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