Faith
Story Stream
Materialism on the Ropes January 27, 2025
When Oxford Professor Allister McGrath wrote The Twilight of Atheism in 2004, it seemed to be an overly hopeful book for religious believers. However, the Bush-era culture war battles over religion and New Atheism were still fully inflamed: Creationi...
Zadie Smith’s Multicultural Fantasy January 27, 2025
In 2023, the formerly edgy became the new canonical. At least that’s what the LRB thought of Zadie Smith’s last book. But was the darling of the Anglo-American literary establishment even edgy to begin with? Surely her debut White Teeth (2000) was al...
Martin Luther King's Vision Anchored in His Christian Faith January 22, 2025
It was the last speech of his life, the speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave on April 3, 1968. It was a radically Christian speech in, of all places, a church: Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, central headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. Lik...
The Alliance Between Tech Titans & the MAGA Faithful January 20, 2025
On Sunday evening, the night before Donald Trump’s second inauguration, scores of “luminaries from across the New Right” are expected to gather for a dinner and gala called the Coronation Ball at the Watergate Hotel. The event is being hosted by the ...
David Lynch’s Errand Into the Wilderness January 20, 2025
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 1835 story “Young Goodman Brown,” set in the New England of two centuries prior, tells the story of a young Puritan’s loss of faith not only in God but in his wife and his community. Wandering out into the woods one nigh...
The Unbearable Burden January 17, 2025
You already have an opinion on this man. You may like him, you may dislike him. You may have a long list of gripes about things he has said or things you imagine he has said: “He claimed that dragons are real! He wanted to give bride-slaves to incels...
The Faith of Djokovic August 12, 2024
No bureaucrat at the IOC was going to steal this performance from Novak Djokovic. Teary-eyed, drenched in sweat, grateful, sprawled out on the clay, Djokovic rose from the Philippe-Chatrier Court at the Paris Olympics and made the sign of the cross. ...
The Lost Arts August 09, 2024
There were both too many metal guitarists for a stately ceremony on the Seine, and yet, too few. When the broadcast cut to a wide shot of the Conciergerie, it revealed nothing, nothing—a vast expanse of beige wall with a few ant-like figures crawling...
Game Changer August 06, 2024
Following his team’s 80–26 loss to the California School for the Deaf’s Cubs, A. C. Swadling, a star football player from the opposing school, Faith Baptist, called out to each of the victors, channeling the feathery-haired villainy of a John Hughes–...
Faith and Russian Literature April 19, 2024
Russians take positions to the extreme. As a result, Russian intellectual history shows us where ideas may lead—and in Russia’s case, really did. The English prided themselves on moderation and suspicion of radical abstractions, but Russians regarded...
Back from the Brink April 19, 2024
The American experiment is in trouble. Deaths of despair — due to suicide, drugs or alcohol poisoning — have surged in recent years. Reports of happiness have plunged. Millions think the American dream is out of reach. Polarization in Washington goes...
There Is No Magic Bullet for Raising Birth Rates April 16, 2024
The influence of religion on fertility is undeniable. Since the dawn of Western society — first through various Pagan European faiths and then to Christianity — an everlasting purpose created a duty to carry on a legacy on earth. Through a spiritual ...
The Great American Speculator April 11, 2024
Emerson is a difficult subject for a biography; on one hand, a biographer must compete with his journals. And because some of Emerson's most famous and important essays were in the mode of biography–the strange and wonderful “Representative Men” seri...
The New Defenders of the Faith April 09, 2024
This past year’s National Book Awards gala presented an ironic, yet at this point increasingly familiar scene: Held in the glittering halls of Cipriani’s on Wall Street, the attendees—dressed in their finest, dining at one of New York’s famed upscale...
Gateway to Statesmanship April 03, 2024
In Gateway to Statesmanship, John A. Burtka IV, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, seeks to revive the tradition of mirror-for-princes literature, a project both timely and timeless. Criticism and distrust of political leaders are no...
