From all the losses of the last year, with its countless ordeals and heartbreaks, let’s pick out one that may seem an abstraction. It’s the loss of a once-sturdy taboo. At some point between George Floyd’s killing on May 25 and the invasion of the US Capitol on...
Month: March 2021
What Is the City on the Hill?
Richard Mouw
When President Ronald Reagan delivered his “Farewell Address to the Nation” in 1989, he called on his fellow citizens to be true to the purposes for which America was founded. To support his urgings, he cited a sermon preached by the Puritan leader John Winthrop in...
Growing Out of the Politics of Self
Anne Snyder
Dhananjay Jagannathan wrote a gorgeous essay this week on the sociability of courage. Volunteering as a patient-intake registrar at a large vaccination site in Manhattan, he soon found his habituated fears of other bodies displaced by the symphony of service. What I...
With Love We Shall Force Our Brothers
Anthony Barr
When I was a little boy, I had two answers to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A preacher, I said, or a police officer. Sometimes I said I would be both. Both aspirations lasted for perhaps as much as a decade of my life. Neither occupation runs in my...
On Pride
St. John Climachus
The great monastic father St. John of Sinai, known as ‘Climachus’, authored his 30-step spiritual guide for monastics, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, in the early 7th century. Received by all the apostolic churches as a supreme guide to the spiritual life, through its call to combat the passions and acquire virtue, it retains a unique place in the Lenten daily liturgy of the Byzantine rite. While written for monks, it speaks powerfully to all those who seek to earnestly live the life in Christ.
All About Grace
Mary Hulst
We know that it is all about grace, but do we act like it? Those of us who profess the gospel of Jesus Christ can proclaim, until we are blue in the face, that we are saved by grace, yet we so often act like it is all on our shoulders. Inviting us back into the posture of children, Hulst unpacks the word of the God from Zephaniah to remind us that God seeks to embrace us, and in him we find rest.
Peacemaking Is Political
Stanley Hauerwas
Plough: Stanley, you’re a Christian ethicist – what makes Christian ethics Christian? Stanley Hauerwas: Jesus. P: Yes, Jesus. But which Jesus? SH: It is the Jesus of the Gospels that makes Christian ethics Christian. Of course, part of the difficulty of contemporary...
The Liberating Word Made Flesh
Nathan Beacom
Sometimes, the hinges of history swing as quietly as the turning of a page. The fate of a nation may turn on the clamour of battle, or it may turn on a thousand things more subtle, more hidden. In the story of the demise of American slave power, we all know the names...
Forgiving Judas
Denise Uwimana
“Gravel in your shoe will hinder you as much as boulders in your path. Besides the man who shot my father, I have to forgive the guy who shoves in front of me to take the last seat on the bus. Forgiving is a way of life.” That’s how I first heard Dr. Antoine...
Homily 21
St. Macarius the Great
INTRODUCTION St. Macarius the Egyptian was a Coptic desert father of the early 4th century. While details of his life are scant, he is thought to have been born around the year 300 A.D. He is mentioned in the Apophthegmata ('Sayings') of the Desert Fathers and was...