Point and Tablet and elsewhere

90. Jonathan Tran – ethics prof at Baylor, author of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, writes for The Christian Century

91. Eve Tushnet – saint in the making, tragicomic Catholic queer writer and journalist, author of Tenderness, writes The Rogation Dragon newsletter, bylines at Commonweal and America and The Lamp and First Things

92. Matthew Walther – trad Cath prose stylist bar none, editor and founder of The Lamp, author of a biography of Saint John Henry Newman (forthcoming from Yale UP), bylines at the New York Times and First Things and elsewhere

93. Tish Harrison Warren – priest at local speakeasy Immanuel Anglican Church, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, writes (wrote?!) for Christianity Today and the New York Times

94. Audrey Watters – ed-tech Cassandra (and therefore to be trusted), author of Teaching Machines, blogs at Hack Education, writes the Second Breakfast newsletter

95. Myles Werntz – ethics prof at ACU, author of From Isolation to Community, writes the Taking Off and Landing newsletter, bylines at Mere Orthodoxy and Christianity Today

96. Alissa Wilkinson – film critic for the New York Times, formerly of Vox and Christianity Today and Books & Culture, author of Salty

97. Rowan Williams – Welsh wizard, former archbishop of Canterbury, author of On Christian Theology, bylines at First Things and The New Statesman and The Guardian

98. Andrew Wilson – teaching pastor at King’s Church London, author of Remaking the World, blogs at Think Theology, writes for Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition, sometime co-host of Mere Fidelity

99. John Wilson – lovable curmudgeon and devotee of books, former editor of the much lamented Books & Culture, bylines at First Things and The Hedgehog Review and elsewhere

100. Molly Worthen – history prof at UNC, recent convert to Christianity, author of Apostles of Reason, bylines at First Things and the New York Times and Christianity Today

My latest: bloodshed during Christmastide, in CT

My last column for Christianity Today this year is called “The Blood Cries Out at Christmastime.” It’s about the bloody feasts of Christmastide: Saint Stephen (Dec 26), the Holy Innocents (Dec 28), and the circumcision of Jesus (Jan 1). Here’s a preview:

Each of these ties bloodshed to Christmas—even the last one. This is not, however, how we usually mark the Christmas season, which is festive because it is a festival: a great party in honor of the birth of the King. Advent is for penitence; Christmas is for merriment (Matt. 9:15).

Yet there is a reason for the timing of these altogether bloody memorials. They are a stark reminder of the world into which Jesus was born, the world he was born to save. Even as we make merry, we will be less likely to trivialize the nativity of Christ when we remember that this child was born to die.

“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” of sins: so says Hebrews 9:22. Christmas may seem a long way from Calvary, but in truth it isn’t far at all. The Cross is already in view, whether for God (from eternity), for Scripture (as a narrative), or for us (who know the end of the story). Mary’s son is born to shed his blood for us. Even from the womb, this baby is bound for Joseph’s tomb. The circumstances of his birth and the saints honored during this season testify to that sobering truth.

Read the rest here. Merry Christmas!

My latest: why Christians oppose Euthanasia, in CT

I’m in Christianity Today this morning with a piece called “Why Christians Oppose Euthanasia.” It is exactly what its title suggests. Here are two early paragraphs:

The church’s moral teaching has always held that murder—defined as the intentional taking of innocent life—is intrinsically evil. It follows that actively intending the death of an elderly or sick human being and then deliberately bringing about that death through some positive action, such as the administration of drugs, is always and everywhere morally wrong.

This ethical argument is very similar to the one Christians make about abortion. We could modify the oft-quoted line from Dr. Seuss—“A person’s a person no matter how small”—by substituting old or ill for “small.” (Other substitutions also suggest themselves: smart, abled, sexed, or hued.) To be sure, there are relevant differences between active euthanasia and, for example, removing a brain-dead person from life support. There are none, however, between administering fatal drugs and offering or prescribing them: Both directly facilitate the intended death of a patient under a doctor’s medical care.

Read the rest here.

Happy news: Letters to a Future Saint is the runner-up for CT’s Book of the Year!

Yesterday Christianity Today published its annual book awards for 2024. Besides awards for genres like fiction and theology, there is an overall award for Book of the Year. This year’s winner was the great Gavin Ortlund’s What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church. And the runner-up?

That would be my own Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry. It won the Award of Merit for Book of the Year!

I’m grateful beyond words. My deepest thanks to the editors and to all who voted. This is not something I or anyone could have expected when I set out to write this book. I’m still in shock about it.

Ideally I’ll wake up soon, because next week there is a special live event celebrating the occasion: a conversation with Russell Moore, Ortlund, and myself, as well as other CT editors. It’ll run for about an hour on YouTube, beginning at 8:00pm ET, and featuring (I believe) questions from readers and subscribers. I’ll see y’all there!