“In the end, local solutions—multiplied by thousands—can become national solutions—if they are allowed to trickle up. It might be that the healing that will come will begin quietly, unspectacularly, when more people refuse to give up and move on even when that’s the reasonable thing to do; even in places the world doesn’t know exist: places like the hollows of these mountains.”
Community
The Hollow Lands, Part I
Andrew Wainer
The escape to Joara was perhaps the first recorded instance of fugitives using Appalachia as a hiding place from hostile outside authority. For centuries more, the mountains would serve as a refuge for those fleeing authority – first native Americans, and then white colonial and American settlers. Almost five hundred years later, the Appalachian distrust of outside authority persists.
The Bruderhof and the State
John Huleatt
November 1933, Hesse, Germany. The Bruderhof, a community of about 125 men, women, and children recently established on a farm in the Rhön Mountains, had just learned of a new mandate from the National Socialist government: all citizens must vote in a referendum to...
Pick the Right Politics
Peter Mommsen
For those afflicted, it has all the compulsiveness of a guilty habit: repeatedly scanning news headlines; experiencing mood swings based on the latest polling data; responding to scandals, epidemics, or Wall Street gyrations by first wondering how it will affect the...
Race, Relationships, and Repentance
Dwan Dandridge, Chris Lambert
Bridge-building and breaking down barriers can sound innocuous enough, even praiseworthy, but what’s the underside of the embroidered tapestry? Dwan Dandridge and Chris Lambert have been doing this work in Detroit for some years now, and aren’t afraid of the mess.
Apart Together
Charles E. Moore
In Leo Tolstoy’s story “Master and Man,” Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov is a well-to-do Russian landowner intent on outdoing his competitors. He has his eye on some land just a few miles from his estate. Despite the danger of a threatened winter storm, he tells his...
What Is “the Church”?
Peter Kreeft
I. Matter and Spirit The first and most obvious answer to the question of my title is that the church is that funny-looking building on the corner. That’s not a wholly wrong answer. A building, like a church, has an identity. It gets its identity from its walls. Walls...
Not Back to Normal
John Massengale
How has the pandemic shaped city life? What choices can we make, as we reopen, to shape our cities for the better?
Renewing What Lies Between
Anne Snyder
What if you heard there was an immediate way to put your life on a different trajectory, and all it would take is a little initiative and a dash of courage? That’s the promise of Community Renewal International, an organization headquartered in Shreveport, Louisiana,...
Inhabiting the Places of Promise
Michael Laffin
Discussions of Martin Luther’s writings on society, ethics, and politics in the English-speaking world tend to focus on his teaching concerning the two kingdoms, which divides authority into temporal and spiritual realms. Often overlooked is the larger theological...