Every article

This took forever.

I read this a few times:
Zachary Holbrook, MereO, The Toxic Environments of First Reformed

Revoice stuff:
Jack Bates, Bread, Wine, & Glitter, The Revoice Conference, Gender, and Desire
Matthew Lee Anderson, Mere Orthodoxy, Sex, Temptation, and the Gay Christian: What Chastity Demands

Ron Belgau, The Public Discourse, In Defense of Spiritual Friendship and Revoice

Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship, Where the World Attacks

Wesley Hill, Covenant, Why I Want to Stay
Ethan McCarthy, Patheos, A Tenacious Witness: Reflections on the Revoice Conference

The current President:

David A Graham, The Atlantic, Trump's Remarkable Admission About Dishonesty
Damir Marusic, Medium, The Problem of Donald Trump Didn't Start with Donald Trump

Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, Abraham Lincoln's Warning

Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, America's heart of darkness

Murray Waas,  NY Review of Books, Flynn, Comey, and Mueller: What Trump Knew and When He Knew It

Immigration and family separation:
Alex Wagner, The Atlantic, Extinguishing the Beacon of America
Laura Bush, WaPo, Laura Bush: Separating children from their parents at the border ‘breaks my heart’
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Lesser Cruelty on Immigration

Alan Noble, Buzzfeed, This Is What Happens When You Say Some People Are Animals
Dara Ling, Vox, What Obama did with migrant families vs. what Trump is doing

Matthew Walther, The Week, Why Trump country is unfazed by the child separation crisis
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, How to Look Away

The Romans 13 eisegesis debacle:
Ruth Graham, Slate, Jeff Sessions Cherry-Picked a Bible Passage to Defend Trump’s Immigration Policy
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, The racist history of the Bible verse the White House uses to justify separating families
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Sessions invents a faith all his own

Tyler Huckabee, Relevant, Jeff Sessions and the Danger of Using the Bible Instead of Letting It Use You

Reacting to Anthony Kennedy's retirement:
Alan Noble, Medium, Initial Reaction to Justice Kennedy Retirement
Ruth Graham, Slate, Amy Coney Barrett Is Allegedly a Member of a Religious Group That’s Been Called a “Cult”
Matthew Loftus, MereO, Defending the Vulnerable Requires More Than a New Supreme Court Justice

The Christian Right's dangerous alliance with Trump. Smarsh's piece doesn't quite fit here, but it goes well with McCrummen's – they temper one another:
Ruth Graham, Slate, “The Most Dangerous Place for a Child to Be Is Inside the Womb of a Woman Inside a Planned Parenthood Clinic”
Ruth Graham, Slate, Mariia Butina’s Cozy Relationship With the Christian Right Makes Total Sense

Emma Green, The Atlantic, Conservatives Are Scared, Even Under Trump

Sarah Smarsh, NYT, Liberal Blind Spots Are Hiding the Truth About 'Trump Country'

Stephanie McCrummen, WaPo, Judgement days
John Fea, The Atlantic, Evangelical Fear Elected Trump
Kristin Kobes Du Mez, CT, Fear, Power, Nostalgia, and the 81 Percent

Two articles on the recent MD primaries:

Rachel M Cohen, The Intercept, Backed by Obama Alums, a Law-and-Order Candidate Aims to Topple Progressive Leaders in Baltimore
Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, Is Ben Jealous What Progressives Want?

Racial issues:

Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health
Jemar Tisby, The Witness, Why Juneteenth Should Be a National Holiday

Leilani Clark, CivilEats, Black Churches, Powerful Cultural Forces, Set Their Sights on Food Security

Environmental issues:

Roy Scranton, NYT, Raising My Child in a Doomed World
Jedidiah Purdy, Boston Review, The New Nature
Nathaniel Rich, NYT Mag, Losing Earth
Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, The Problem With The New York Times’ Big Story on Climate Change

The triumphant return of the TECH EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE section:
Edward Mendelson, NY Review of Books, In the Depths of the Digital Age
Jeffrey Bilbro, Front Porch Republic, Restoring Trust in the Aftermath of Anti-Social Media
Noah Kulwin, New York Mag, ‘One Has This Feeling of Having Contributed to Something That’s Gone Very Wrong’

Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, The Death of the Public Square

Adam J White, The New Atlantis, Google.gov

LM Sacasas, The New Atlantis, The Tech Backlash We Really Need

Gracy Olmstead, The Week, Facebook is broken. Let's all fix it together.

Kashmir Hill, Gizmodo, When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life

Erika Christakis, The Atlantic, The Dangers of Distracted Parenting
Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian, 'This is awful': robot can keep children occupied for hours without supervision

A bunch of cultural and political criticism not as directly related to the immediate political scene:
David Dark, Books & Culture, The Gospel According to America
Ryan Hammill, MereO, Against the Sterile Style
Coleson Smith, Comment, Beerbelly Elegy

BD McClay, Hedgehog Review, Virtue Signaling

Phil Christman, Hedgehog Review, What Is It Like to Be a Man?

Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, What two fictional Gileads can teach us about America in 2018

Alan Jacobs, The Guardian, To survive our high-speed society, cultivate 'temporal bandwidth'
Rachel Wiseman, The Point, Switching Off: Joseph Brodsky and the moral responsibility to be useless
Talia Lavin, Village Voice, The Moral Case for Incivility
Melvin Rogers, Boston Review, Democracy Is a Habit: Practice It
Christopher Lebron, The Nation, Up From Rawls
Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, What Can We Learn From Utopians of the Past?

Emily Rose Gum, Comment, Recovering an Institutional Imagination

James Davison Hunter & James KA Smith, Comment, The Backdrop of Reality

Lydialye Gibson, Harvard Magazine, The Democracy of Everyday Life

John Thornton, Jr, Commonweal, Under Pressure

More criticism, of literature, music, and film:
Haley Stewart, Church Life Journal, Alasdair MacIntyre Reads Jane Austen Reading Her Late Modern Reader
Kira Thurman, The Point, Singing Against the Grain: Playing Beethoven in the #BlackLivesMatter era
Trevor Quirk, The Point, The Pieces Fit: Tool's Cult of Meaning
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, Paul Schrader on First Reformed: “This is a troubling film about a troubled person”
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, The real reason we need more diversity in film criticism
Francey Russell, Boston Review, Haneke and the Technology of Intimacy
Megan N Liberty, Hyperallergic, The Clever Concrete Poetry of a Benedictine Monk
Ange Mlinko & Peter Mishler, LitHub, A Lot of My 'Process' Is Just Mucking About
Danny Heitman, Humanities, The Messy Genius of WH Auden
Emily Dreyfuss, Wired, Sacha Baron Cohen's Fake Conspiracy Site is Fully Post-Parody
Scott Timberg, LA Review of Books, The Bad Idea That Keeps On Giving
David Kolitz, The Outline, Academics Explain David Foster Wallace To Me

Walker Percy, man of the moment:

Jessica Hooten Wilson, Liberty & Law, Living as an Ex-Suicide
Randall S Rosenberg, Church Life Journal, Walker Percy and the Racist Tragedy of Southern Stoicism

Brian A Smith, The American Conservative, Walker Percy and the Gift of Influence

Christian life and commentary:
DL Mayfield, InTouch Ministries, The Ministry of Lament
Karen Swallow Prior, TGC, Christian Hospitality in an Age of ‘They’re Not Welcome Anymore, Anywhere’
Amanda Wortham, Christ & Pop Culture, How Mr Rogers's Analog Show Speaks to Us in a Digital Age
Jake Meador, MereO, The Lord's Work in the Lord's Way: Against the Culture War

Rachel Gilson, Christ & Pop Culture, David Foster Wallace and Worship in the #MeToo World

Derek Rishmawy, TGC, You Want a God of Judgement
Jasmine Holmes, Fathom, So You Hate Biblical Womanhood

Kaitlyn Scheiss, Christ & Pop Culture, Ben Myers's The Apostles' Creed Reminds Us of Our Roots
BD McClay, Commonweal, Problems Like Maria
Dante Stewart, CT, Why the Enslaved Adopted the Religion of Their Masters – and Transformed It

Cameron McAllister, Christ & Pop Culture, When Your ‘Story’ Gets in the Way of Your Testimony: Lessons from Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering

Alan's book Disruptive Witness came out this month:
Alan Noble, CT, How to Witness to a Distracted World
Alan Noble, Fathom, Disruptive Conversations
Lauren M Fabrycky, Fathom, Bearing Witness In a Distracted World
Justin Bailey, In All Things, Bearing Witness in a TLDR World: A Review of “Disruptive Witness”
Jonathan Merritt, Jonathan Merritt on Faith & Culture, The Christian Call to be Culturally Disruptive?

Some paired pieces that didn't fit well elsewhere: 2 from Taffy; 2 on American waste and wealth; 2 on #PlaneBae; 2 on translation; 2 on the shortcomings of modern sexual activism:
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, NYT Mag, Jonathan Franzen Is Fine With All of It
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, NYT Mag, How Goop's Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow's Company Worth $250 Million
Matthew Walther, The Week, American wasteland
Micah Meadowcroft, National Review, Riches Unto Death: Poverty Is a Lack of More Than Money
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, Two Strangers Met on a Plane – and the Internet Ruined It
Ella Dawson, elladawson.com, We Are All Public Figures Now
Burke Gertenschlager & Ed Simon, LA Review of Books, Groping Towards Each Other In a Common Mist
Rachel Hadas, Literary Matters, On Translation

Ross Douthat, NYT, The Handmaids of Capitalism
Brandon McGinley, First Things, Her Name Is Monroe Christine

Individual pieces that didn't fit elsewhere:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, America, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her Catholic faith and the urgency of a criminal justice reform
Philip Jenkins, Patheos, Faith, Fertility, and the Fate of American Religion
Grace Akello, LSE Africa, From ‘saved’ to secularised: the challenges facing former LRA fighters after reintegration into their communities

Annie Lowery, The Atlantic, Are Stock Buybacks Hurting the Economy?

Alan Jacobs, Weekly Standard, Understanding the Beautiful Game

Matthew Loftus, Plough, The Medicated Soul

June came upon us

This week's roundup (two weeks? three? I don't know, I started this collection a week ago) follows a similar pattern to a few posts back. Our political situation is pretty bad. Our President has sub-adolescent levels of self-control (Karni) and a political ideology that cannot ascend past brute vulgarity (Goldberg). The crowing celebrities of the ostensible other side isn't far behind in this race to the bottom (Gilbert). This is the age of charlatans (Ganz):
Annie Karni, Politico, Meet the guys who tape Trump's papers back together
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: ‘We’re America, Bitch’
Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, Robert DeNiro’s Toothless Protest
John Ganz, NYT, Why We Are So Vulnerable to Charlatans Like Trump

It isn't just the political situation that's bad. Two celebrity suicides and a chilling new study brought suicide forward in our national conversation (Dvorak). What does this say about the state of our culture (Powers)? And how can we be considerate to people who have lost loved ones while discussing this important issue (Feinberg)?
Petula Dvorak, WaPo, Will we finally end the silence around suicide?
Kirsten Powers, USA Today, Americans are depressed and suicidal because something is wrong with our culture
Ashley Feinberg, Huffington Post, My Suicide Week

Despite the sorrowful occasion, I was glad to be introduced to the life of Tony Bourdain through several loving remembrances, which drew me to start seeking out his own work. As many things I read these past few weeks have reflected, we need to cultivate the courage to encounter differing people and cultures, and to embrace difference with humility; Bourdain seems like a heroic figure in this regard. A terrible loss:
Helen Rosner, New Yorker, Anthony Bourdain and the Power of Telling the Truth
Sarah Condon, Mockingbird, On Anthony Bourdain: We Were Not Made to Be Famous
Kendall Vanderslice, Christ & Pop Culture, Anthony Bourdain Taught Us About Breaking Bread in a Broken World
David Simon, The Audacity of Despair, Tony
Anthony Bourdain, New Yorker, Don't Eat Before Reading This

More coverage of the reckoning facing the American Church w/r/t sex abuse. Harris's piece, in particular, really drills down into how churches find themselves obliviously complicit in abusers' plans and become negligent toward their victims: 

Molly Worthen, NYT, Sex and Gender on the Christian Campus
Michelle Boorstein & Sarah Pulliam Bailey, WaPo, How women led to the dramatic rise and fall of Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson
Kimberly Harris, CT, Sex Offenders Groom Churches Too

Hermeisha Hopson, CT, Q&A: We Need a Christ-Centered Theology of Trauma

The upcoming Revoice conference has generated a generally depressing controversy about whether celibate gay Christians are adequately abased in their long challenge to find ways to (as Eve puts it) "express and receive love" while adhering to traditional Christian interpretations of sexual ethics. Most of it has failed to rise even to the level of "uncharitable." Wedgeworth, to his credit, probes somewhat deeper than his fellow critics while maintaining a fair-minded tone, but fails to honestly represent his interlocutors, approach issues from an angle seeking better understanding, or present any potential solutions to theological questions he raises. Matthew's short response to him gets at a few of these issues, while Eve's general response to the controversy as a whole (plus an older post on gay identity from 2012) provide a much-needed (and hilarious) counterpoint. There's also a piece from Vice with an outside look on these "Side B" Christians – not a great piece (it has a very "come look at this curiosity!" vibe), but it does at kkleast put their voices in the foreground with minimal commentary:
Steven Wedgeworth, MereO, A Critical Review of Spiritual Friendship
Matthew Loftus, MereO: Doctors Without Boredom, Philia and Eros: Sloppy Wet Kissing Cousins
Eve Tushnet, Blogspot, The Name of the Miracle of the Rose
Eve Tushnet, Patheos, There’s a Place for Us: Revoice and Gay Christian Futures
Eve Tushnet, Patheos, There’s a Place for Us Part II: More on Revoice & Gay Christian Homemaking
Sam Nichols, Vice, The Openly Gay Christians Swearing Off Sex for Jesus

Right now, our government is doing what may be the worst thing they've done in our country in my life (we've done worse elsewhere, and maybe worse here, but I haven't thought of anything I've lived through). The separation of immigrant families is an incredible evil. Robinson is appropriately excoriating towards the religious conservatives failing to call evil what it is. Mayfield targets more specifically, writing an open letter to Focus on the Family, who has yet to respond. (Her Comment piece on suburbia and the way neighborhoods are constructed to enforce isolation is not exactly on the same issue, but it's great). 
Marilynne Robinson, The Guardian, A moral crisis grips the US border. Yet the religious right is shamefully silent
DL Mayfield, NowSheRises, An Open Letter to Focus on the Family/President Jim Daly
DL Mayfield, Comment, The Architecture of Loneliness in Immigrant Communities

More recently, the administration has appealed to Romans 13 to justify their actions in tearing families apart. This is appalling and theologically wrong, as many here have noted:
Alan Jacobs, Snakes and Ladders, The Whole of the Law
Fleming Rutledge, Generous Orthodoxy: Ruminations, Between the Two Thirteens
Matthew Loftus, MereO, Romans 13, Jeff Sessions, and Separating Families at the Border

Christian political priorities are changing, between traditions (Gjelten) and within denominations (Leeman & McKissic). We need a deeper understanding of how the Church should relate to the State (Tran, reviewing Jamie Smith) and the distinctions between them (Meador, responding to Moser): 

Tom Gjelten, NPR, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals Move Farther Apart in Their Political Priorities

Jonathan Leeman, TGC, Truth, Power, and Pence at the SBC

Dwight McKissic, CT, The Case for Electing Beth Moore as President of the Southern Baptist Convention

Jonathan Tran, LARB: Marginalia, Trump and the Specter of Christian Withdrawal

Brett Moser, TGC, The (False) Promise of Small-Town Community
Jake Meador, MereO: Commonplaces, What do we mean by "community"?

America has forgot the virtues of forgiveness and humility (Bruenig), to the extent that even Mr Rogers seems like a radical with his vast reserve of compassion (Wilkinson). We need to recover this sense of humility, as a country (Dark) and as a Church (McCloud). The Church, if it truly longs for renewal, must stop trying to police others so much (Jacobs) and focus more on not being hypocritical itself (Anderson). We do not need to have huge numbers or shiny equipment to be discipled and to be a light in the world (Bird); we might get farther by committing to hospitality to our neighbors (Lundgren). Indeed, it is in loving and welcoming our neighbors that we express our love and welcome for God's presence (Lee):
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, We are no longer capable of forgiving our enemies
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, The Fred Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor feels radically subversive
David Dark, America, In the age of Trump, can Mr. Rogers help us manage our anger?
Catherine Addington, MereO, Lessons from Valladolid: On Being Decent in an Indecent Age
Ian McCloud, Fathom, A Cure for the Church

Alan Jacobs, Snakes and Ladders, Seeds of Renewal
Matthew Lee Anderson, Medium, What Faithful Presence Demands

Chad Bird, TGC, God Loves Your Messy, Unimpressive Church
Laura Lundgren, Fathom, Cracking the Code on Hospitality

John Lee, CT, Entertaining More Than Angels

Christian thinkers like Andy Crouch have been discussing the need for discipleship to filter down into the culture and workplaces for years (Zylstra); it should go without saying, though, that this should not just be a retreading of inequalities present in the Church, as it has been in places like Silicon Valley (Starke). We also need art that brings us out of our utilitarian workplace mindsets, and orient us to transcendence rather than productivity (Casper). Unfortunately, most mainstream movies marketed to Christians are shallow pandering (Rothkopf):

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, TGC, Andy Crouch and the Culture Makers
Rachael Starke, Fathom, Not good for man to work alone?
Mark Casper, Mockingbird, The Role of Art (Or, the Limitations of Self-Help) in Life and Work

Joanna Rothkopf, Jezebel, A Journey Into the Righteous, Risk-Averse World of Faith-Based Films

And that's why we need movies like Paul Schrader's First Reformed:  AO Scott, NYT, Review: 'First Reformed' Is a Marvel. Ethan Hawke Is, Too.
Ann Hornaday, WaPo, This new movie gets right everything that 'Mother!' got wrong
Kenneth R Morefield, CT, 'First Reformed' Imagines a Stunning Dark Night of the Soul
Brett McCracken, TGC, 'First Reformed': 2018's Most Thought-Provoking Film So Far
Steven D Graydanus, National Catholic Register, SDG Reviews 'First Reformed'
Josh Larsen, Larsen on Film, First Reformed
Kevin Lincoln, First Reformed, Let's Talk About the Ending of 'First Reformed'
John Ehrett, The American Conservative, A Hollywood Movie About Christianity Worth Seeing

Getting back to humility, we need to have the courage and charity to read our political and cultural opponents' foundational material in a way that allows to see whatever worth there may be in it, or at least see why it attracts them (Corbin). Many haven't done this with Jordan Peterson's work (myself perhaps included), preferring instead to present a convenience caricature to fit a preconceived narrative (Yang). Of course, this doesn't preclude reading Peterson (or anyone else) critically, and seeing trends and histories behind their work (Burton). But writing off someone's work because of distasteful fans alienates those fans unnecessarily – not to mention, it makes the fans that don't fit that narrative invisible and renders their perspectives silent (Ritchey). There are many ways we can pursue thinking and reading together, and this is worth being intentional about (McEntyre).

Ian Marcus Corbin, Weekly Standard, Reading Dangerously
Wesley Yang, Tablet, The Shocking Truth About Jordan Peterson
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, The religious hunger that drives Jordan Peterson's fandom
Jessica Ritchey, Mel Magazine, You’re Doing Women No Favors With Your Mocking ‘Ugh, Only Straight White Men Like This’ Takes
Marilyn McEntyre, Medium, Reading Together

Certainly we should all be reading more Solzhenitsyn:

Jeff Groom, The American Conservative, 40 Years Ago Today: When Solzhenitsyn Schooled Harvard
Robert P George, First Things, Solzhenitsyn's Prophecy

And reading more theology:
Eugene F Rivers III, Plough, Powers and Principalities: King and the Holy Spirit

David Bentley Hart, Church Life Journal, A Prayer for the Poor
Julia Smucker, Church Life Journal, A Prayer for the Rich?
Karen Swallow Prior, CT, Sin Is Like Walking in Front of a Bus
Andrew Wilson, CT, Whatever Happened to Gifts of Language, Prophecy, and Healing?

And reading more deeply in the humanities:
Natalie Elliot, The New Atlantis, Shakespeare's Worlds of Science
Vladislav Davidzon, Tablet, In Memory of Isaiah Berlin
Rebecca McLaughlin, TGC, The Enlightenment Improved the Wold – But Not without Christianity
Jamelle Bouie, Slate, The Enlightenment's Dark Side

Three more pairs of pieces, on smartphones and motherhood and jazz, and a final miscellaneous article on copyediting:
Sarah Puryear, Covenant, Why I Gave Up My Smartphone for Lent – And Took It Back
Kate Shellnutt, CT, Go Tell It on the iPhone
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, To my daughter, who taught me not to worry about time
Courtney Ressig, TGC, When Motherhood Feels Like Death
John Murph, Downbeat, Todd Marcus Merges Jazz and Activism
Giovanni Russonello, NYT, Lost John Coltrane Recording From 1963 Will Be Released at Last
Karen Ostergren, The Atlantic, How to Copyedit The Atlantic

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