Thoughts on Augustine's City of God - Book I

This is my first reading of Augustine's City of God, and to try to get a little more of it, I'm going to try blogging a summary and any thoughts I might have for each book. Book I starts off curiously, with Augustine sarcastically pointing out the failure of the Roman gods to save Rome from the recent "catastrophe" of invasion while contrasting the fact that even non-Christian Romans were spared in the Christian basilicas. Why start here?

Augustine is obliquely setting up the central tension of his argument through a classic philosophical question: why do bad things happen to good people (and vice versa)? Why did God shelter Romans who falsely claimed in His name while allowing some Christians to be tortured, raped, or killed? What greater purpose was served by the sack of Rome? Believing in the providence of God, he sees a variety of reasons God may afflict the righteous or show mercy to unbelievers, some more convincing than others, but final explanations are not really the heart of the matter here. The primary question (set up in I.8) is "What use is made of the things thought to be blessings, and of the things reputed evil?" What is the telos of blessings and disasters? This question is worth asking whether we are seeking the end intended by God in His ineffable plan, or merely the best way to interpret and learn from our perception of a situation. 

These ultimate ends are crucial to search out, as they orient us on our paths through life. Augustine turns to an examination of Christian concerns: Is burial essential? If not, is it worthwhile? Is one's chastity violated by rape? Is suicide ever justified in the face of others' sin (or one's own)? Here, he is constantly pointing his readers to find their ultimate end in God and the eternal Christian hope. God is concerned with the things of this world, our lives, our struggles, our bodies. Burial, for instance, is a practice worthy of considered thought, because "[a] man's body is no mere adornment, or external convenience; it belongs to his very nature as a man. (I.13)" However, this mortal life is not our chief end; in every beloved detail, it points to something more. God "is concerned with the bodies of the dead, so as to promote faith in the resurrection." Through temporal trials, we should come to be aware of our immoderate love of the things of this world, be convicted of our sin or humbled by our dependence on Heaven, and reorder our hearts towards a greater hope: "what is to be loved is the incorruptible good. (I.10)"

But these trials have not had this effect on the Roman pagans; their reaction to the sack of Rome is to blame the Christians. Even those who were saved by claiming sanctuary in the name of Christ fail to see His saving power at work. In I.30, Augustine exposes the true motivation here: Rome is a decadent society of hedonists, longing to exploit their material prosperity in cheap pleasures without the scolding eye of the Christians looking on. The pagans use the goods of this world for the ends of this world, temporal and fleeting. Their vices were not corrected or mitigated by their recent trials (I.33), and their short-sighted vision allows the pagan spirits to tempt them into deeper and deeper vice (I.32). 

And yet, God allowed many Romans to live, some sheltered dishonestly within his own temples. Why? Augustine writes that the Church must extend sanctuary protection even to those hostile to her, for "[she] must bear in mind that among these very enemies are hidden her future citizens (I.35)." Moreover, many claiming Christian allegiance, themselves participants in the sacraments, are not true members of the Church. "In truth, those two cities are interwoven and intermixed in this era, and await separation at the last judgement. (I.35)" 

How are we to discern between the two cities? If their intermingled tension is such that we cannot, how should we best orient our paths toward the Heavenly one? What role do the gods of this world play in distracting us from right paths, and how can we trust that the one true and living God is working in the midst of calamity? 

March Reads week two-ish

Martyn Wendell Jones leads off this week's reads with his magisterial profile of the Bakker family and the surrounding culture of religious enthusiasm in The Weekly Standard: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker: A Scandal of the Self

Some articles on modern political problems. Cedric Johnson's essay fits with the second piece due to its discussion of modern policing, and with the third due to its discussion of pre-political identity, but honestly I mostly grouped these together because I thought it was funny to match a journal produced by Jacobin with two conservative magazines:
Cedric Johnson, Catalyst Journal, The Panthers Can't Save Us Now
Adam Rubenstein, The Weekly Standard, Radley Balko: 'The Biggest Problem in Our System is Bad Incentives'

Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, Confiscating the Nation

The tech section. AJ's essay, of course, is everything I've ever wanted; everything else is mostly, as usual, terrible. 

Alan Jacobs, Hedgehog Review, Tending the Digital Commons: A Small Ethics toward the Future
Anastasia Basil, Medium, Porn Is Not the Worst Thing on Musical.ly
Joseph Bottum, Washington Free Beacon, At the Algorithm's Mercy

Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News
Farhad Manjoo, NYT, For Two Months I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here's What I Learned.

Speaking of the Internet, it's generally a good reminder to reexamine our levels of charity to others when thinking about it:

Katherine Mangu-Ward, NYT, When Smug Liberals Met Conservative Trolls

Jake Meador, Mere O, The Grace of Good Questions

These articles on the changing makeup of the Church are crucial. There have been numerous examinations of craven white evangelicals' capitulation during the 2016 election, and the resultant brutality inflicted on the souls of minority Christians; these are not the full extent of the analysis needed of this moment in history, but they certainly help. Jesus, come quickly, or send us some non-Western missionaries enflamed with the Spirit. 
Campbell Robertson, NYT, A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshippers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches
Deborah Jian Lee, Religion Dispatches, Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads
Michael Gerson, The Atlantic, The Last Temptation
Emma Green, The Atlantic, How Trump is Remaking Evangelicalism
Jake Meador, Mere O, The Evangelical Center After Billy Graham
Saba Imtiaz, The Atlantic, A New Generation Redefines What It Means to Be a Missionary

At least there are Christians reporting on science for Christianity Today, even if the profile of Christian conservationists staring down mass extinction is really depressing in its own way:

Cara Daneel, CT, Creation Groans, but God Hears: Many Species Face "Thinning of Life"
Stephanie Zhang, CT, Behaving Like Children or Chimps?

Some theology and philosophy. 
Fleming Rutledge, Generous Orthodoxy: Ruminations, The concept of sacrifice: The latest thing on the hit list?

John Woodbridge, CT, Why Christian Theology Needs (Former) Atheists
Gilbert Meilander, First Things, Virtuous Evildoers

Brian Wright, Desiring God, Read the Bible with Someone Else

On #MeToo and how not to let ourselves off the hook for our own sins; how Christians must speak up, but with humility; on raising boys in a culture of toxic masculinity (the first two-thirds would be a good first quarter of a better essay, which would not include the final third at all).

Ethan McCarthy, Christ & Pop Culture, Louis's Sins and Mine

Phil Mobley, By Faith, Christianity and Complicity
Michael Kimmel, The Cut, Raise Your Son to Be a Good Man, Not a 'Real' Man

Also somewhat #MeToo-related, a brief look at Rachael Denhollander's shot across the bow of SGM:
Ruth Graham, Slate, Larry Nassar’s First Accuser Is Taking On Another Big Target—This Time, Within Her Own Evangelical Community

Reviews: more Lady Bird, an interview with the founder of The Toast, and a look at Christian Wiman's new collection of poems on Joy. 

Clare Coffey, National Catholic Reporter, 'Lady Bird' inspires memories of Catholic high school and the sisters
Constance Grady, Vox, Mallory Ortberg talks The Toast, The Merry Spinster, and the joys of peanut butter
James Matthew Wilson, Law & Liberty, Joy's Mysteries

Two last reviews on Black Panther:

Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger
Kathryn Freeman, Christ & Pop Culture, The Role of Black Women in the Church: A Wakandan View of Flourishing

The last of the Febreads, and Marching on

So many good book reviews this week. First, here's Rafia Zakaria in The Baffler, arguing that superficial positive reviews are infantilizing for women and people of color, marginalizing them from the intellectual conversation under the guise of supporting them: In Praise of Negative Reviews

Here are some negative book reviews of the Steven Pinker scientism joint.
Nick Spencer, Theos, Enlightenment and Progress, or why Steven Pinker is wrong
Peter Harrison, ABC Religion & Ethics, The Enlightenment of Steven Pinker
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Edges of Reason

The best book review (and probably, overall piece) I read this week was Brad East's engagement with Patrick Deneen's How Liberalism Failed and Jamie Smith's Awaiting the King in LA Review of Books. It's a great overview of the debate over political theology and how Christianity should relate to the system of liberalism: Holy Ambivalence

That led me to this overview of Deneen's book, as well as the author's blog:
Patrick J Deneen, ABC Religion & Ethics, The Triumphant Failure of Liberalism
Brad East, Resident Theologian, Principles of Luddite pedagogy

And many other solid reviews here as well (OK, the last one is a movie).
Park MacDougald, American Affairs, Fascists and Revolutionaries

Justin Lee, First Things, Bros Against Humanity
Catherine Cusick, Longreads, An Education in Doubt
Kelly Jane Torrance, National Review, The Struggle for Meaning
Anna Leszkiewicz, New Statesman, “Senior year burns brightly. There is a vividness in worlds coming to an end”: Lady Bird’s aesthetic of memory

A varied assortment of national politics griping, from (legitimately) fake news, to the President's circle of corruption, to the unmitigated malice even in the face of death on social media, to America's depressing child mortality rates, to the true purpose of guns:
Kevin D Williamson, National Review, An Epidemic of Dishonesty on the Right
David A Graham, The Atlantic, Trump's Real Scandal is Hiding in Plain Sight

Samuel James, MereO (Inklingations), The Wrong Spite of History

Matthew Loftus, America, The United States is dangerous for children. How we can help more of them live to see adulthood?

Christine Emba, WaPo, We All Know What Guns Are Really For

Also on the political front is this great profile of Eric Metaxas and his craven capitulation to Trump, as candidate and now as President. Illuminating but challenging to read is the full email exchange between the author and subject, in which he (Metaxas) begins graciously, but gradually grows more and more towards the very likeness of Godwin's Law (not to mention Poe's). A response to some of his comments by fellow Bonhoeffer biographer Charles Marsh is also intriguing.

Jon Ward, Yahoo News, Author Eric Metaxas, evangelical intellectual, chose Trump, and he's sticking with him
Jon Ward, Medium, My Email Exchange with Eric Metaxas
Charles Marsh, Medium, Charles Marsh responds to Eric Metaxas

Leslie Jamison is simply a phenomenal writer. I wish she'd engaged more with Martha Nussbaum's ideas on retribution at the end of the anger piece, but these are both worth reading.
Leslie Jamison, VQR Online, The Breakup Museum
Leslie Jamison, NYT Mag, I Used to Insist I Didn't Get Angry. Not Anymore.

In the vein of Leslie Jamison, here are several pieces chronicling female pain, from the surrealistic trauma of recovery from an aneurysm, to the difficulty of caring for children when they and you are far from home, to overcoming the shame associated with painful sex, and finally, political ostracism for speaking the truth: 
Emily Carter Roiphe, Longreads, The Hotel of Multiple Realities
Rachel Pieh Jones, The Other Journal, Split Me Open
Joy Pedrow Skarka, Fathom, Having Painful Sex

Mona Charen, NYT, I'm Glad I Got Booed at CPAC

Some of these pains may affect women more directly or frequently, but can be shared by men as well. Matthew Loftus shares the fear of needing medical care for a child when you live where it's not as available; this great profile of Brendan Fraser adds a new voice to the #MeToo movement:

Matthew Loftus, Making the little things available for little people

Zach Baron, GQ, Whatever Happened to Brendan Fraser?

I didn't really like this piece; it basically argues that social movements should appropriate little "tools" from religious practices to strengthen themselves, and it does so in a way that makes it seem that she thinks they function just as effectively stripped of their source and context. I'm open to that argument from some angles, but this one didn't work.
Danielle Celermajer, ABC Religion & Ethics, Shelter in a Hurricane: Muscular Silence and Creative Resistance

Urban issues:
Ariel Aberg-Riger, CityLab, When America's Basic Housing Unit Was a Bed, Not a House
Kate Wagner, The Atlantic, City Noise Might Be Making You Sick

Priya Fielding-Singh, Los Angeles Times, Why do poor Americans eat so unhealthfully? Because junk food is the only indulgence they can afford

Daryl Crouch, CT Pastors, How to Serve Your City When You Aren't a Megachurch

A poem:

Lauren K Alleyne, The Atlantic, Martin Luther King Jr Mourns Trayvon Martin

Gracy Olmstead writing Gracy Olmstead things: The American Conservative, Sourdough Bread and the Cult of Convenience

Science!
Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, Life Can Survive in the Most Mars-Like Place on Earth

Media in the digital age:
Maria Bustillos (with Karen K Ho), Columbia Journalism Review, Erasing History
Quinn Norton, The Atlantic, The New York Times Fired My Doppelgänger

Capitalism in a virtue-commodifying age:
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Rise of Woke Capital

On slave narratives and theology:
David Roach, CT, Reprint of Ex-slave's Theology Book Opens 'Underexplored Vista'
Joy Craun, CT, We Need to Read Stories of People Who Were Enslaved

And lastly:
Matthew Miller, MereO, Singing as Part of Family Worship

Febreads, week three

Let's start with this CT excerpt from Michael Wear's new afterword to Reclaiming Hope, because his voice and his call to bear one another's burdens is so needed now (and is important to keep in mind for so much else in this week's list): Make American Politics Hopeful Again

Mere O is doing some exciting things, such as Jake's upcoming book and the general thrust of their publication of late. The Household Worship Project looks like a good way to intentionally shape families into better-formed ambassadors of the Kingdom; Jake and Brandon's thoughts on Christian are always insightful and challenging:
Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy, Announcing the Household Worship Project
Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy, The Parting of Ways Amongst Younger Christians
Brandon McGinley, Mere Orthodoxy, The End of Bourgeois Christian Politics

A few pieces on liberalism, illiberalism, and political trends from Shadi Hamid in The Atlantic: Bari Weiss and the Left-Wing Infatuation With Taking Offense and The Rise of Anti-Liberalism

Similar is this instance of the Left eating its own: Amelia Tait, New Statesman, JK Rowling created an army of liberals – now they're turning against her

But... at least the Left isn't totally insane w/r/t guns. That's a debate with no satisfying answers that I tend to stay away from, but this week I read these, and am more convinced of the utter depravity of American gun (etc.) culture:
BD McClay, Commonweal, Phenomenology of the Gun
Krishnadev Calamur, The Atlantic, The Swiss Have Liberal Gun Laws, Too

Oh right, I have to read pieces about the President. Some news this week on the Russia front (usually I cut out the straight news pieces I read, but this seemed significant enough to merit inclusion), a well-reported but not particularly insightful piece from Michael Lewis (although the public art metaphor is perfect), and a beautifully scathing review of a book on Trump's "faith": 

David A Graham, The Atlantic, What Mueller's Indictment Reveals
Sarah Grant, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, Matt Tait, & Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare, Russian Influence Campaign: What’s in the Latest Mueller Indictment
Michael Lewis, Bloomberg, Has Anyone Seen the President?
Erick Erickson, Weekly Standard, The Apotheosis of Donald J Trump

Speaking of scathing reviews, David Berlinski takes on the transhumanist fantasies ofYuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus at Inference Review: Godzooks

How about good reviews? Here are two on Marilynne Robinson's new collection of essays:
James KA Smith, Comment, Marilynne Robinson's Apologia Gloriae
Dinah Birch, The Guardian, What Are We Doing Here? by Marilynne Robinson review – hope, as distinct from optimism

Russell D Moore deftly examines the tension-filled relationship between Neil Gaiman and CS Lewis for Touchstone. Simply a joy to read work this good: Watchful Dragons

A nice profile of LMM by John Leland for NYT Mag: Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Next Lion of New York

Heading towards religion, with a pitstop at its opposite: Isabel Fattal, The Atlantic, How Should Atheism Be Taught?

Three long, interesting examinations of thinkers from First Things – a theologian, a philosopher, and several thinkers that provide the intellectual underpinnings of the alt-Right:
David Bentley Hart, First Things, The Lively God of Robert Jenson
Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, Kierkegaard for Grownups
Matthew Rose, First Things, The Anti-Christian Alt-Right

Three Christianity Today articles – a great theological corrective to a the limiting view of heaven (I'm very sympathetic to NT Wright, et al, but this is a helpful grain of salt), more on Lent, and Nancy Pearcey examines the contradictions of transgenderism: 
J Todd Billings, CT, The New View of Heaven is Too Small
W David O Taylor, CT, Lent Is Here to Throw Us Off Again
Nancy Pearcey, CT, How the Transgender Narrative Perpetuates Stereotypes

The tech section is much less everything-is-terrible and much more "let's get out of here" this week. The first piece (using a helpful urbanist metaphor to ruminate on the environments created by social media) is fantastic. Also, how was I not going to read piece about Infinite Jest?

Frank Chimero, The Good Room
Nicole Dieker, Longreads, Is 2018 the Year We Step Away From Social Media?

Tony Reinke, Desiring God, A Movie So Good It Ruins You

Two last pieces to close things out, each waxing Wendell Berry-esque in their own way:

Tim Wu, NYT, The Tyranny of Convenience
Matthew C Halteman, The Banner, Eating toward Shalom: Why Food Ethics Matters for the 21st-Century Church

Feb reads, week two

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and this was a lovely meditation on domesticity from Ruth Graham in Slate: I’ll Tell You What, Nothing Is More Romantic Than Talking About Trash Cans and Towels With My Husband

It was also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Tish Harrison Warren wrote about this conjunction for CT: God's Message on 'Ash Valentine's Day': True Love Dies

And here are several other pieces about Lenten practice:
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, Why "Secular Lent" Misses the Point
Kevin P Emmert, CT, A Lent That's Not For Your Spiritual Improvement
Aaron Damiani, CT, Introducing Lent to Your Congregation

This isn't about Lent specifically, but it is about mortality and the ephemeral nature of life, and of art, and it's simply a great piece:
Justin Lee, The Smart Set, Graffiti These Bones

Also not about Lent, but about suffering and seeing God in it:

Kate Bowler, CT, God Came to Me in My Cancer

Trillia Newbell, TableTalk Magazine, Suffering and the Joy Before Us

They talk more about Advent than Lent:
David George Moore & Fleming Rutledge, Patheos, Interview with Fleming Rutledge

Tech stuff (the first piece is a stellar bit of reporting):

Nicholas Thompson & Fred Vogelstein, Wired, Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook – and the World
Sarah Aswell, Splitsider, How Facebook is Killing Comedy

Naomi Schaeffer Riley, NYT, America's Real Digital Divide

This has been on my mind a lot, and now I can't not think about it when analyzing what authors I read:
Ed Yong, The Atlantic, I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories

I'm not sold on the "sciency" part of this (and I really hate this sort of headline formulation), but this seems somewhat intuitively true, or at least likely, and remembering this is probably crucial to using social media well: 

Amy Ellis Nutt, WaPo, Science shows why it's important to speak — not write — to people who disagree with you

Pornography is a scourge; this isn't mere Puritan scoldery, but it seems evident that, like social media, young generations are being shaped by forces we've never thought to control, and the damage seems virtually incalculable. God have mercy on us. Glad to see these takes in response to the heartbreaking piece on teenagers and porn last week:

Ross Douthat, NYT, Let's Ban Porn
Matthew Schmitz, WaPo, The case for banning pornography

After listening to a fascinating podcast with James Davison Hunter, I read Andy Crouch's Books & Culture (RIP) review of his book: How Not to Change the World

Also Andy Crouch related, this is a good summary of a recent talk he gave on how we should steward our resources in favor of others:

Joseph Sunde, Acton Institute Blog, Beyond mere affluence: Embracing Isaiah's posterity gospel

On the subject of economics: can Christians work in any job with a clear conscience? Is all work sanctified by God, or do the realities of modern capitalism render some professions more morally murky than others? Charlie Clark examines at Mere Orthodoxy: Conscientious Producerism

Some national Bmore coverage, of things bad and good:
Timothy Williams, NYT, In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat
Andrea Appleton, Citylab, What Should Grow in a Vacant Lot?

Quincy Jones is nuts. The second piece was so crazy I had to read some follow-ups with the interview to see how he navigated the stream of consciousness so deftly:

Chris Heath, GQ, Quincy Jones Has a Story About That
David Marchese, Vulture, In Conversation: Quincy Jones
Lauren Stark, NY Mag, Vulture’s David Marchese on His Quincy Jones Interview, How He Prepares, and His Dream Subject
Meg Dalton, Columbia Journalism Review, Q&A: New York magazine’s David Marchese on viral Quincy Jones interview

Some other pieces on various culture-related things. Extra points to K B Hoyle's excellent and nostalgic take on spiritual discipline and formation via Super Nintendo:
Tom Carter, Spectator, How going on pilgrimage cured my millenial malaise
James K A Smith, LA Review of Books, How to Find God (on Youtube)
K B Hoyle, Christ & Pop Culture, Super Nintendo and the Spiritual Life
Cameron McAllister, Christ & Pop Culture, Of Jordan Peterson and Cultural Action Heroes
M V Bergen, Christ & Pop Culture, Telling Stories of Strange Worlds: Remembering Ursula K LeGuin
Tyler Braun, TGC, The Beauty of Lament in Sandra McCracken's New Album

February reads, week one

It's reading time again! This week:

Noah Millman has a stellar essay in The Weekly Standard on Louis CK and Woody Allen. It's wide-ranging film- and cultural-criticism of the best sort: Louis and Woody

Techrything is terrible (but especially the last piece on how porn is shaping young minds and libidos; it is heartbreaking):
Nick Bilton, Vanity Fair, "This Is Serious": Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral
L M Sacasas, The American Conservative, Our Great Awakening to the Ethics of Technology
Addison del Mastro, The American Conservative, Looking for an Exit Off the Information Superhighway
Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel J X Dance, Richard Harris, & Mark Hansen, NYT, The Follower Factory

Maggie Jones, NYT Mag, What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn

Gracy Olmstead is in the Intercollegiate Review, writing that Politics is Filling the Gaping Hole in Human Connection

Unfortunately, I don't always remember to take that advice; I'm trying to break the habit of reading about this man, but these pieces were pretty good (especially Liz's):

James Fallows, The Atlantic, Calling the Trump Era by Its Proper Name

Jonathan Rauch & Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic, Boycott the Republican Party

Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Trump’s paid family leave plan would punish those who choose to have kids

Several pieces on tribalism, identity politics, pluralism, etc., most of which are very good book reviews:

Alan Jacobs, ABC Religion & Ethics, Embrace the Pain: Living with the Repugnant Cultural Other

Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy, Book Review: Confident Pluralism by John Inazu

Michael Wear, TGC, The Blind Spots of Identity (and Liberal) Politics

Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine, When Two Tribes Go to War

Damon Linker, NYT, The Sickness of Our Time: Is It Populism or Fascism?

Some assorted good Christian writing:  

B D McClay, Commonweal, The Comedy in Ash & Roses
T Desmond Alexander, Crossway, A Biblical Theology of the City of God
D H Dilbeck, CT, The Radical Christian Faith of Frederick Douglass

These pieces are all in response to prominent Church figures – John Piper, Pope Francis, and the President (heh) – and not one is favorable
Sandra Glahn, Bible.org, Reflections of a Female Seminary Professor
The Editors, Commonweal, A Time to Judge
James Misner, TGC, The Greatest Gospel Opportunity in a Generation – Lost

Two last miscellaneous reads:
Malka Groden, National Review, The Power of Domestic Adoption
Andrew Russell, The Rabbit Room, Choosing Our Limitations: Thoughts on Community

The rest of January's reads

Here's the rest of January's reading since the last post:

The absolute best things I read this week were Rachael Denhollander's testimony against serial abuser Larry Nassar, and her follow-up NYT op-ed and CT interview. Her words are so, so powerful: honest about the brutality of her experiences, as well as the institutional failures that enabled it and its lasting impacts, open about the cost of coming forward and seeking justice in the face of these corrupt institutions, and all of it steeped in a full-bodied, theologically rich gospel understanding that balances God's mercy, grace, and forgiveness with His unwavering demands for justice. Without being hyperbolic, this woman is the voice the evangelical church needs to hear right now; while so many ostensible leaders are bowing their knees to Baal and other gods for a reaching grasp at power, she is planted firmly on God's Word, bearing a cross few of us can imagine and speaking passionate truth nonetheless.
Rachael Denhollander, CNN, Full Victim Impact Statement
Rachael Denhollander, New York Times, The Price I Paid For Taking On Larry Nassar
Morgan Lee & Rachael Denhollander, Christianity Today, My Larry Nassar Testimony Went Viral. But There’s More to the Gospel Than Forgiveness.

Several pieces on the inadequacy of the modern sex ethic:
B D McClay, The Week, 'No' is Not Enough

Lili Loofbourow, The Week, The female price of male pleasure

Gracy Olmstead, Washington Post, Divorcing sex from love hasn’t made sex more fun, more safe or less complicated
An interesting conversation between Alyssa Rosenberg & Christine Emba at WaPo, Why are Americans having such bad sex?

Also, Russell Moore discusses on his site how to react When Someone You Admire Does Something Disgusting

I read a lot of responses to Rod Dreher's awful comments on not wanting poor people in one's neighborhood or poor immigrants in one's country, including:

Jemar Tisby (who is heroically restrained here after being directly attacked in one of Dreher's responses), The Witness, Of Sh*tholes and Section 8: A Response to Rod Dreher
Alexander Wilgus, The American Conservative, The Benedict Option & Section 8

Patrick Gilger, America, Is the Benedict Option based on Christian principles—or white middle-class ones?
Mary Pezzulo, Patheos, Of Sh*tholes, Poverty and Rod Dreher’s Errors
Judy Wu Dominick, Life Reconsidered, Why the Affluent Need the Poor (not a direct response, but an older piece the author shared as her reaction)

Some pieces criticizing the system of overarching liberalism:
Damon Linker, The Week, An ominous prophecy for liberalism
Adrian Vermeule, First Things, Liturgy of Liberalism
Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy, Debating the Actual Crisis of Liberalism

Several miscellaneous vaguely political pieces:
Robert Joustra, Comment, The Politics of The Good Samaritan
Stephanie Summers, Center for Public Justice Review, Awaiting The King: An Interview With James K. A. Smith

Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, The antisocial politics of Trump

Kaitlyn Scheiss, Christ & Pop Culture, The Church Much Offer the World More Than Mere Authenticity

Daniel Cox, 538, Are White Evangelicals Sacrificing the Future in Search of the Past?

Michael Wear has another good earnest-but-trolly piece in Christian Today (sic, did he pitch this to the wrong email or what), on What Barack Obama's Christianity can teach white evangelicals

More political pieces, specifically dealing with where people live and why:

Sarah Jones, New Republic, Telling Rural People To Move Won't Solve Poverty
Sean Illing & Nikole Hannah-Jones, Vox, “Schools are segregated because white people want them that way"
The great Emma Green, in The Atlantic, on the end of Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans and its impacts on their churches: 'An Assault on the Body of the Church'

Ronald C White has a fascinating review of the fragments of Lincoln's personal notes in Harper's, including his lawyerly arguments against slavery and theological musings on God's will in the Civil War: Notes to Self

Some local politics: David A Graham, The Atlantic, The Baltimore Police Department is Badly Broken

Political in a different way (I have no affection for or even much knowledge of Jordan Peterson, but I thought this was a good piece) – Conor Friedersdorf, on how we talk past one another and caricature our opponents' arguments in The Atlantic: Why Can't People Hear What Jordan Peterson is Saying?

On the subject of how our political attentions are distorted, and the deleterious effect of social media on public discourse, these two pieces go well together: 

Nicholas Carr, Politico, Why Trump Tweets (And Why We Listen)
Zeynep Tufecki, Wired, It's the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Era of Free Speech

And more technology-everything-is-terrible, but with much extra terrible:
Samantha Cole, Vice Motherboard, We Are Truly Fucked: Everyone Is Making AI-Generated Fake Porn Now

Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy, The Politics of The Last Jedi

Tyler Huckabee, WaPo, The radical – but gentle – faith of Mister Rogers

A couple pieces approaching the pro-life from different angles, one apologetic and one practical:

Karen Swallow Prior, CT, How Poetry Might Change the Pro-Life Debate
Lyman Stone, Institute for Family Studies, One Way to Boost Fertility: Babysit Other People's Kids

On the other hand, there's death. The first piece here (on the history and complications of the "brain death" designation) is simply incredible. 

Rachel Aviv, New Yorker, What Does It Mean To Die?
Gilbert Meilander, First Things, A Complete Life

Kate Bowler, NYT, What to Say When You Meet the Angel of Death at a Party

Andrea Palpant Dilley, CT, Kate Bowler: I Reject the Prosperity Gospel but I Still Crave What It Promises

A few more somewhat philosophical pieces:

Charles Taylor, The Immanent Frame, Ethical Journeys
Olivia Goldhill, Quartz, The idea that everything from spoons to stones are conscious is gaining academic credibility

Chris Krycho, Mere Orthodoxy, Faithful Extension and the Question of Human Origins

A few articles about drugs:

Matthew Loftus, NY Post, Sorry: Sometimes drugs are vital to escaping depression
Dan Diamond, Politico, First There Was Prince. Now Tom Petty. When Will America Finally Wake Up to the Opioid Crisis?

Miscellaneous Christian-specific stuff:
Thomas Kidd, TGC, When Christians Began Speaking of 'The' Antichrist
Stephen Witmer, Desiring God, The Secret Small Churches Know Best
Caleb Lindgren, CT, Translating the N T Wright and David Bentley Hart Tussle

A really interesting (and LONG) interview of Ross Douthat by Tyler Cowen on Medium: Ross Douthat on Narrative and Religion

And to close, a big part of why I'm doing this is to keep better track of what I'm reading, so here's Julie Beck, in The Atlantic, on Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read