In 2002, the rapper Styles P released what is his most popular and memorable song, “Good Times.” The song’s title is ironic, and the chorus, which features a high-pitched voice singing I get high, high, high, is misleading. The lyrics don’t celebrate good times, nor...
Behind the Black Umbrellas
Patrick Tomassi
“What’d you see?” a man shouted. Around him, a crowd of black-clad activists gathered outside the Multnomah County Democrats building in northeast Portland, Oregon, the Sunday night after the US presidential election in November 2020. “You didn’t see shit!” the...
The Case for Meekness
Peter Mommsen
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...
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...
A Return to Wisdom
Susannah Black
Dear Friends, When you love learning, there are things you remember: the first time you became consumingly curious, the first time you wondered and tried to find out. You probably remember a teacher, too, who seemed to know things that you didn’t, who had the skill to...
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...
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...