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'