The rest of May

The sexual abuse scandal in the evangelical church:
Michelle Boorstein, WaPo, Amid a Southern Baptist scandal, some evangelical women say the Bible’s gender roles are being distorted to promote sexism
Al Mohler, CT, The Humiliation of the Southern Baptist Convention
Jake Meador, MereO, The Fall of the Village
Tyler Huckabee, Relevant, Paige Patterson’s Non-Punishment Shows the Church Is Not Prepared for True Repentance
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Baptist Apocalypse
Joshua Pease, WaPo, The sin of silence

Abortion and birth:
Emily Sullivan, MereO, How the Irish Lost Themselves and Their Ancestral Inheritance and How They May Find Themselves Again
Ruth Graham, Slate, Choosing Life With Down Syndrome
Aida Chávez, The Intercept, Planned Parenthood Is Asking Donald Trump's Labor Board for Help Busting Its Colorado Union

Christine Emba, WaPo, The recession is long gone. Where are the babies?
Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, A Surprising Reason to Worry About Low Birth Rates

A snapshot of the current political scene:

Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, In Rural Tennessee, a Big ICE Raid Makes Some Conservative Voters Rethink Trump's Immigration Agenda
Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, An ICE Raid Has Turned the Lives of Hundreds of Tennessee Kids Upside Down

Katherine Stewart, NYT, A Christian Nationalist Blitz
Lauren Markoe, WaPo, Did Trump fulfill a divine prophecy? What to expect from a new Liberty University film.
David Frum, The Atlantic, The Measure of Trump's Devotion

How the absence of legitimate news sources helped lead to our current political reality:
Shawn Musgrave & Matthew Nussbaum, Politico, Trump thrives in areas that lack traditional news outlets
Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative, Sinclair and the Fake News Battle That Never Ends
Todd VanDerWerff, Vox, The rise of the American news desert
Caitlin Dickerson, NYT Mag, How Fake News Turned a Small Town Upside Down
Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman Labs, From Bible study to Google: How some Christian conservatives fact-check the news and end up confirming their existing beliefs

Jordan Peterson is bad; how else can we offer a life of meaning for his fans?

Kate Manne, Time Literary Supplement, Reconsider the Lobster
Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books, Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism
Bernard Schiff, The Star, I was Jordan Peterson's biggest supporter. Now I think he's dangerous.
Matthew Loftus, Comment, Why Do the Young Men Rage?

Two of my favorite Catholic writers on the NFL's enforced patriotism:
Elizabeth Bruenig, Medium, The Soulless Logic of Capitalism's 'Dark, Satanic Mill'
Ross Douthat, NYT, Free Speech Will Not Save Us

On Christian living:

Miles Smith, MereO, Evangelical Indifference to the Immigrant in Historical Perspective

Nancy & Shelvis Smith-Mather, Presbyterian Mission Agency, "We Speak Normal!"
Emily Jane Hubbard, Faithfully Magazine, Seeing Pastor Harry Reeder Surrounded By Confederate Flags Breaks My Heart

Eve Tushnet, America, You have heard it said: Visit the imprisoned. But what about their guards?

Leah Libresco Sargent, Commonweal, A Final Hospitality

Theology:
Reagan Rose, The Master's Seminary Blog, The Wretched Art of Loveless Discernment
David Mathis, Desiring God, Where Does God Want Me to Work?
Jonathan Leeman, CT, The Two Kinds of Government That Show Up in the Bible
Caleb Lindgren, CT, Reading Together, Early Church Style
Mike Higton, St Brandon's Brancepeth, Trinity Sunday Homily
Ben Myers, Faith and Theology, Why I (still) confess the filioque

Two pieces on California churches:

Jonathan Parks-Ramage, Medium, Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas
Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, The Radical Preacher of Palo Alto

These aren't really connected except through a line of thought – the first piece examines a sociology of religion study, which touches on the latent (sometimes expressed) spirituality of the Nones; the second offers the theological rebuttal; the third is the opposite problem, materialism - a very modernist reading of Aristotle that still shows some of his truths, while being frustratingly Pelagian in its approach to virtue ethics; the fourth is not really even related at all (it's about the decline in humanities programs), but Aristotle:

Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic, Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians
Fleming Rutledge, CT, Why Being 'Spiritual' Is Never Enough
Edith Hall, Aeon, Why Read Aristotle Today?
Frank Bruni, NYT, Aristotle's Wrongful Death

On same-sex attracted Christians and identity:

Eve Tushnet, Patheos, Beyond Sexual Identity: Not Whether But How
Eve Tushnet, Spiritual Friendship, The Self-Defeating Sexualization of Gay and Same-Sex Attracted Christians

Environment:
Danielle Butcher, Vox, Young conservatives like me care about climate change. The GOP needs to take notice.
Kendra Atleework, The Atlantic, Power Lines Are Burning the West

Miscellaneous:
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke, is bruising, vital, and one of the year’s best films
Damon Linker, The Week, Pope Francis' cunning long game
LM Sacasas, The Frailest Thing, Cyborg Discourse is Useless

Leah Libresco Sargent, Commonweal, 'You Are What You Love'

Lyz Lenz, Columbia Journalism Review, From Taylor Swift to the world's largest T-shirt cannon: An internet reader
Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, Was Classic Rock a Sound, or a Tribe?
Michael LaPointe, The Atlantic, Chasing the Pearl of Lao Tzu
Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, Actually, Kissing Is Good

Elisabeth Donnelly, Topic, Valley of the Ragdolls

Many more May reads

Starting with the most recent news, here's some great reporting on an awful story from Sarah Pulliam Bailey, with some commentary pre-removal from Dreher. The rot in the American Church is being exposed:
Sarah Pulliam Bailey, WaPo, Southern Baptist leader encouraged a woman not to report alleged rape to police and told her to forgive assailant, she says
Rod Dreher, The American Conservative, Paige Patterson's Feast
Sarah Pulliam Bailey, WaPo, Prominent Southern Baptist leader removed as seminary president following controversial remarks about abused women

Touching on the same rot, here's a profile of Robert Jeffress, and a sadly accurate-seeming assessment from Jake that scorns the tribalism on both political sides of the American Church:
Ruth Graham, Slate, The Pundit Pastor
Jake Meador, MereO, Can There Be Mercy in Trump's America?

Two reviews of books examining who uses the term "Christian" and how flexible Christian orthodoxy really is. The latter makes the case that people leaving the Church due to a perceived rigidity should learn more about their options for staying in the faith:
Micah Watson, CT, You Keep Using That Word, 'Christian'
Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative, Where Should Christianity Draw a Line in the Sand?

Indeed, with the SBC and Jeffress stories in mind, this is a good time to remember that many need to see a vision of Christianity that isn't associated with typical white Evangelicalism. First, Alissa reviews the new Wim Wenders film on Pope Francis, which views him far more sympathetically than Ross Douthat and company (although their concerns are certainly more than valid). Then, a bunch of positive reactions to the homily at the royal wedding this week – Wes Hill's is characteristically the best, but seeing other, more liberal outlets react with surprising approval is encouraging (what was the last Slate piece that ended with an appeal to go to church?!)
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, The new Pope Francis documentary is a lucid portrait of a quiet radical
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, Bishop Michael Curry just stole the show with his sermon at the Royal Wedding
Randall Balmer, WaPo, ‘Love is the only way’: How a black preacher’s royal wedding address showed the power of a good sermon

Wesley Hill, First Things, A Homily to Remember

Ruth Graham, Slate, Bishop Michael Curry’s Sermon at the Royal Wedding Was a Subtly Radical Piece of Theology

Here's some more theology: a piece each for Ascension Day and Pentecost; a 5-year old op-ed on the theology of embodiment and the LGBTQ movement; a pro-life (!) piece in Vox expressing both Catholic and humanist views against euthanasia; a fantastic DB Hart piece on Christianity's radical creation of inherent dignity, as well as a new review of his New Testament translation:
Wendy Alsup, CT, Carrying On After Jesus Is 'Gone'
Scot McKnight, CT, How the Holy Spirit Sets Us Up for Holiness
Andy Crouch, CT, Sex Without Bodies
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, What we lose when we gain the right to die
David Bentley Hart, Church Life Journal, Human Dignity Was a Rarity Before Christianity
Lucas Kwong, Public Books, The Polyphonic Gospel

And some Church history, specifically looking at the women of the early Church and women mentioned in the New Testament:

Catherine Kroeger, Christian History Institute, The Neglected History of Women in the Early Church
Michael Peppard, Commonweal, Household Names

One way to begin dealing with the failings in the American Church is to look for ways to support the vulnerable people it has recently neglected, such as women involved in ministry or single people: 

Melissa Kruger, TGC, 4 Ways Brothers Can Encourage Their Sisters in Ministry

Chris Williams, Patheos, Confessions of a would-be Incel

Bethany Jenkins, TGC, Turning 40 While Childless and Single

Several significant pieces on the intersections of family and society: a great Atlantic cover story on the way aristocracy has masqueraded as meritocracy; Helen Andrews on the original rise of meritocracy and the arguments against it; a look at how family structure impacts racial inequality (that insufficiently ties its arguments together); the challenges of motherhood in the workplace; the demographic decline of mothers as a share of the American population; a good review of numerous recent books examining the choice to become a mother.

Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy
Helen Andrews, The Hedgehog Review, The New Ruling Class
Glenn C Loury, Institute for Family Studies, Race, Inequality, and Family Structure
Katherine Goldstein, NYT, The Hidden Reality of Anti-Mom Bias at Work
Lyman Stone, The Atlantic, The Decline of American Motherhood
Megan Marz, The Point, To Be or Not to Be

Jordan Peterson is unfortunately somewhat important to a large-ish number of people; I am content to read profiles and reviews like these in lieu of actually devoting serious time to his work:

Nellie Bowles, NYT Mag, Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy
Christine Emba, WaPo, The profound sadness of the Jordan Peterson phenomenon
Thomas Brewer, TableTalk Magazine, Book Review: 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson

Also on the review side of things: another take on Dreher, Deneen, and a new book on Aristotle, America, and how the middle class and virtue ethics do (and don't) intersect. With the latter, I was left with the question of whether there is an ultimate limit to the appropriate scale of wealth; in other words, while someone might be "middle class" relative to America as a whole, is it possible that this is itself too rich to live a virtuous life?:

Christine Emba, WaPo, A survival guide for our 'post-Christian' nation
Peter Blair, The American Interest, The One Theory to Rule Them All

Harvey Mansfield, Weekly Standard, Stuck in the Middle with Virtue

Our President: a review of the numerous facets of the Mueller investigation, and a reminder of the underlying reality of the multifarious "scandals" raised by this administration:
Natasha Bertrand, The Atlantic, The Lingering Mysteries of a Trump-Russia Conspiracy
Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, There Is Only One Trump Scandal

Coverage of the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem, and a well-nuanced piece examining the various angles of the current Palestinian protests in Gaza:

Emma Green, The Atlantic, Celebration in Jerusalem, Bloodshed in Gaza
Yair Rosenberg, Tablet, 13 Inconvenient Truths About What Has Been Happening in Gaza

Some more philosophical work: how secularization has compartmentalized and diminished our understanding of "health"; Joseph Pieper and how our work should grow us in the virtue needed to keep leisure from becoming mere consumerism; on our eternal longings and search to reënchant the world; how young people, some religious and some not, seek out new ways of gathering; Facebook's erosion of community (hey, no dedicated tech section this week!); the New Atheist lie that we can fully transcend cultural biases and attain a truly neutral viewpoint.
Daniel Hindman, MereO, Health and the Power of the State
Gracy Olmstead, Intercollegiate Review, Redefining Leisure

LM Sacasas, The Frailest Thing, Are We Really Disenchanted?

Stephanie Paulsell, Christian Century, How Millennials Gather

Antonio García Martínez, Wired, How Facebook Binds – and Shatters – Communities

Robert Wright, Wired, Sam Harris and the Myth of Perfectly Rational Thought

White guys writing about older white guy writers (each of these pieces is really good, though, says this white guy writing about white guy writing):

Brian A Smith, Law and Liberty, Soulcraft, Indirectly: Reading Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos
Ralph C Wood, The American Conservative, Walker Percy's Funny and Frightening Prophecy
Matt Stewart, Front Porch Republic, Stop Talking about Wendell Berry on Twitter
Frank Brownlow, Chronicles, Thank You, Auden!

Philip Bunn, Intercollegiate Review, Kurt Vonnegut and the Terrible Disease of Loneliness

Three CxPC pieces on food:
Kendall Vanderslice, Christ & Pop Culture, Dining Our Way to Neighborly Love
CJ Quartlbaum, Christ & Pop Culture, Grieving the Gentrification of Food
Sophie DeMuth, Christ & Pop Culture, Whole30 and the Counter-Cultural Nature of Self-Discipline

A conservative piece and a lefty piece on the academic humanities; neither one makes me want to enter the academy as a profession, nope, no thanks:

Neema Parvini, Quillette, The Stifling Uniformity of Literary Theory
Melissa Dinsman, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Digital in the Humanities: An Interview with Marisa Parham

Some TV and film stuff (even though BKLN99 is no longer canceled). Ethan Hawke seems like the exact actor-equivalent of a Linklater film, which is not a bad thing:
Alyssa Rosenberg, WaPo, Goodbye, 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine.' And thank you.
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, Why Christopher Nolan "unrestored" 2001: A Space Odyssey

Lara Zarum, Village Voice, Ethan Hawke Goes to Church

Miscellaneous: hurricane season is bad; Johann Hari is bad; Creation is good; beautiful religious art is good; art that makes us encounter the bad things of the Fall is also good.

Emily Atkin, New Republic, America Is Not Ready for This (Again)
Joe Muggs, The Quietus, Why The Rehabilitation Of Plagiarist Johann Hari Is Irresponsible & Dangerous
KB Hoyle, Christ & Pop Culture, Planet Earth II, Imago Dei, and a Redeemed Creation
Algerina Perna, Baltimore Sun: Darkroom, The Art of Icon Writing
Jim McDermott, America, What Childish Gambino and Flannery O'Connor have in common

The First Half of May: Reads

Two pieces on the beginning of life:
Michael Chabon, GQ, Are Kids the Enemy of Writing?
Laura Turner, Catapult, Missing Hope: A Trio of Miscarriages, and What Happened After

Two pieces on the end of life:
Robin McKie, The Guardian, No death and an enhanced life: is the future transhuman?
Rowan Williams, New Statesman, How dying offers us a chance to live the fullest life

Transhumanism is only the ad absurdum conclusion of recent trends in tech; our phones are tacitly trying to eliminate some of the things that make us most human (Furness). We view extravagance and luxury as normal (Clymer – though his piece lacks this critical lens); our habits are harvested for profit. Even religion is in the process of being digitized (Samuel). Perhaps it's time to take a step back technologically (Jacobs).

Dyllan Furness, Digital Trends, Technology makes our lives easier, but is it at the cost of our humanity?
Benjamin Clymer, Hodinkee Magazine, Apple, Influence, and Ive
Nicholas Carr, Rough Type, You are your phone
Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic, This Design Lab is Making Rituals for Secular People
Alan Jacobs, The Atlantic, I Went Back to a Dumbphone

However, it's not merely the technology's fault; there is a whole history behind the narcissism of the modern self (Beckerman's piece gives a good overview, although Christopher Lasch and Charles Taylor are conspicuously absent). Indeed, the bigger change than mere regulation is a reshaping of our moral imaginations (Foroohar) and a willingness to not give in to the wicked impulses the online world encourages (Holmes). These demons may only come out by prayer, and we may need to gouge out an eye if the offense is great enough (McClay).

Gal Beckerman, New Republic, Don't Blame Phones for Narcissism
Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, Regulating big tech is just the start
Jasmine L Holmes, Be the Change You Wish to See on the Internet
B D McClay, Commonweal, "Log Off" or Pray

Our technology does shape us, but we shape it as well, forming a feedback loop (Doan) – one that reveals our darkest desires (Saler). It has not been long since the Internet has become a shaping force in our lives, but it feels as though we are now a radically different generation because of it (Smith).

Jeremy Doan, Christ & Pop Culture, Smartphones, Guns, and Black Mirror: The Shaping of Our Technology
Michael Saler, The Weekly Standard, A 'Mirror' to Our Souls

Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books, Generation Why?

Changing gears to race issues: As Nikole Hannah-Jones frequently says, American schools are still segregated because white people want them to be (Branigin). This is nothing new, just the most recent manifestation of a racialized society set up to keep black people from acquiring wealth (Roller). For people old enough to remember a more hopeful time, in which there was at least a greater perception of momentum, the revelation of our true racial attitudes turns even the happiest song sad (Jacob). From the outside of struggles with systemic injustice, it's easy to dehumanize those struggling against flawed power structures, either by expecting them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or by assuming they have no agency whatsoever in the face of their challenges (Miller).
Anne Branigin, The Root, Watch: Roomful of Rich, White NYC Parents Get Big Mad at Plan to Diversify Neighborhood’s Schools
Emma Roller, Splinter News, How the U.S. Government Locked Black Americans Out of Attaining the American Dream
Alan Jacobs, Snakes & Ladders, Everyday People

Roselyn Miller, Slate, For a Former Foster Kid, "Poverty Porn" is Personal

Coates has a really interesting piece on Kanye's recent Twitter antics (which I'm personally not quite ready to say aren't performance art; whether joking or genuine, they carry little weight for me). I only wish this piece were framed differently, focusing on the crushing burden of fame and its power to disconnect us from the human connections – our families and friends, our heritage and history – which provide accountability and a sense of reality and responsibility for those whose fame is growing. In his recounting of his own struggles with fame, Coates brings to mind Andy Crouch's essay on celebrity; these are the strongest parts of the essay and despite the truly cutting accusations of racial denialism (which certainly have merit!), I think they should have been the focus: 

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, I'm Not Black, I'm Kanye

Two really good pieces on the pilgrimage of black Christians leaving white churches: 

Jemar Tisby, The Witness, A Wilderness Wandering After the "Quiet Exodus"
Esau McCaulley, The Witness, After Lemonade: The Future of Black Christians in the Diaspora

In between the crises of race and sex, here are some articles about the President. Liz points out that when people in a democracy feel as though they aren't represented, it drives national anxiety; such is our case, as our politicians care more about cash than citizens. Reviewing two books on Trump supporters, Kennedy observes that academic liberals have a hard time disengaging their judgement against flyover country (her piece is a little too "both sides-y" for me, though). As Flanagan observes, this President is the first to embody the general ethic of pornography in his history of both business and women; perhaps some judgement is in order:

Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Our democracy has much bigger problems than Trump
Anne Carlson Kennedy, CT, Taking the Measure of Trump Country

Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic, The First Porn President

"Sex robots" were a legitimate conversation topic on the internet this month – what a time to be alive. Douthat's column challenged the Left's nascent reading comprehension skills; apparently, they're so used to thinking of him solely as the conservative at the Times (read: "the enemy") that they've forgotten (or never bothered to consider) the roots of his sexual ethic, and therefore thought he was attempting to advance the cause of sex-bots and prostitution. Uh, no. Thankfully, Ms Burton is a more careful reader, and offers her own look at the history of automated erotica. Dalmia's piece also reads Ross right, to its credit, although its conclusion (that we need to further the sexual revolution) is way off:

Ross Douthat, NYT, The Redistribution of Sex

Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, We’re talking about “sex robots” now. We’ve been here before.
Shikha Dalmia, The Week, Our perilous sexual moment

The Dalmia piece above certainly gets the moment right in its title, and it is no less perilous in the Church right now. Beth Moore's cri de coeur (and Thabiti's poignant confession in response) lays bare the bias against women in evangelicalism. There is a massive unveiling occurring in the American Church, exposing the sexism and corruption that has lurked behind closed doors for generations (Wehner). It seems many in the Church have forgotten that rape is a sin, and not merely against chastity (McClay). This is the natural consequence of barring women from any position of influence, silencing their voices even when true prophetic gifts are present (Scheiss). This is unbiblical and untethered from the historical Christian practice (Olmstead).
Beth Moore, Living Proof Ministries Blog, A Letter to My Brothers
Thabiti Anyabwile, TGC, An Apology to Beth Moore and My Sisters
Peter Wehner, NYT, The Great #MeToo Awakening
B D McClay, Commonweal, Rape Is a Sin
Kaitlyn Scheiss, Christ & Pop Culture, Paige Patterson Counsel Abounds When Women Aren’t Given a Seat at the Theological Table
Gracy Olmstead, WaPo, What early Christians knew that modern Christians don’t: Women make great leaders

Many Christians have suggested the "Billy Graham/Mike Pence Rule" as a panacea for these sexual ills, splitting pundits into a naïve hope in legalism or (via the path of overcorrection) a naïve hope in license. Tish offers a more virtuous middle ground, showing what marriage practices that nurture chastity, fidelity, and trust while still fostering fellowship could look like. Jake, while mostly agreeing, pushes back a bit with the worthwhile observation that marriages that may have less collective virtue than two literal priests may flourish with some stricter boundaries to safeguard against a world set against the idea of marital limits. Samuel James expands this by reminding us that marriage changes our fundamental identity – we are no longer our own, no longer separate but one flesh – and this should be reflected in our friendships. On that note, Rosaria Butterfield's piece on her new book shows how opening our homes is a spiritual warfare strategy; Patricia Snow reminds us to remember that the Church is a field hospital for those injured by the enemy:
Tish Harrison Warren, CT, It's Not Billy Graham Rule or Bust
Jake Meador, MereO, On the Pence Rule
Samuel D James, Letter & Liturgy, Hospitality as Friendship: A Billy Graham Rule Proposal
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Desiring God, The Best Weapon Is an Open Door

Patricia Snow, First Things, Heal Our Wounds

On that note, Wes Hill's gorgeous writing so often makes the case for deeper Christian friendship, and here it is specifically married couples whose love he seeks. How much more beautiful a vision this is than the horror of Julie Rodgers' experiences in gay conversion therapy. Wes offers further thoughts (not in direct response) to this mindset of many evangelicals; if we don't have a robust theology of sex, it's easy to just be anti-gay because of prejudice:

Wesley Hill, Comment, Love, Again
Julie Rodgers, NYT, What I Learned From Gay Conversion Therapy
Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship, On Evangelical Bigotry

Two last #MeToo-related pieces, on DFW's abuse of Mary Karr. Garber's piece challenges me in a good way, pointing out how easily we allow an abuse victim (in this case, even a brilliant literary mind in her own right!) to become a prop in a "troubled genius narrative." 

Whitney Kimball, Jezebel, Mary Karr Reminds the World That David Foster Wallace Abused and Stalked Her, and Nobody Cared
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, David Foster Wallace and the Dangerous Romance of Male Genius

Local news: 

Baynard Woods, The Real News, Baltimore Police Commissioner Facing Federal Charges, Still Under Investigation
Luke Broadwater, Baltimore Sun, In Baltimore's high-crime zones, an experiment in government starts to yield results
Mark Ruetter, Baltimore Brew, Celebrated cops and a wrongfully convicted man

Theology-related:

Wesley Hill, First Things, Andy Stanley's Modern Marcionism
Thabiti Anyabwile, TGC, Evangelical Gnosticism
John Wilson, First Things, Versions of Paul
Samuel G Freedman, WaPo, One of America’s most influential religious figures has died. He deserves more notice.
Rachel Darnall, Fathom, The Proverbs 31 Husband
Matthew Walther, The Week, What Catholics have sacrificed by allying with Republican evangelicals

Lyman Stone, First Things, Two Kingdom Theology in the Age of Trump

John Shelton, MereO, Stanley Hauerwas: Modern American Puddleglum

Auden stuff (and also a poem, not by Auden):

Hannah Arendt, LitHub, Hannah Arendt on the Time She Met W H Auden
Rosie Schaap, Poetry Foundation, In Search of the Auden Martini

Christian Wiman, New Yorker, Eating Grapes Downward

I don't know, every time I write up these round-ups, there are the same sections, on tech, race, sex, the Church, politics, etc. WHY NOT A TROPICAL WILDLIFE SECTION FOR ONCE.
Karen Abbott, Topic, Birds of a Feather
Nina-Sophia Miralles, Paris Review, The Strange History of the "King-Pine"
Nadia Drake, The Atlantic, The Jaguar Is Made for the Age of Humans

And a whole bunch of reviews/miscellaneous stuff:
Andrew Spencer, TGC, Disrupted Witness for a Distracted Age
Carol Iannone, Modern Age, Seinfeld: The Politically Incorrect Comedy
Joe Berkowitz, Esquire, If You Think You Hate Puns, You're Wrong
Lolade Fadulu, The Atlantic, The Experiment in Irresponsibility
Lauren Rae Konkol, First Things, A Touching and Feeling Faith
Drew Batcher, TGC, Reading Moby-Dick with Marilynne Robinson

Paul J Griffiths, First Things, Letter to an Aspiring Intellectual
Kyle Williams, Comment, Markets are Made: The Story of Capitalism

Post-FFW April Reads

The past week and a half or so of reading seems to revolve around some major related themes: our cultural crisis, the crisis of evangelicalism in America, and how should we live as faithful Christians in this time of upheaval.

First, let's look at the recent meeting of evangelical minds on the generally anti-Trump side of things. While it's good to see a stalwart group of people committed to seeking the ways of faith, this meeting seems a bit disappointing in its ultimate outcomes. As Jemar Tisby has asked, what is it about white evangelical theology that either tends toward Trumpism, or lacks the resources to stand firmly against it? Beatty's piece points to a few of the spiritual strongholds to which evangelicalism turns something of a blind eye; while I would have liked to see more analysis of these tensions, the fear of addressing racism head on – whether spurred from the threats of their donors or their own sinful hearts – is, if not the ultimate root, certainly deep near the source of the rot in the American Church (more on this later). Ruth Graham's piece on the mutual embrace of Trump and Christian TV networks is a fantastic look at how American Christians are uniquely vulnerable to sentimental appeals to false nostalgia:

• Sarah Pulliam Bailey, WaPo, Dozens of evangelical leaders meet to discuss how Trump era has unleashed ‘grotesque caricature’ of their faith
• Emily McFarlan Miller, Religion News Service, Evangelical leaders discuss future of their movement in Trump era
• Hollis Phelps, Religion Dispatches, Maybe It's Time to Admit That the "Grotesque Caricature" of White Evangelicals Is the Reality
• Katelyn Beaty, New Yorker, At a Private Meeting in Illinois, a Group of Evangelicals Tried to Save Their Movement from Trumpism
• Ruth Graham, Politico, Church of the Donald

So, we have a crisis. Jake at Mere Orthodoxy gives a solid overview of where we stand at the moment, surveying the cultural situation in which we find ourselves, the challenges of racism, sexism, and doctrinal understanding in America's pews (for example, see Abigail Rine Favale's piece on her students' lack of creedal knowledge), and he wonders whether the American Church is adequately equipped to address the needs of the refugees of our collapsing culture: 

• Jake Meador, MereO, The Crisis in Christian Discipline and the Opportunity Before Us
• Abigail Rine Favale, First Things, Evangelical Gnosticism

These cultural challenges manifest in the churches within that culture. For instance, American capitalism makes us skeptical of the Bible's warnings about the sinful allure of riches; our ingrained work ethic and ethos of self-reliance make us prize work above rest:

• John Piper, Desiring God, Do the Biblical Warnings Against Riches Apply to Most Americans?
• Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, America is obsessed with the virtue of work. What about the virtue of rest?
• Rebecca Jones, CT, Lord, Save Me from My Side Hustle

In the white American Church, we have a particular struggle with racism. It should not be hard to admit the deepness of this particular sin in our collective past, and there is no escaping its legacy within our own hearts. We should, as confessing Christians, all be willing to confront sin in all its forms, called as we are to let judgement begin at the house of God, but we struggle even to agree on the lasting legacy of our racial sins. Even churches who ostensibly acknowledge these evils still struggle to eradicate them in practice.

• Kevin DeYoung, TGC, Racial Reconciliation: What We (Mostly, Almost) All Agree On, and What We (Likely) Still Don’t Agree On
• Thabiti Anyabwile, TGC, Admitting Things
• Michelle Boorstein, WaPo, What happens when a church dedicated to fighting white supremacy is accused of it

It isn't just in the Church that these crises manifest. Enormous forces of questionable intent (look, we know it's BAD intent, let's be real) surreptitiously record our every move. The supposedly innocuous pasttime of social media has been hijacked by malicious forces, maneuvering into the malleable minds of young people seeking quick riches. Kyle Chayka's fantastic essay on Big Data's forays into the world of fashion brings up the excellent question of whether capitalism possesses the resources to craft an identity that is not merely an expression of homogeous algorithmic consumerism:

• Peter Waldman, Lizette Chapman, & Jordan Robertson, Bloomberg, Palantir Knows Everything About You
• Symeon Brown, The Guardian, Fake it till you make it: meet the wolves of Instagram
• Kyle Chayka, Racked, Style Is an Algorithm

Indeed, as many have noted about Patrick Deneen's recent book, the very roots of our political and economic system, despite its many benefits and ostensible goods, undermine the very virtue and moderation necessary to maintaining it:

• Jon Médille, Front Porch Republic, Why Anti-Liberalism Fails
• Jonathan Leeman, CT, How Freedom Became an American Idol
• Jake Meador, MereO, Book Review: Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen

Our culture is death-oriented; it does not value the lives of the poor, or of black people, of children. We can see other iterations in the parallel death-orientations of India and China, with their trends of sex-selective abortion and China's one-child policy starting to show their massive consequences:

• Eve Tushnet, Institute for Family Studies, What's Wrong With the "Success Sequence"
• Linda Villarosa, NYT Mag, Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis
• Mark R Rank, NYT, The Cost of Keeping Children Poor
• Simon Denyer & Annie Gowan, WaPo, Too Many Men

The Church needs a change in how we view politics: a change that focuses on eternal ends rather than opposing temporal sides; a change that humbles us and refocuses our desires towards our neighbors' needs. We need to seek co-belligerents in our endeavors from outside the Church walls; we may well have something to teach them about the need for intentional formation in living a moral life:

• Alex Grant, Christ & Pop Culture, City of God and the Ends of American Politics
• Thabiti Anyabwile, TGC, What Can I Do? / What Do You Want?
• Matthew Loftus, MereO, Stay Woke, Cultivate Virtue

Our view of life must be expanded, inverted even, to see how our own weakness is revealed and Christ's love is reflected in caring for those more vulnerable than ourselves:

• Leah Libresco Sargent, First Things, The Weak Lead Us to Reality
• Corey Latta, CT, My Son's Down Syndrome Showed Me the Real Imago Dei

We must open our homes to others, not as performance to show off our accumulation of cultural signifiers, but as a step towards more fully opening ourselves to the love and service of others – plus, it's a great opportunity to step into a real-life fantasy novel, where good food is abundant:

• Brandon McGinley, MereO, Stop Making Hospitality Complicated
• Lindsey Carlson, CT, Rosaria Butterfield: Christian Hospitality Is Radically Different from ‘Southern Hospitality’
• Anne Ewbank, Atlas Obscura, Why Do Fantasy Novels Have So Much Food?

It isn't merely American Protestants feeling the strain of modernity; the Roman Church, too, is in flux, searching for a new balance between cultural assimilation and distinctiveness, and flirting (perhaps dangerously) with adapting to social changes at the expense of sound doctrine and reliable tradition:

• Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, Pope Francis reportedly denies the existence of Hell. Vatican panics.
• Emma Green, The Atlantic, A Cassandra Cry Against Pope Francis

As James Davison Hunter has observed, we're all Protestants now, enmeshed inexorably in Charles Taylor's "secular age." How do we maintain discipline in a world where an authoritative admonishment might be seen as causing sufficient friction to break with a church, and where another church, more fitting to one's consumer preferences, is readily available? How also do we speak the truth in love to those shaped by such a world, walking a road to recovery alongside sinners that may be longer than we imagine? 

• Wesley Hill, MereO, The Confusions and Dangers of a Church of Mercy: Anglican Musings on a Catholic Dispute
• Wesley Hill, Covenant, Five Theses on Church Discipline

We cannot do better for coming generations by focusing on an imagined future and allowing the present to fall into our mental gutters. As in just about all of Gracy Olmstead's writing, the influence of Wendell Berry looms large in both of these pieces, as she suggests we might start to think a bit smaller for our solutions:

• Gracy Olmstead, Intercollegiate Review, What Wendell Berry Can Show Zuckerberg Types About Making a Better World
• Gracy Olmstead, NYT, Can 'Localism' Restore Sanity to U.S. Politics?

In the interest of locality, then, we turn to Baltimore, to see the manifestation of our more local crises. As with the larger, problems, national or ecclesial, here are no easy solutions, whether it is the closing of small businesses, the reforming of an utterly corrupt police department, the tension between revitalization and gentrification, or the ramifications of the national War on Drugs on a particular city:

• Jessica Anderson, Baltimore Sun, Team overseeing Baltimore Police consent decree assures public of progress despite turnover in department
• Amanda Yeager, Baltimore Business Journal, 'We always joked it was a bridge too far:' O'Flynn's owner says distance led to South Baltimore restaurant's closure
• Fern Shen, Baltimore Brew, “AS OF A NOW” shows Baltimore rowhouses not vacant, but full of generations of “quiet stories”
• Siddhartha Mitter, The Guardian, Gentrify or die? Inside a university's controversial plan for Baltimore
• Jessica Lussenhop, BBC, When Cops Become Robbers
• Ron Cassie, Baltimore Magazine, The Vindication of Kurt Schmoke

In past times of crisis, there are been voices of prophetic wisdom cutting through the melee; Andrea Barnet looks at the overlaps between Rachel Carson and Jane Jacobs, who both saw the contradictions and consequences of technocratic modernity and spoke forcefully against its destructive systems. Would that we might listen more closely to the women speaking out with such wisdom now; after all, it is not merely straight, white, middle-class Protestant males that the country is supposed to be for (even if this is usually how the game seems to be rigged):

• Andrea Barnet, Paris Review, The Age of Wreckers and Exterminators
• Nicola A Menzie, Faithfully Magazine, Interview: Karen A Ellis Talks Christian Persecution
• Jill Radsken, Faithfully Magazine, Rachael Denhollander Says Don't Trust the Church or Christianity – Trust Jesus Christ
• Patricia Lockwod, Tin House, How Do We Write Now?
• Rebecca Solnit, LitHub, Whose Story (and Country) Is This? 

We need many voices calling out in alarm to our collective conscious, exposing our blind spots and offering better stories through which to live our lives. We need to build churches with embodied ministries for the good of the cultural refugees around us; we need to build better cities in general. We need to read widely, being nourished with the empathy of great writers, while appreciating that their work is not an unlimited resource to which we are entitled:

• David J Michael, America, Alan Jacobs: A Christian intellectual for the Internet age
• Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, Randa Jarrar, Moral Grandstanding, and Forbearance
• Charlie Clark, The Boro.ist, In Search of Character: The Narrative Concept of Selfhood
• Duke Kwon, TGC, The Underrated Strategic Value of Church Buildings
• Eben Weiss, Outside, The Ethics of Breaking Traffic Laws
• Cathy Lynn Grossman, Publishers Weekly, Reading Is a Spiritual Act, Publishers Say
• Larissa Pham, LitHub, The Bottomless Generosity of the Writer's Memoir
• Megan McArdle, WaPo, A farewell to free journalism

And we must recognize our own limits, too. We are embodied creatures and our bodies are frail. We cannot solve every problem; we must find our rest in the God who made Heaven and Earth and plans to remake them. As Augustine wrote, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him, and these are truly restless times. It is a gift to participate in the emergence of His Kingdom, and part of that gift is that He is not bound by our great limitations and failures.

• Kaitlyn Scheiss, Letters from the Exile, Feet On the Earth

April reading – Pre-FFW

First, some Holy Week/Easter pieces – Wes Hill's piece on how Easter vindicates the foolishness of the Cross is especially good:
Wesley Hill, CT, Easter Fool's Day
Malcolm Guite, Good Friday - Stations of the Cross Sonnets
Tish Harrison Warren, CT, The Epic Jesus Follower Fail

Jon Meacham, NYT, Jesus Died Only to Rise Again. Where Did the Concept of Resurrection Come From?
Mike Frost, The only woman to give evidence at the trial of Christ

Some pieces on Jordan Peterson and the wider crises in masculinity that work to increase his appeal:

Scott Alexander, SlateStarCodex, Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
Ross Douthat, NYT, God and Men and Jordan Peterson

Abby Perry & Kathryn Watson, Christ & Pop Culture, Rearing Boys to Be Peacemakers in a World Bent on War
Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian, The crisis in modern masculinity

Liz Bruenig's spiritual advice is good, both in the generalized form she offers everyone in the Medium piece, and the specific admonishment to the American Church for the Post. Another Post piece on religious literacy, and The Atlantic on the adaptation of Coptic Christianity in the US:
Elizabeth Bruenig, Medium, It Will Happen Again and Again
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Evangelicals' support for Trump will cost them – spiritually
Christine Emba, WaPo, You should read the Bible
Shira Telushkin, The Atlantic, The Americanization of an Ancient Faith

Tech: Silicon Valley is enough of a cultural juggernaut that it needs to step up w/r/t its responsibility as a cultural source (Bogost). Currently, however, it seems its complacency has trickled down – even to church pews – and become into a degraded culture of trolling (Morse). Much of this trolling is related to Freudian notions of taboo, causing repressed older people to lash out like adolescents against perceived cultural restrictions, to the detriment of their family connections (Renner). Deleting one's account is an insufficient and individualized solution in the absence of government regulation (Vaidhyanathan, Glaser). Our social media use should be stewarded wisely to help us to grow in virtue and work towards the common good of our online connections (Sacasas).
Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, Silicon Valley 'Has No Words'
Greg Morse, Desiring God, Internet Trolls in Church Clothes: How to Comment the Truth in Love
Nausicaa Renner, N Plus One, Trolling and Taboo
Siva Vaidhyanathan, NYT, Don't Delete Facebook. Do Something About It.
April Glaser, Slate, The Problem with #DeleteFacebook
LM Sacasas, The Frailest Thing, Vows of Digital Poverty

Also tech-related: How new technologies seek to advance our understanding of emotions and their expression; how we look futilely to fantasies of technological truth; how trying to program an overarching system of social trust is inherently problematic:

Christine Rosen, The Hedgehog Review, Expose Thyself! On the Digitally Revealed Life
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, The Lie Detector in the Age of Alternative Facts
Mara Hvistendahl, Wired, Inside China's Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking

Cities: Two great pieces from Duke Kwon on Christians coming into and leaving cities, and another on the challenges of missional urban churches and gentrification. Photos of how cities struck by rioting in 1968 have changed since. Self-driving cars are bad, just like all other cars; walk instead:
Duke Kwon, WaPo, The tragedy to communities when church buildings are demolished to make condos
Duke Kwon, TGC, What We Miss When We Say We're "For The City"
Taelor Gray, The Witness, Missional. Black. Gentrifiers?
Latoya Ruby Frazier, The Atlantic, The Geography of Oppression
Matthew Robare, The American Conservative, Self-Driving Cars and the Hostile Takeover of Our Streets

Antonia Malchik, Aeon, The End of Walking

Secular pieces on race: Desmond's has a good goal (analyzing the social changes over recent decades that have prevented or discouraged rioting, leading to citizens more complacent in their marginalization), but it ends up weird, almost as though he takes rioting to be a good in itself:

Matthew Desmond, The Atlantic, Where Have All the Rioters Gone?
Bree Newsome, The Atlantic, The Civil Rights Movement's Generation Gap
Daniel Harris, Baltimore Sun, If Hopkins creates an armed police force, people like me will be at risk

Religious pieces on race: 

Nicole Massie Martin, CT, King's Dream Succeeds If We Study the Bible
Paul Tripp, My Confession: Toward a More Balanced Gospel
Sarah Shin, Evangelicals for Social Action, The Limits of Colorblindness
Thabiti Anyabwile, TGC, We Await Repentance for Assassinating Dr. King
Timothy Isaiah Cho, Faithfully Magazine, Interview: James K.A. Smith On Public Theology And Racial Justice

Three pieces on John Perkins and his new book (Kwon's engaging review is the best):

Duke Kwon, CT, John Perkins Has Hope for Racial Reconciliation. Do We?

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, TGC, The Final Call of John Perkins

Holly Meyer, Tennessean, Why a leading voice on racial reconciliation says evangelicals aren't focusing enough on unity

Other social issues:
Stephanie Sommers, Public Justice Review, Why Immigration Is First About Families, Not Economics or Security
Ross Douthat, NYT, Among the Abortion Extremists

Reviews: A bad Christian movie, a good Christian movie, and finding the faith in a good non-Christian movie; new takes on Deneen and Robinson; a new book about Erasmus and Luther:
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, How the Christian movie series God's Not Dead fails to be Christian
Ann Hornaday, WaPo, ‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’ portrays the early Christian community at its most fragile
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, Great movies about faith are hard to come by. Enter Blue Velvet.

Christine Emba, WaPo, Liberalism is Loneliness

Wesley Hill, CT, Marilynne Robinson's Celebration of Humanity is Brilliant but Incomplete

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, NYT, Erasmus vs. Luther – A Rift That Defined the Course of Western Civilization

Philosophy:
Amia Srinivasan, New York Review of Books, More Equal Than Others
Diana Popescu, Aeon, What we talk about when we talk about post-truth

Miscellaneous:
Mark Bauerlein, Chronicle of Higher Education, Is This the Hardest Course in the Humanities?

DL Mayfield, A Response to the Failed Missionary Podcast
Alex Heard, Outside, Where in the Hell Is Our Cat?
David Auerbach, Slate, The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time
Austin Kleon, Like-minded vs. Like-hearted

Jia Tolentino, New Yorker, The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death

Marcelo Gleiser, NPR, Teaching and Learning at the Boundaries of 2 Cultures