The end of all reads

To start the final roundup of the year, some Advent and Christmas pieces, first about Mary. Mere O writes about how Protestants can call the Mother of Christ blessed as we should, and DL shows what churches miss by neglecting the Magnificat. Also, a Catholic piece that I found interesting but not wholly convincing:
Matthew Y Emerson & R Lucas Stamps, MereO, The Seed of Woman: Mary Among the Protestants
DL Mayfield, WaPo, Mary’s ‘Magnificat’ in the Bible is revolutionary. Some evangelicals silence her.

Alexi Sargent, First Things, America for the Immaculata

Several pieces on the meaning and practice of Advent and Christmas:

Fleming Rutledge, Generous Orthodoxy, Observing Advent
Fleming Rutledge, CT, John the Baptist Points to the Real Hope of Advent
Fleming Rutledge, CT, Why Apocalypse Is Essential to Advent

Kaitlyn Scheiss, Christ & Pop Culture, Advent is Actually Quite Political
Amanda Wortham, Christ & Pop Culture, Of Dying Kingdoms and Newborn Salvation: Resurrecting Christmas in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot
Ian Paul, Psephizo, Once More: Jesus Was Not Born in a Stable

Julie Canlis, CT, The Incarnation Is the Rule, Not the Exception

A piece on Dickens's A Christmas Carol, one on It's a Wonderful Life, and one on both sandwiched in between:

Haley Stewart, Church Life Journal, The Sham Practice of Christmas
Gina Dalfonzo, CT, Mankind Was Scrooge's Business (And George Bailey's, Too)
K B Hoyle, Christ & Pop Culture, George Bailey at the Bridge: The Costly Virtue of It’s a Wonderful Life

Several lovely Christian personal essays:

Judy Wu Dominick, CT, I Told My Husband I Had Feelings for Another Man

Tabitha McDuffee, CT, We Were Women Comforted by Shared Pain

Tish Harrison Warren, CT, I Cremated My Unborn Son

Kate Bowler, NYT, How Cancer Changes Hope

DL Mayfield, The Curator, Prayer Walks

Edwidge Danticat, Plough, Dangerous Unselfishness: With Dr King in Haiti and America

Grey Maggiano, Medium, It Keeps Getting Worse

Something on my mind recently is about how to write about faith for a secular audience; here are several pieces that kind of do it, but never quite get there for me (McClay's piece is fine, but is a review of a book that doesn't get there for her):
BD McClay, The American Scholar, Of Faith and Tragedy
Joel Winkelman, Popula, Plenty to think about, not much to believe in

Peter Wehner, NYT, The Uncommon Power of Grace

Jonathan Merritt, The Atlantic, Lauren Daigle and the Lost Art of Discernment

I'd like to think that these pieces (as well as some of the personal essays above) communicate a little more of what I'd like to see:

James KA Smith, Image Journal, In Praise of Boredom

Sarah Hamersma, Comment, Editorial: Consumption Pharisees? On the New Minimalism

Sarah Dahl, Comment, Trading Brunch for the Eucharist
Laura Turner, NYT, Internet Church Isn't Really Church

Martyn Wendell Jones, Ekstasis, Sickness Unto Death

Some other theology pieces:
Jonathan Leeman, MereO, Evangelicalism, Christian Identity, and Church Membership
Trevin Wax, TGC, What Expressive Individualism Does to Sin

John Piper, Desiring God, What Is the Rapture?

Jessica Martin, Snakes & Ladders, The Four Last Things: Hell
Wesley Hill, Covenant, The Trinitarian Theology of Morning Prayer
Samuel Bray, Covenant, A Neglected Gem: The Sunday First Lessons in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

Two pieces on liberalism's contradictions:
Jeffrey Bilbro, Front Porch Republic, Whose Nostalgia? Which Liberalism? Reflections on “Faith and Democracy in America”
Francis Wade, LARB, “The Liberal Order Is the Incubator for Authoritarianism”: A Conversation with Pankaj Mishra

Some international Christian news:
Ed Stetzer, WaPo, Slain missionary John Chau prepared much more than we thought, but are missionaries still fools?
Marc LiVecche, Providence, Give Asia Bibi Asylum, Now

Pastor Wang Yi, stevechilders.org, My Declaration of Faithful Disobedience

Two pieces on China's oppression of their Muslim citizens:

Philip Wen & Olzhas Auyezov, Reuters, Tracking China's Muslim Gulag
Dake Kang & Yanan Wang, AP, China’s Uighurs told to share beds, meals with party members

US Politics:
Chelsea Maxwell, Shared Justice, Finding Time to Care
Eliza Griswold, The New Yorker, Evangelicals of Color Fight Back Against the Religious Right
Catherine Rampell, WaPo, Is the GOP the law and order party? Not so much.
Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, The Democratic Party Wants to Make Climate Policy Exciting
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, This is US politics. Are you triggered?

A stream of consciousness – first, a piece on American atomization, and how extreme politics steps in to fill the gap of community (Brooks); Sullivan takes this further, tying it to religion; Douthat also sees the connection with religion, and the resurgence in neo-paganism (though he doesn't think these are as tightly connected as some others); Phillips looks at connections between Nazi occult practices and alt-right spirituality; Kristian looks at Trump and his supporters' quasi-medieval ordering of the world; Rishmawy notes that we are not nearly so disenchanted as many have thought; Mariani shows some of the other cracks in the secular, which the Roman Church ties pretty distinctly to the rise of new spiritualities:
Arthur C Brooks, NYT, How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
Andrew Sullivan, New York Mag: Intelligencer, America's New Religions
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Return of Paganism
Brian Phillips, The Ringer, The Magical Thinking of the Far Right
Bonnie Kristian, The Week, Trump's medieval sense of order

Derek Rishmawy, Reformedish, When You Sort of Miss Disenchantment

Mike Mariani, The Atlantic, American Exorcism

Technology:
LM Sacasas, The New Atlantis, How Facebook Deforms Us
Brian Phillips, The Ringer, The Cost of Living in Mark Zuckerberg's Internet Empire
Andrea M Matwyshyn, Wall Street Journal, The ‘Internet of Bodies’ Is Here. Are Courts and Regulators Ready?
Kara Swisher, NYT, Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to Be Ethical?
Ruth Whippman, NYT, Everything Is for Sale Now. Even Us.
Sophie Elmhirst, 1843 Magazine, Meet Alexa: inside the mind of a digital native
Siobhan Hegarty, ABC Religion & Ethics, Why your most personal moments are too personal for Instagram
Tim Milosch, MereO, Asynchronous Citizens: Addressing Flaws in Digital Citizenship

Technology-adjacent, one article on online shaming and one on civil discourse on the Internet:
Helen Andrews, First Things, Shame Storm
Kiley Bense, The Atlantic, Civil Discourse Exists in This Small Corner of the Internet

The big bug piece, and two theological responses (neither is really a response to the piece itself, but both worth reading in connection):

Brooke Jarvis, NYT Mag, The Insect Apocalypse Is Here
Jacob J Erickson, Religion Dispatches, Insecto-Theology: A Wake for our Planetary Commons
Norman Wirzba, ABC Religion & Ethics, Can we live in a world without a Sabbath? Rethinking the human in the Anthropocene

Two Baltimore pieces:

Leon F Pinkett III, Baltimore Sun, When will we value Baltimore's North Avenues like we do its Charles Streets?
Christina Tkacik, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore hopes to alleviate pain of jury duty with new quiet room featuring no movies and plenty of outlets

Loosely food-related pieces:
Matthew Singer, Willamette Week, Did a Rave Review Really Shut Down Portland Burger Bar Stanich’s? Maybe It Was the Owner’s Legal Troubles.
Kate Wagner, The Atlantic, How Restaurants Got So Loud
Catherine Nicholas, Popula, You've got yourself a chicken of the woods
Sarah Miller, Popula, Three people, two bottles of wine.
Jim Goodman, WaPo, Dairy farming is dying. After 40 years, I'm done.

Kendall Vanderslice, CT, Power in the Plate

Two on the modern musical landscape – on the shallowness of the worship industry, and how Facebook becomes a barrier for underground DIY venues:
Madeleine Davies, Church Times, Where next for contemporary worship music?
Liz Pelly, Logic, The Antisocial Network

Book Reviews:

Micah Mattix, Kirk Center, Poetry, Oblivion, and God
David Sessions, Commonweal, Left to Their Devices
Alan Jacobs, The Weekly Standard, The Question without a Solution
Eve Tushnet, The Week, What Memoir Reveals
Gina Dalfonzo, CT, There’s Nothing Sketchy About Cross-Gender Friendships in the Church

LM Sacasas, MereO, Book Review: The Power of Silence by Robert Cardinal Sarah

Clare Coffey, The Weekly Standard, Of Fairies and Dragons

Two reviews of These Truths and a Jill Lepore interview from a while back:

Casey N Cep, Harvard Magazine, True Lies
Scott Spillman, The Point, These Truths
Joy Horwitz, LARB, What Gets Saved and What Gets Lost: An Interview with Jill Lepore

Other reviews:
Alexandra V Cipolle, Bust, "Worlds Of Ursula K. Le Guin" Shows The Evolution Of A Wizard, Writer, And Feminist
DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: Janet(s) (Season 3, Episode 10)
Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, The Incarnation of Ideas in Tom Stoppard's 'The Hard Problem'

Pieces on people:

Matthew Loftus, MereO, Savage Love: A Review of the Work of Elisabeth Elliot
Alan Jacobs, The New Yorker, Thomas Merton, the Monk Who Became a Prophet

Hannah Long, The Weekly Standard, The Steward of Middle-Earth

Drew Magary, GQ, The Last Curious Man

The miscellany:
Jen Manion, Public Seminar, The Performance of Transgender Inclusion
Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship, Gay Boys and Their Evangelical Parents
Karen Swallow Prior, The Atlantic, What Jane Austen’s 'Pride and Prejudice' Teaches Readers
Tim Wu, NYT, In Praise of Mediocrity
Erica Klarreich, Quanta Magazine, A Collector of Math and Physics Surprises
Alice B Lloyd, The Weekly Standard, Last Lines

Thankful for the reading

Lots of paired articles to start off with: first, two on history and artifacts from the past:

Kyle Harper, LARB, The Emperor and the Empty Tomb: An Ancient Inscription, an Eccentric Scholar, and the Human Need to Touch the Past

Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?

Two on the suburbs:

Ashley Hales, CT, God's Call to a Reluctant Suburbanite
James Howard Kunstler, The American Conservative, The Infinite Suburb is an Academic Joke

Two on purity culture and Josh Harris:
Abigail Rine Favale, First Things, Kissing Purity Culture Goodbye
Christine Emba, WaPo, The dramatic implosion of ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ is a lesson — and a warning

Two pretty negative profiles, of a pseudo-Christian Instagrammer, and an alt-right convert:
Laura Turner, Buzzfeed, “Girl, Wash Your Face” Is A Massive Best-Seller With A Dark Message

Anna Silman, The Cut, We Thought We Knew Faith, Until We Didn’t

Two against Mars exploration:

Micah Meadowcroft, The New Atlantis, Lost on Mars

Andrew Russell & Lee Vinson, Aeon, Whitey on Mars

Two on the priority of maintenance over innovation:

Andrew Russell & Lee Vinson, Aeon, Hail the Maintainers

Shannon Mattern, Places Journal, Maintenance and Care

Two on spiritual fatigue (of Wes and Jemar Tisby, respectively):

Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship, Weariness

Jon Ward, Yahoo News, In the age of Trump, tired are the peacemakers

Two on the recent midterm elections (sadly, the first piece is pretty much what one would expect from HuffPo): 

Brandi Miller, Huffington Post, What It Means to Vote Like a Christian
Rachel M Cohen, The Intercept, Why Ben Jealous Lost the Maryland Governor's Race

Two pieces of Christian news of note:
Kate Shellnut, CT, CCDA President Noel Castellanos Resigns
Karen Swallow Prior, Kristie Anyabwile, & Tish Harrison Warren, CT,  A New Guild Aims to Equip Women and Amplify Orthodoxy

Theology:

Matthew Loftus, Mere O, “Easier For People To Be Good”: Ten Theses on the Bible, Poverty, and Justice
Matthew Loftus, MereO: Doctors Without Boredom, The Paranoid Style in American Christianity
Duke Kwon, The Crux & The Call, Pharisees, Tax Collectors, and the Politics of Self-Righteousness

Chris Pappalardo, CT, This Thanksgiving, I’m Thankful for Difficult People

Willie James Jennings, Christian Century, European Christian missionaries and their false sense of progress
Oliver O'Donovan, First Things, Every Square Inch
Joni Eareckson Tada, CT, Suffering Helps Me See Heaven
Fleming Rutledge, Ruminations, Thoughts for the Advent season 2018

A few pieces on coming to the Church, keeping kids in it, and drawing in new members in the modern age:
BD McClay, Commonweal, Why I Came

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, TGC, Ask and You Shall Evangelize

Sharon Galgay Ketcham, CT, Why ‘Passing on the Faith’ Fails Our Kids

The unhealthy sexual recession, porn, politics:
Kate Julian, The Atlantic, Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?
Helen Andrews, Hedgehog Review, Kicking Against the Pricks
Tim Alberta, Politico, How the GOP Gave Up on Porn
Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason, Anti-Porn Republicans Haven't Gone Anywhere

Left, Right, and Center all agree that Amazon is terrible:
Daniel Kishi, The American Conservative, Amazon's Great HQ2 Swindle
Veronique de Rugy, National Review, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Right about Amazon’s Corporate Welfare
Stacy Mitchell, The Nation, Amazon Doesn’t Just Want to Dominate the Market—It Wants to Become the Market
Alana Samuels, The Atlantic, Amazon’s HQ2 Will Only Worsen America’s ‘Great Divergence’
Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, Amazon’s HQ2 Spectacle Isn’t Just Shameful—It Should Be Illegal

A transition pair – one on how the changing nature of work is depleting its meaning, and another on how the changing nature of work is due to technology not being particularly suited to humans:
Jonathan Malesic, Hedgehog Review, When Work and Meaning Part Ways
Atul Gawande, New Yorker, Why Doctors Hate Their Computers

Which brings us to TECHNOLOGY EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE OMNIBUS EDITION:
Vincent Gabrielle, Aeon, Gamified Life
Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox, Period-tracking apps are not for women
Ethan Gach, Kotaku, AIs Are Getting Better At Playing Video Games...By Cheating
Ian Leslie, 1843 Magazine, The Scientists Who Make Apps Addictive
Eli Saslow, WaPo, ‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America
Sheera Frenkel, Nicholas Confessore, Cecilia Kang, Matthew Rosenberg & Jack Nicas, NYT, Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis
Elizabeth Picciuto, Arc Digital, Facebook’s Dangerous Push to Appease the Right
LM Sacasas, Real Life, Personal Panopticons
William A Wilson, The Weekly Standard, Acts of Creation

America, nationalism, and modern ethics:

James Poulos, Law & Liberty, Reading America from the Outside

Robert Zaretsky, Foreign Policy, We Are All Isaiah Berliners Now

Reihan Salam, The Atlantic, The Virtues of Nationalism

Alan Jacobs, The American Conservative, Code Fetishists and Antinomians

TV and film reviews:

Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, Netflix’s Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an old West folk tale, with a signature Coen brothers twist
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, How Willem Dafoe learned to paint like Vincent Van Gogh
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, It took 46 years for Aretha Franklin’s concert doc to come out. The wait was worth it.
Maya Phillips, Slate, 'Salt Fat Acid Heat' Revolutionizes the Cooking Show
DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: Don’t Let the Good Life Pass You By (Season 3, Episode 9)

Book reviews (including a profile of smart dummy Yuval Noah Harari and a nice interview with George Saunders):

Kyle David Bennett, CT, When Christian Practices Hurt Other People

Jake Meador, TGC, What 2018 Can Learn from 1943

Alan Jacobs, The Weekly Standard, Cartographantasies

Cortland Gatliff, Christ & Pop Culture, Teju Cole’s 'Blind Spot': An Antidote to Instagram Syndrome

Nellie Bowles, NYT, Tech CEOs Are in Love With Their Principal Doomsayer

George Saunders, LitHub, George Saunders on the Best Writing Advice He's Received

Jamie Quatro and Fire Sermon reviews:

Anthony Domestico & Jamie Quatro, Commonweal, An Interview with Jamie Quatro
Claire Dederer, The Atlantic, 'Fire Sermon' Is a Profoundly Strange Meditation on Desire
Megan Nolan, The White Review, Jamie Quatro's 'Fire Sermon'

FOOD:

Kevin Alexander, Thrillist, I Found the Best Burger Place in America. And Then I Killed It.

Dayna Evans, Eater, Do You Even Bake, Bro?

Amanda Mull, The Atlantic, Why Most of America Is Terrible at Making Biscuits

Reads up to the midterms

I read a ton of pieces focused on specific people since the last roundup. First up are the theologians: Russell Moore with a moving tribute to Eugene Peterson, followed by a profile of Jamie Smith:  
Russell Moore, TGC, Eugene Peterson Preached One Sermon
Patrick Gilger, America, James KA Smith's Theological Journey

Next, artists: a visit to author Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo, and a post-religious reflection on Sufjan Stevens: 
Ursula Lindsey, The Nation, The World of the Alley
Katie Bloom, The Outline, Sufjan Stevens Helped Me Understand God

Then politics: a long 2014 profile of the fascinating German Chancellor Angela Merkel (along with a brief eulogy for Christian Democrats in the wake of the announcement that she will not seek reelection), and a look at the trollish Dinesh D'Souza, who's finally found a political era that has caught up with his determined foolishness and corruption:
George Packer, New Yorker, The Quiet German
Matthew Walther, The Week, Germany's last kaiser
Alice B Lloyd, The Weekly Standard, Dinesh Unchained

Finally, philosophy: George Scialabba (who was featured in an essay in the last roundup) gives an overview of Ivan Illich, "the scourge of the professions," and the Times magazine looks at Bruno Latour's recent attempts to prevent his worthwhile critiques of scientific epistemology from slipping into complete disconnection from reality in the "post-truth" era. The TLS "Footnotes to Plato" series examines Isaiah Berlin's work, and Aeon looks at the integrity and influence of Simone Weil. Both TLS and Aeon had pieces on Hannah Arendt as well, and so did Wen Stephenson in the LA Review of Books (the best of the three, examining how her thoughts on human plurality, political action, and complicity in evil apply to climate change and the post-2016 era):
George Scialabba, The Baffler, Against Everything
Ava Kofman, NYT Mag, Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science
Henry Hardy, Times Literary Supplement, Isaiah Berlin: Against dogma
Christy Wampole, Aeon, Strange and Intelligent
Finn Bowring, Times Literary Supplement, Hannah Arendt and the hierarchy of human activity
James McAuley, Aeon, Shadow and Substance
Wen Stephenson, LARB, Learning to Live in the Dark: Reading Arendt in the Time of Climate Change

Reading about reading – Karen has an adaptation of her book's preface, and First Things has a similar but unrelated piece on filling one's life with reading (which is long and fun, but fairly light). I initially thought Poulos's piece would fit more exactly with the first two, but it ends up being more about the rise of technocratic solutionism and algorithmic bureaucracy:

Karen Swallow Prior, TGC, Practice the Christian Virtue of Reading Promiscuously
Joseph Epstein, First Things, The Bookish Life

James Poulos, National Affairs, Great Books in a Digital Age?

Which, of course, leads into the tech section. Tiku's piece review three books showing how so-called industry "disruption" by tech companies was just a cover for new forms of greed and exploitation. Bowles looks at tech gurus who don't want their own children using their devices and apps. Facebook's recent push toward Groups raises questions about privacy, safety, and fairness in what can be helpful and supportive communities (Zhang). Christians are thinking about tech as well: some are founding virtual churches based solely online, though these disembodied "bodies" have their critics (Bettis); others are (perhaps overly) optimistic about the possibilities of technology and see opportunities for God to redeem it (Cheng-Tozun). One Christian in particular – Søren Kierkegaard –presciently anticipated the rise of mob rule and public shaming online in his criticism of Copenhagen media over a century ago, offering some worthwhile thoughts for our own age (Stokes):
Nitasha Tiku, Wired, An Alternate History of Silicon Valley Disruption
Nellie Bowles, NYT, A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, Facebook Groups as Therapy
Kara Bettis, CT Pastors, The Embodied Church in a Digital Age
Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, CT, He Makes Everything Beautiful in Its Time—Including Tech
Patrick Stokes, ABC Religion & Ethics, Inhuman communication: Søren Kierkegaard versus the internet

It was Halloween, and All Saint's Day. Liz asks if we're thinking about Satan enough (probably not); Image's new blog editor offers a memento mori:

Elizabeth Bruenig, Hedgehog Review, The Devil We Know
Jessica Mesman, Image, Happy Halloween: Remember You Will Die

Some theology and writing on Christian life and politics: A great review of two theology books, one on creation and one on the end of things (East); Fleming Rutledge draws connections between her book, The Crucifixion, and the work of James Cone; Sam James review a new book about campus speech disputes and finds salient connections with the last generation's parenting habits...and what this means for our own; Jamie Smith review Lauren Winner's new book about the risks of Christian practices being deformed by sin, and thus deforming us; Rosaria Butterfield thinks introverts like her can still find ways to offer hospitality; DL's Curator piece never really gets there for me – while her writing is still gorgeous and I appreciate her very real struggle to live a life of neighbor-love, it seems like far too often she's finding herself overcorrecting from the evangelicalism of her upbringing into wishy-washy universalism (I mean, at least be like Fleming Rutledge and be a rigorous, theologically argued universalist!); Dan Darling rebukes the racist fear of people fleeing from oppression; Matthew rebukes Rod Dreher and anti-immigration fear-mongers in general:
Brad East, Marginalia, First Things and Last Things in Christian Theology
Fleming Rutledge, Generous Orthodoxy: Ruminations, "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" by James H. Cone
Samuel James, Mere O, The Public Square Is about Parenting
James KA Smith, Christian Century, When Christian practice (de)forms us
Rosaria Butterfield, Crossway, How Can You Show Radical Hospitality as an Introvert?
DL Mayfield, Curator, Feasting in the House of the Lord
Daniel Darling, WaPo, Christians should see in the migrant caravan the Bible’s call to honor the dignity of all humanity
Matthew Loftus, Mere O, And Who Is My Neighbor?

Transitioning from the theology but staying on the subject of racism, here are several pieces following the tragic white supremacist attack in Pittsburgh. Russell Moore refutes those who find justification for anti-semitism in the Bible, while Wes Hill (via Lauren Winner) worries about the risks of isolated proof-texting. Brandon McGinley considers the local aspect of both a tragedy of this magnitude and the work needed to fight back. Evan offers his own Jewish perspective in a moving tribute to his heritage, while Emma Green looks at the rituals associated with death and mourning in Pittsburgh's Jewish community. On a slightly different note, Ian Bogost suggests we move past advice intended for children, as it is no longer clear how to interpret in today's world, but rather numbs and absolves us in the wake of acts of evil:
Russell Moore, If You Hate Jews, You Hate Jesus
Wesley Hill, Commonweal, Death at the Tree of Life 
Brandon McGinley, WaPo, The long, hard work of healing a society
Evan Tucker, Times of Israel, Pittsburgh in Baltimore
Emma Green, The Atlantic, The Jews of Pittsburgh Bury Their Dead
Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, The Fetishization of Mr. Rogers’s ‘Look for the Helpers’

This article from the sixties was recirculated following the synagogue shooting; its meditation on complicity has eternal relevance in America:

Eugene Patterson, Poynter, A Flower for the Graves

This brings us to more general politics, with several pieces on identity, polarization, and how we might work and act together despite these differences. First, Hazony believes we have lost our American identity, which may be the case, but sadly, his account of that identity is too shallow to provide a workable way forward; as Mendelson observes, the utter emptiness of the rhetoric of "exceptionalism" has been around since the time of Pericles. The past failures of any so-called American identity have been clear for generations – we only needed to listen to people of color and others who fell outside its prescribed boundaries to see its limitations, as Coaston shows. Jones argues that the "middle" is messier than we think; a compromise between good and evil is not inherently virtuous, especially when the side of evil keeps pulling the center their way. (My initial instinct was to quibble with this piece, both in its unclear definition of virtue and its seeming unwillingness to acknowledge the others that, like it or not, we live with, but it is a worthwhile corrective to a morally blind moderation that allows evil to persist; any worthwhile "middle ground" to be sought must relate the disparate parties within the boundaries of moral absolutes.) A polarized America has numerous interpretations of evil, though, and it seems that there may no longer be a place for a virtuously positioned moderate in this political climate (Plott); might this doom us to a politics based primarily on cults of personality (Miller)? Meanwhile, younger evangelicals largely – though not uniformly – struggle to reclaim their faith from the political associations with which it's long been saddled (Dias). Judy Wu Dominick provides the most productive way forward, recounting her journey to an interest in justice, and offering the diverse cultural, economic, and political backgrounds of the 12 disciples as an example of how Jesus transcends our chosen affiliations:
Yoram Hazony, Time, How Americans Lost Their National Identity
Edward Mendelson, NY Review of Books, What Thucydides Knew About the US Today

Jane Coaston, Vox, Max Boot, Jackie Robinson, and the racism problem in the Republican Party
Tayari Jones, Time, There's Nothing Virtuous About Finding Common Ground
Elaina Plott, The Atlantic, The 2018 Midterms Could Kill the American Moderate for Good

Katherine Miller, Buzzfeed, First Came Trump, Then Came Beto: Ted Cruz And The Brutal Politics Of Likability

Elizabeth Dias, NYT, ‘God Is Going to Have to Forgive Me’: Young Evangelicals Speak Out

Judy Wu Dominick, CT, Love Your Political Frenemies

A few pieces leftover from the Kavanaugh debacle (which seems like a year ago already): Rachael Denhollander lends her typically clear and prophetic voice to Vox, and a CT references her and others to push back against the tendency of churches to silence victims. Waldstein examines the failures of virtue in even ostensible defenders of the #MeToo movement, with a reminder that virtues are interrelated; multiple complementary virtues are needed for a comprehensive sexual ethic. Barry looks to the salacious 80s movies emulated in Kavanaugh's high school yearbook (and alleged behavior), and asks whether it was simply a different era, or if there is any contrary evidence that shows we've always known what harassment is and that is it terrible (spoiler alert: duh):
Rachael Denhollander, Vox, I’m a sexual assault survivor. And a conservative. The Kavanaugh hearings were excruciating.
Kimi Harris, CT, Time Doesn’t Heal Sexual Assault If Victims Are Silenced
Edmund Waldstein, Popula, #MeToo in light of Aristotelian Virtue Ethics
Rick Barry, Christ & Pop Culture, Brett Kavanaugh, Willful Ignorance, and the Pop Culture of the 1980s

These two aren't really connected, except that they are about stuff: too much of it, what happens to it, problems arising in how we deal with it, and what should we do with it instead:
Leslie Hook & John Reed, Financial Times, Why the world's recycling system stopped working
Matt Miller, Comment, Holy Clutter

Two pairs of book-related pieces: an adapted excerpt from Smarsh's Heartland and Gracy's very positive review of it, and two essays on Bulgakov:
Sarah Smarsh, The Guardian, Country pride: what I learned growing up in rural America
Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative, A Price Tag on the American Dream
Viv Groskop, LitHub, Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita
Cathy Young, The Weekly Standard, Devil's Ball

The Good Place Season 3 is getting good again! 

DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: The Ballad of Donkey Doug (Season 3, Episode 6)
DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: A Fractured Inheritance (Season 3, Episode 7)

Two last reviews to close this out, both of things I like that have required some wind to be taken out of their sails: On the more serious side, Louie seems to think that he can merit a career resurgence by showing off his black defenders in a way that allies him with the oppressed; he'd do better not to view black comedy fans as monolithic (or even try to have a comedy career right now in the first place). But some comedy is worthwhile, like this takedown of the empty pretentiousness of most people lugging around a copy of Infinite Jest (not me, of course, I am very literate and sophisticated and had a conversation about IJ just this week in which I only needed to be reminded of who one character was):
Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, Louis C.K.’s Phantom Alliance With His Black Fans

Claire Friedman, New Yorker, How to Read 'Infinite Jest'

Most of October

Politics have been particularly bad recently, particularly w/r/t the Kavanaugh debacle:
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Kavanaugh is one more step in America’s cycle of self-destruction
Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, The Cruelty Is the Point
Jennifer Rubin, WaPo, The left no doubt what they think of women
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, Christian Nationalism, explained through one pro-Trump propaganda film

Christopher R Browning, NY Review of Books, The Suffocation of Democracy

Emily Badger & Quoctrung Bui, NYT, Americans Say Their Politics Don’t Define Them. But It’s Complicated.

Conservatism has been particularly bad recently as well:

Jane Coaston, NYT, When 'Conservatives' Turned Into Radicals

Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, Why I'm Leaving the Republican Party

Max Boot, WaPo, The dark side of American conservatism has taken over
James Poulos, The American Mind, Why Conservatism Failed
Jake Meador, National Review, A Unified Nation Must Rest on Something Real

Technology has been particularly bad recently:
Alyssa ElHage, Institute for Family Studies, Keeping Technology in Its Proper Place: An Interview with Andy Crouch
Alexis C Madrigal, The Atlantic, Raised by YouTube
Ben Sasse, WaPo, This new technology could send American politics into a tailspin
Harriet Griffey, The Guardian, The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

Stephen Marche, LARB, The Crisis of Intimacy in the Age of Digital Connectivity

Some Baltimore stuff:
Holden Wilen, Baltimore Business Journal, Baltimore transportation chief says city faces infrastructure 'crisis'
Morgan Eichensehr, Baltimore Business Journal, Stop Apologizing, Baltimore: From Sandtown to Roland Park, why city business owners are still here
Daniel L Hatcher, Baltimore Sun, Maryland needs to stop forcing foster children to pay for their own care

Some screen-based entertainment reviews:
DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: The Snowplow (Season 3, Episode 4)
DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: Jeremy Bearimy (Season 3, Episode 5)
Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, 'A Star Is Born' Is the 'November Rain' of the Big Screen

Maura Judkis, WaPo, Netflix’s new ‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’ is unlike any other food show on TV

Book reviews:
Adam Schwartz, University Bookman, The Presence of the Counterkingdom
Gracy Olmstead, University Bookman, A Most Hospitable Benedict Option
Valerie Weaver-Zercher, Christian Century, Good reading and the good life
Jedediah Purdy, New Republic, George Scialabba, Radical Democrat

Casey N Cep, NYT, Is All Art Sacred Art? In a Prose Meditation, One Poet Makes the Case

David Auerbach, The American Reader, Review: Thomas Pynchon’s “Bleeding Edge”
Alan Jacobs, Books & Culture, Unexpected Refuge

A wide variety of Christian writing:

Samuel James, Desiring God, What Netflix Cannot Give — and Death Cannot Take
Hannah Anderson, Christ & Pop Culture, The Vocation of Parenthood
DL Mayfield, CT, Love Your Neighbor as Yourself—And Bring Your Kids Along
Jonathan Merritt, NYT, It’s Getting Harder to Talk About God
Chase Pasudniak, Patheos, Is a Smaller Church a Better Church?

Dana Ray, Comment, Everyday Aesthetics: Apartment Living and 'Rainbows for the Fallen World'

David Bentley Hart, First Things, The Secret Commonwealth
Jeremy McClellan, America, Catholic comedian Jeremy McLellan on finding God by welcoming the disabled
Wilfred M McClay, Comment, Gardeners and Pilgrims

Ed Welch, Desiring God, Six Ordinary Lessons for Mental Health Issues
Hannah Anderson, CT, Breaking Bread with Broken People Brings Wisdom
Matt Damico, Desiring God, Four Ways to Love a Disappointing Church
Jason Barnhart, Tethered Freedom, A Curmudgeon Looks at Worship
Natasha Sistrunk Robinson, CT, Weary in the Wilderness?

Memento Mori:

Raymond C Barfield, Comment, When Self-Help Means Less Help
Tom Scocca, Hmm Daily, Your Real Biological Clock Is You’re Going to Die

Old people:
Krista Tippett & Eugene Peterson, On Being, The Bible, Poetry, and Active Imagination
Kate Shellnutt, CT, Eugene Peterson Has Completed His Long Obedience
John Motyka, NYT, Mary Midgley, 99, Moral Philosopher for the General Reader, Is Dead
James Parker, The Atlantic, Paul McCartney Can't Stop Making People Happy

Miscellaneous:
Amy Brady, Orion, Rewilding your Lawn in the Anthropocene: An Interview with Author Jeff VanderMeer
Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books, Climate Fiction Reveals Just How “Weird” Humans Truly Are
Rebecca Schuman, Guernica, The Franz Kafka Marriage Manual for Young Ladies
Claire Fallon, HuffPost, Instagram Poetry Is A Huckster’s Paradise
Kim Foster, NPR Desert Companion, The Meth Lunches

Joe MacLeod, Hmm Daily, I Wanted to Be Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
Immaculata Abba, Popula, Me, My Body, and I

Caroline Langston, Image, Waiting for Nothing to Happen

September reads

Brian Mealer's exploration of the "deconstructing" liberal exvangelicals is one of the pieces that gave me the most to think about this month. In a similar vein is TIB's description of how exercise classes are attempting (perhaps inadvertently) to fill some of the voids left by the Church (along with two responses to this trend):

Brian Mealer, New Republic, The Struggle for a New American Gospel

Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, "CrossFit is my Church"
Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative, The Holy Church of CrossFit
Connor Gwin, Mockingbird, My Church Is Not CrossFit

A bunch of thoughts on the current political climate from Christian perspectives (and one piece on John Kasich's faith from the 2016 primary season, which reads like wistful nostalgia these days):
Michael Gerson, WaPo, Christians are suffering from complete spiritual blindness
Ross Douthat, NYT, Conservatism After Christianity
Ruth Graham, Slate, How Conservative Christians Are Responding to the Kavanaugh Allegations

Laura Turner, Politico, How Kasich's Religion Is Hurting Him With Conservatives

Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, We're all back in high school

Ross Douthat, NYT, An Age Divided by Sex

Brandon McGinley, The Week, The shameful roar of the new masculinists

A few secular reflections on the Kavanaugh fiasco:

Megan Garber, The Atlantic, The Pernicious Double Standards Around Brett Kavanaugh's Drinking

Alexandra Petri, WaPo, It is very difficult to get the train to stop

Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic, I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn't Confirm Him

The Republicans are no longer a conservative people; the Democrats, unfortunately, are not the all-inclusive party they'd like to present themselves as:

Eliot A Cohen, The Atlantic, The Republican Party Abandons Conservatism
Jessica Mendoza, Christian Science Monitor, Blue wave euphoria? Why it hasn't reached this corner of Baltimore.

Why can't we all just get along? To be honest, these three pieces are only fine as far as I'm concerned. Keller's is the best; I kind of wonder if it's a backhanded strike at those Christians who have made explicit idols of their preferred party or political priorities, but worded in such a way so as not to have to break fellowship with them, or say, "I'm not one of those Christians!":

Ann Bauer, WaPo, I was a Yankee liberal. It took moving to Arkansas for me to understand my biases.
Gracy Olmstead, Intercollegiate Review, How to Bring Civility Back in 2018
Timothy Keller, NYT, How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don’t

A few urbanist pieces, and some other vaguely political pieces that aren't directly about the national drama of the moment:
Andy Singer, Strong Towns, Driverless Cars and the Cult of Technology
Laura Bliss, Pacific Standard, How Bad Policy Ends Up on Our Sidewalks
Johnny Sanphillippo, Granola Shotgun, Methodist Urbanism: Ocean Grove
Steven Brill, Time, How Baby Boomers Broke America
Joanne Lipman, Wall Street Journal, Want Equality? Make New Dads Stay Home

Michael Hobbes, Huffington Post Highline, Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong

I read a lot about work this month. Graeber's initial essay, interview, and a few reviews of his Bullshit Jobs book; a typically incisive essay from Desmond; Gracy notes how our phone habits form us to be constant workers; a great CT piece on the failure of the "Faith & Work" movement to address the working class; and a great Comment piece on the social life of work, the isolation of both unemployment as well as dehumanizing labor, and the potential of solidarity and community found in unions:
David Graeber, Strike! Mag, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant
David Graeber, The Economist, Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism
Rachel Paige King, Longreads, Is Your Job Lynchian, or Is It More Kafkaesque?
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, New Republic, Money For Nothing
John Schneider, LARB, Is Your Job A Bunch of BS?
Matthew Desmond, NYT, Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They're Not.
Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative, We Weren't Made for Endless Work
Jeff Haanen, CT, God of the Second Shift
Brian Dijkema, Comment, All the Lonely Workers

Tech stuff:
LM Sacasas, The Frailest Thing, Zuckerberg's Blindness and Ours
Matthew Carney, ABC News (Australia), Leave No Dark Corner
Mark O'Connell, New Yorker, The Deliberate Awfulness of Social Media
Rachel Seo, Christ & Pop Culture, Gen Z's Biggest Legacy: Has Social Media Hacked a Generation?

Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, Brands Are Not Our Friends

Liz's deeply felt and reported investigation of a rape at her high school is journalism and moral scrutiny of the highest order:
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, What do we owe her now?
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Amber Wyatt told her story of rape. This is how the world responded.
Sandra Newman, Quartz, What kind of person makes false rape accusations?

Political theology thoughts:

Jake Meador, MereO, Setting Fire to Modern Civilization: On Abuse and Institutions
Jorden J Ballor & J Daryl Charles, Public Discourse, Common Grace, Natural Law, and the Social Order

Mary McCampbell, The Witness, We Wear the Mask
Tommy Lynch, Political Theology Network, Climate Apocalypticism
Emily Hubbard, Fathom, I found God in my kid's public school

Clare Coffey, National Catholic Reporter, Where do we turn when our deepest fears become national headlines?
Brian Dijkema & Patrick Deneen, Comment, Liberty, Equality, ...Disintegration?

This Heather Havrilevsky piece has some good stuff, but never quite gets there for me. Luckily, the Plough review of Christian Wiman's new book gets at all the stuff she wants to get at but can't (the CT piece on the same book is good, too). Jamie Smith looks at some short fiction and finds ritual in its post-Christian pages; KSP finds hope even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland:
Heather Havrilevsky, Longreads, The Miracle of the Mundane
Jane Zwart, Plough, The Wound Incarnate: Death, Art, and Immortality
Christie Purifoy, CT, How Poetry Quiets the ‘Pandemonium of Blab’
James KA Smith, Image, Homo Liturgicus: On the Persistence of Ritual in Contemporary Fiction
Karen Swallow Prior, Think Christian, Holding to Hope, Even in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

Book Reviews:

Amanda Martinez Beck, Evangelicals for Social Action, Moving Past Fear Through Story: A Review of 'Disruptive Witness'
John Wilson, The Weekly Standard, Fear Factor
Sally Rooney, London Review of Books, Get a Lobotomy
DL Mayfield, CT, Mr Rogers Had a Dangerous Side
James E Hartley, Public Discourse, Deicide on the Right
Helen Andrews, Claremont Review of Books, Inconspicuous Consumption
Susan Grove Eastman, Christian Century, N. T. Wright’s creative reconstruction of Paul and his world

AJ with a good post, a review of a book related to his new one, a fascinating interview, and another review of his new book for good measure:
Alan Jacobs, Snakes & Ladders, Dare to make a Daniel
Alan Jacobs, Books & Culture, Man in Crisis
Wen Stephenson, LARB, Christianity and Resistance: An Interview with Alan Jacobs
Bradley J Birzer, The American Conservative, Is ‘Christian Humanism’ Gone Forever?

Profiles: The Tucker Carlson piece is bizarre and brilliant, not exactly a takedown, but a unique tone and approach; Taffy doesn't find enough to make fun of in Ethan Hawke to really do her thing, but it's OK because it turns out he's super interesting; a fantastic profile of faith and patriotism in the music of Johnny Cash; "DFW for Christians...for Dummies!"; Beth Moore is brave and awesome and everything Emma writes is great; Francis Chan has a new book, in which he says some things I probably agree with and about which, he gave this lackluster interview; Gracy pitches her granddad softballs and he says the things he always says, but I like those things:

Lyz Lenz, Columbia Journalism Review, The mystery of Tucker Carlson
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, NYT Magazine, Ethan Hawke Is Still Taking Ethan Hawke Extremely Seriously
John Hayes, The Bitter Southerner, He Saw Our Darkness
Warren Cole Smith, CT, David Foster Wallace Broke My Heart
Emma Green, The Atlantic, The Tiny Blond Bible Teacher Taking On the Evangelical Political Machine
Rachel Starke, CT, Francis Chan: Stop Treating the Book of Acts Like Hyperbole
Gracy Olmstead, NYT, Wendell Berry's Right Kind of Farming

Pairs: Two on Nicole Chung – one on her new book about her childhood as an adoptee to white parents, and a piece of advice to beginning writers; two on moral philosopher and curmudgeon extrordonaire Mary Midgely; a summary and a review of Mike Cosper's new book on Esther; two on Jill Lepore and her massive new history tome:
Ashley Fetters, The Atlantic, The Fraught Language of Adoption
Joe Fassler & Nicole Chung, The Atlantic, E. B. White’s Lesson for Debut Writers: It’s Okay to Start Small
Simon Jenkins, High Profiles, Crosscurrent: An interview with Mary Midgely
Andrew Anthony, The Guardian, Mary Midgely: A late stand for a philosopher with soul
Mike Cosper, TGC, The Esther Option
Jasmine Holmes, TGC, Meet the Prodigal Daughter of the Bible
Jennifer Schuessler, NYT, Jill Lepore on Writing the Story of America (in 1,000 Pages or Less)
Michael Schaub, NPR, 'These Truths' Looks At America Through The Promises Of Its Beginning

Some miscellaneous review work that doesn't really fit anywhere else; each of these pieces is uniquely good:

Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, The 'First Man' controversy is grounded in partisanship, not patriotism

Sarah Miller, Popula, The Movie Assassin

The Editors, n+1, The New Reading Environment
Simon Reynolds, Pitchfork, How Auto-Tune Revolutionized the Sound of Popular Music

BoJack Horseman and The Good Place – the two best shows on right now are both ridiculously-premised sitcoms:

Molly Lambert, New Yorker, The Origin Story of the Depressingly Good 'BoJack Horseman'
Alexandra Vlak Cipolle, Hyperallergic, The Hidden Art Masterpieces in 'BoJack Horseman'
Todd VanDerWerff, Vox, BoJack Horseman season 5 is a bold, bracing look at a culture that shirks responsibility
Tyler Huckabee, Relevant, In 'BoJack Horseman,' the Unexamined Past Is a Cancer
Film Crit Hulk, Observer, The Ultimate Lesson of 'The Good Place': Change Is REALLY Hard

Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 'The Good Place' Offers a Heavenly Reprieve

Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, Sympathy for Janet on 'The Good Place'

Sam Anderson, NYT Magazine, The Ultimate Sitcom

DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: Everything Is Bonzer! (Season 3, Episode 1)

Miscellaneous:
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, I'm Still Confused About 'Miss America 2.0'
Rachel Ossip, n+1, Ghost World

Pablo Torre, Sports Illustrated, The Mystery Pick is Royce White

Sabrina Little, I Run Far, Friends and Tethers
Vernon Loeb, The Atlantic, A New World Marathon Record Almost Defies Description

Frank Bruni, NYT, The Most Contrarian College in America