This year’s Thanksgiving is a strange one: it comes amid what continues to feel like a penitential season, both because of COVID and because of America’s ongoing reckoning with its own past, and with its future together. COVID had originally seemed to me as though it...
Newsletters
The Complicated Grief of Advent
Heidi Deddens
One of my favorite Advent hymns is “O Come O Come Emmanuel”—though for much of my life, I must admit, that love stemmed more from the haunting beauty of the melody than the rich meaning of its lyrics. This year, though, the words feel particularly apt. The first verse...
The Human Conspiracy
Susannah Black
In the late 1990s, the Catholic priest and philosopher of technology Ivan Illich delivered a lecture in Bremen titled “The Cultivation of Conspiracy.” In it, he discussed the ancient Christian practice of conspiratio. This, the holy kiss with which St. Paul told us...
In Search of Some Political Humility
Anne Snyder
“Take a breath,” most of us were probably told as kids. “Slow down.” It’s rarely bad advice. In a high-stakes political battle like this week’s presidential election, I found myself grateful for some days of uncertainty, a chance for a hysterical nation to press pause...
One Church, Many Tribes
Anne Snyder
It’s no secret that we live in a secular age. Richard John Neuhaus coined an evocative term in the 1980s, “the naked public square,” which cemented the loss of enchantment in a discourse increasingly obsessed with utility and politics, slipping away from questions of...
God Loves Adverbs
Anne Snyder
It’s political season in the United States. Invariably, every four years, we experience a tightening in the societal chest as the majority hold breaths for a verdict at the tippy-top. This year, more than any other in recent history, fears of a democratic shudder and...
For the Common Good
Anne Snyder
Allow me to take a stylistic detour in this week’s newsletter. Next week, Breaking Ground will unveil a long-planned cultural artifact that we trust will layer some grace and moral muscle onto our naked public square. Back when theology was considered a viable source...
You’re Not Being Persecuted for Your Beliefs
Susannah Black
Six months ago, as the pandemic spread across America, mayors and governors ordered the closure of many places where members of the public come together in proximity—including, of course, churches. Are these restrictions sensible and appropriate, coming from those...
Awakening While Descending
Anne Snyder
Author and professor Jeffrey Bilbro published a poignant piece on Breaking Ground this week, reflecting on the surreal experience of “going dark” as one whose job as a tenured English professor at a small liberal arts college was cut this summer. Like so many...
First Things
Anne Snyder
When it comes to the social divisions of our time, it’s easy to baptize the reigning ideological currents rather than face them from a quiet core of christological insight. In this week’s feature essay, “Is God Anti-racist?,” Amy Julia Becker gropes for tools that...