OH JEEZ

This is everything I read in March and April and most of May, from Baltimore to Philly to New York to Kenya. Too many to sort by topic, sorting by outlet instead:

Charles Lindholm & John A Hall, ABC Religion & Ethics, Frank Capra meets John Doe: Politics and anti-politics in American film
NT Wright, ABC Relgion & Ethics, Cross and kingdom: Putting the Christian story together again
Susan Neiman, ABC Relgion & Ethics,  The rationality of the world: A philosophical reading of the Book of Job

Patrick Gilger, America, Review: Remaining faithful to fragile gifts
Eve Tushnet, America, The value of public penance in the age of clerical abuse, mass incarceration and #MeToo

Adrian Vermeule, American Affairs, Integration from Within

Charles Fain Lehman, The American Conservative, Reversing the Baby Bust
Anthony Paletta, The American Conservative, Why Baltimore Abandoned Johns Hopkins' Humane Vision

Leah Libresco Sargent, The American Interest, Orpheus and the Wall
Leah Libresco Sargent, The American Interest, Your Roots Shall Make Ye Free

Shadi Hamid, American Mind, Crisis of the Creed Divided

Nicholas Gross, Arc Digital, Left-Wing Identity Politics vs. Right-Wing Localism 

Michael Wear, The Atlantic, The Abortion Debate Needs Moral Lament
Amanda Ripley, The Atlantic, The Least Politically Prejudiced Place in America
Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, The Western Erasure of African Tragedy
Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, The Truth About People Who Have No Personality
John McWhorter, The Atlantic, Freedom Am Won: A Linguistic Mystery
David Sims, The Atlantic, A Movie Like 'The Matrix' Might Never Happen Again
Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic, They Had It Coming
Emma Green, The Atlantic, Democrats Have to Decide Whether Faith Is an Asset for 2020
Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, Is This the End of Recycling?
Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, ‘A Convenient Life and a Good Life May Not Be the Same Thing’
John McWhorter, The Atlantic, It Wasn’t ‘Verbal Blackface.’ AOC Was Code-Switching.
Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, How 'Old Town Road' Transforms the Listener
Edward-Isaac Dovere, The Atlantic, Pete Buttigieg Isn’t Just Winning Over People on the Internet
Rainesford Staufer, The Atlantic, Why More Couples Are Getting Married by a Friend
Rachel Donadio, The Atlantic, Witnessing the Fall of Notre-Dame
Rosa Inoncencio Smith, The Atlantic, Writing the Pulitzer-Winning 'The Overstory' Changed Richard Powers’s Life
Rachel Donadio, The Atlantic, France’s Paradoxes, Embodied in a Cathedral
Alexis C Madrigal, The Atlantic, The Images That Could Help Rebuild Notre-Dame Cathedral
Alexis C Madrigal, The Atlantic, Twitter Is Not America
Emma Green, The Atlantic, How Sri Lanka's Christians Became a Target
Emma Green, The Atlantic, Rachel Held Evans, Hero to Christian Misfits
Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, The Hidden Subsidy of Fossil Fuels
Joe Pinsker, The Atlantic, When Was the Last Time American Children Were So Afraid?
W Bradford Wilcox & Lyman Stone, The Atlantic, The Happiness Recession
Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, The Agony and Ecstasy of 'Fleabag'
Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic, I’ve Never Watched 'Game of Thrones.' But Here’s What I Know
Margaret Tucker, The Atlantic, The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers

Erica X Eisen, Altas Obscura, The Very Real Search for the Bible's Mythical Manna

Fern Shen & Mark Reutter, Baltimore Brew, Pugh’s downfall was propelled by her ineffective leadership

Melody Simmons, Baltimore Business Journal, 'Don't take our market from us,' Mondawmin residents say of Shoppers

Ron Cassie, Baltimore Magazine, Hell and High Water

Lillian Reed, Baltimore Sun, Brick Hill community, hidden in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park, lists rare home for sale

Nia Hampton, BMore Art, Reading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen in 2019
Maura Callahan, BmoreArt, Notre Dame on Fire: An Absurdist Tragicomedy

Rosie Gray, Buzzfeed, 'Get Out While You Can'
Laura Turner, Buzzfeed, Why Rachel Held Evans Meant So Much To So Many

Julia Blackburn, Caught by the River, Time Song (excerpt) 

Michael Wear, Catapult, My Hope as a Parent Is Something I Share with My Birth Mother

Kaitlyn Scheiss, Christ & Pop Culture, Melodies of Sin and Salvation: Why Modern Worship Music Needs a More Holistic View of Salvation
Abigail Murrish, Christ & Pop Culture, All the Foods I've Failed to Eat
Travis Roberts, Christ & Pop Culture, God of the Belly: Wasting away in the World of First Reformed

Francesca A Murphy, Church Life Journal, Liturgy and Slaughter in the Book of Revelation
Abigail Favale, Church Life Journal, The Eclipse of Sex by the Rise of Gender
Jessica Hooten Wilson, Church Life Journal, Pushing Back Against Marilynne Robinson's Theology

Katharine Dell, Church Times, 'The Bible is not a paper Pope'

Oren Cass, City Journal, How the Other Half Learns

Sarah Holder, CityLab, An App For Mapping Crime, or Urban Paranoia?
Fred Scharmen, CityLab, Jeff Bezos Dreams of a 1970s Future

Doug Sikkema, Comment, Twelve Rules for the Bookish Life
John Wilson, Comment, In Praise of Miscellany
Mark Mulder, Comment, A Damnable Shame
Shaun Ross, Comment, Lords of Misrule
Jeff Haanen, Comment, Dreading Monday
Sarah Dahl, Comment, Selling Our Birthright for a Quiet Pew

Paul J Griffiths, Commonweal, No Neutral Ground
Wesley Hill, Commonweal, After Boomer Religion
Jake Meador, Commonweal, Resisting a Throwaway Culture

Judy Wu Dominick, The Crux & The Call, Recovering Place: Counteracting the Polarizing Effects of Consumerism & Online Communities

Katelyn Beaty, CT, Girl, Get Some Footnotes: Rachel Hollis, Hustle, and Plagiarism Problems
RS Naifeh (Scott Garbacz), CT,  This Fantasy Novelist Showed Me What It Means to Fear God
Tish Harrison Warren, CT,  Richard Mouw Wrestles with Evangelicalism, Past and Present
Kelly M Kapic, CT, Has Academic Theology Lost Its Way?
Paul J Pastor, CT,  How the Bible Project Is Using Video to Get People into Scripture Again 
Amy Simpson, CT, When Moral Boundaries Become Incubators for Sin
Ashley Hales, CT, Waiting Time Isn't Wasted Time
Matthew J Milliner, CT, At Notre Dame, Good Friday Came Early
Nancy Guthrie, CT, Suffering and Submission in Gethsemane
Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, CT, Easter Joy Belongs to the Melancholy
Fleming Rutledge, CT, Why ‘Being Christian Without the Church’ Fails the Good Friday Test
Chris Palusky, CT, Christians Can't Back Out of the Foster System Now
Gracy Olmstead, CT, Parents Need Villages, Not Just Public Policies
Mark Galli, CT, The Heart of the Evangelical Crisis
John Thomas, CT,  The Call to Self-Discipline in a Media-Saturated AgeKatelyn Beaty, CT, Why Character Is Making a Comeback

Kate Wagner, Curbed, The Case Against Lawns

Nathan J Robinson, Current Affairs, The Radical Egalitarian Politcs of Weird Al's 'UHF'
Ryan Cooper, Current Affairs, Are Voters Just Lemmings?

Jen Gan, The Cut, The Embryo in the Hallway

Jamie Shupe, Daily Signal, I Was America’s First ‘Nonbinary’ Person. It Was All a Sham.

Drew Magary, Deadspin, The Night the Lights Went Out

Joe Rigney, Desiring God, He Sang in the Belly of the Earth

Susannah Black, Fare Forward, New York, New Jerusalem

Anthony Bradley, Fathom, The Great Commission Christianity Keeps Blacks Away From Evangelicalism

Matthew Milliner, First Things, Evangelicals and Zen Masters
Wesley Hill, First Things, Glorious Humility
Leah Libresco Sargent, First Things, Fear and the Benedict Option
Chris Arnade, First Things, Back Row America
Moriah Speciale, First Things, Marilynne Robinson and the Mystery of Grace

Brenton Dickieson, Forefront, The Tolkien Film and the Problem of Beauty

Susannah Black, Front Porch Republic, Sources of Order: Rooted Cosmopolitanism and the Origins of City Life (Part 1), Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Melissa Sexton, Front Porch Republic, Rethinking the Local vs. Global Divide
Elizabeth Stice, Front Porch Republic, Notre Dame and the Need for the Past
John Médaille, Front Porch Republic, “Ora et Anti-Labora”? Kathryn Tanner on Finance Capitalism
Emile Doak, Front Porch Republic, Toward a Somewhere Suburb

Laura Turner, Glamour, The Big Problem With the New Screen-Time Guidelines for Kids

Jennifer Kabat, Granta, Ghostlands

Michael Finkel, GQ, The Secrets of the World's Greatest Art Thief 
Clay Skipper, GQ, Why "Doing Nothing" Is the Best Self-Care for the Internet Era
Drew Magary, GQ, Elizabeth Warren Deserves Your Undivided Attention

Richard Lea, The Guardian, Francis Spufford pens unauthorised Narnia novel

Marilynne Robinson, Harper's, Is Poverty Necessary?

BD McClay, Hedgehog Review, The Ills That Flesh Is Heir to
Megan Marz, Hedgehog Review, Seeing Double

Katie Kresser, Image, Christ the Chimera: The Riddle of the Monster Jesus 
DL Mayfield, Image, Hummingbird: For Rachel Held Evans

David Lapp, Institute for Family Studies, The Mind in a Lonely Age

James KA Smith, Journal of Church & State, Review: The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis, by Alan Jacobs

Veery Huleatt, Kirk Center, Writing from the Edge of the Middle
Ben Reinhard, Kirk Center, A Hope Beyond Our Sight

Mary Lehman Held, Knox News, Fallout from Bean Station meat-processing plant raid devastating to children

Brad East, LARB, Public Theology in Retreat

Jenny Jarvie, LA Times, He voted for Trump. Now he and his wife raise their son from opposite sides of the border

Summer Brennan, Longreads, Rewriting a Symphony in Stone

Wesley Hill, Marginalia, Paul and the Cosmic Tyrant 
Paul R Hinlicky, Marginalia, Theology after the Death of God

Ginny Hogan, McSweeney's, Don't Get Married Before You Live Together

Stacia L Brown, Medium, Baltimore, Just Below the Surface
Jenny Odell, Medium, How to Do Nothing
Emily Johnson, Medium, Loving a vanishing world

Sean O'Hare, MereO, In Defense of Localism
Jake Meador, MereO, Ben Sasse Heightens the Contradictions
Jake Meador, MereO, Apologies, Power, and Martyrdom in a Decadent Age
Thomas Sieberhagen, MereO, Tolkien and the Golden Age of Fantasy
Susannah Black, MereO, Polis/Counter-polis: On the Civic Benedict Option
Susannah Black, MereO, Dr. Moore and the Politics of Dinner Parties
Susannah Black, MereO, Sealed in Blood: Aristopopulism and the City of Man
Jake Meador, MereO, Whose Reaganism? Which Republicanism?
Matthew Loftus, MereO, Desire, Duty, and Dynamite
Jake Meador, MereO, The End of Christendom: Notes on the Burning of Notre-Dame
Joshua Heavin, MereO, The Church's One Foundation and the Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral
Susannah Black, MereO, On Rebuilding
Matthew Loftus, MereO, Sex and the Supremacy of Technique
Matthew Loftus, Christian Young, & Jake Meador, MereO, The Radicalization of John Avery Whittaker
Matthew LaPine, MereO, On Being a Church for the Weak
Joshua Heavin, MereO, On Dishonest Stands for the Truth
Jake Meador, MereO, On Pro-Life Incrementalism

Kendall Gunter, Mockingbird, The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism
Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, Mockingbird, The Top Ten Reasons the Lectionary Sucks and Five Half-Assed Solutions

Randy Boyagoda, Modern Age, Children of Light in an Age of Darkness

Talia Lavin, The Nation, A Reporter’s Long, Strange Trip Into the Darkest Parts of the American Mind

Carrie Arnold, National Geographic, Cats know their names—why it's harder for them than dogs

Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review, Where Charity and Love Prevail
Elizabeth Kirk, National Review, On Foster Care, People of Faith Are Called to More Than Political Activism
David French, National Review, Franklin Graham and the High Cost of the Lost Evangelical Witness

James Poulos, The New Atlantis, Netflix and Nil
Clare Coffey, The New Atlantis, Modernity's Spell
Micah Meadowcroft, The New Atlantis, The Distance Between Us

David Yezzi, The New Criterion, An interview with Christian Wiman

Daniel Kolitz, New Republic, In Search of Generation Z
Win McCormack, New Republic, How Green Was My Virtue
Jedediah Britton-Purdy, New Republic, Rebuilding Notre Dame
Bob Moser, New Republic, Why the Religious Right Is Terrified of Pete Buttigieg
David Sessions, New Republic, The Emptiness of Adam Gopnik's Liberalism
Jacob Silverman, New Republic, Down and Out in the Gig Economy

Steve Inskeep, Vince Pearson, & Barry Gordemer, NPR, What Does 'Born in the USA' Really Mean?

Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker, The Drummer Hal Blaine Provided the Beat for American Music
Douglas Preston, New Yorker, The Day the Dinosaurs Died
Masha Gessen, New Yorker, Pete Buttigieg Claims His Right to Run for President—and Defends His Right to Exist

Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Review of Books, Dialectics of Enlightenment

Eric Levitz, NY Mag: Intelligencer, Ta-Nehisi Coates Is an Optimist Now

Michele Anderson, NYT, Go Home to Your (Dying) Hometown
Alex V Cipolle, NYT, Increasing Exposure for Native Artists
David Brooks, NYT, The Case for Reparations
Nellie Bowles, NYT, Human Contact Is Now a Luxury Good
Jillian Jordan & David Rand, NYT, Are You 'Virtue Signalling'?
John Koblin, NYT, A Fan’s Love, Requited at Last: Conan O’Brien Lands Robert Caro
Ross Douthat, NYT, From the Ashes of Notre-Dame
Ross Douthat, NYT, Are Christians Privileged or Persecuted?
David Bentley Hart, NYT, Can We Please Relax About 'Socialism'?
Emily Badger, Quoctrung Bui, & Robert Gebeloff, NYT, The Neighborhood Is Mostly Black. The Home Buyers Are Mostly White.
Jonah Engel Bromwich, NYT, A Manifesto for Opting Out of an Internet-Dominated World
Claire Cain Miller, NYT, Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got ‘Greedy.’
Brad Plumer, NYT, Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace
Lydia Kiesling, NYT, A Mother's Clock
Jennifer Schuessler, NYT, Medieval Scholars Joust With White Nationalists. And One Another.
Alexandra Alter, NYT, Hannibal Lecter’s Creator Cooks Up Something New (No Fava Beans or Chianti)
Ross Douthat, NYT, The Reinvention of Tradition
Anand Giridharadas, NYT, What to Do When You're a Country in Crisis
Dwight Garner, NYT, In Wendell Berry’s Essays, a Little Earnestness Goes a Long Way

Zachary Scott, NYT Mag, Rick Steves Wants to Set You Free

Matthew Lee Anderson, The Other Journal, Ascension in a Minor Key

Joe Veix, The Outline, You Can't Beat an Unwinnable Game, But You Can Break It

Jonathan Coppage, Philanthropy, Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Rich Hill, Players Tribune, I Want to Talk About My Son Brooks

Tamara Hill Murphy, Plough, The Hole in Wendell Berry's Gospel
Jeffrey Bilbro, Plough, What I Stand For Is What I Stand On

Agnes Callard, The Point, The Emotion Police
Agnes Callard, The Point, Is Philosophy Fight Club?
Jennifer A Frey, The Point, Paris Without Her Cathedral
Agnes Callard, The Point, Against Advice

Shuja Haider, Popula, Song for My Father

Alec MacGillis, ProPublica, The Tragedy of Baltimore

Jenny Anderson, Quartz, The only metric of success that really matters is the one we ignore

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, Religion & Politics, Is This the Religious Left’s Kairos Moment?

Brian Phillips, The Ringer, Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction Into High Art

Lee Billings, Scientific American, Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says

Ekemini Uwan, Sistamatic Theology, The Blood of Jesus Is The Bridge; Not My Back

Laura Miller, Slate, Missed Connections
Jane C Hu, Slate, Texting Means Never Having to Say Goodbye
Bérengère Viennot, Slate, Let's Not Rebuild Notre Dame
William Saletan, Slate, The Root Cause of Global Poverty

Scott Alexander, SlateStarCodex, Sort By Controversial

Sarah Lewin, Space, 'Exhalation' Collection Will Expand Your Mind: A Q&A with Short Story Author Ted Chiang

Rachel Thomas, Theos Think Tank, Rage against the metaphor: Should we stop comparing ourselves to machines?

Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly, Faith, Friendship, and Tragedy at Santa Fe High

Randianne Leyshon Holbrook, UMBC Magazine, The Joy of Giving
Randianne Leyshon, UMBC Magazine, UMBC international students find connection on campus, from day one to degree

Shanon Dingle, USA Today, I was 12 years old and pregnant. Alabama's abortion ban bill would punish girls like me.

Angela Chen, The Verge, Artist Jenny Odell explains why place is the antidote to the attention economy

Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, Sorry to Bother You is a bananas satirical comedy about code-switching and exploitative capitalism
Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox, How to quit Facebook without quitting Facebook
Karen Swallow Prior, Vox, Abortion will be considered unthinkable 50 years from now
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, How Christianity can be an "alternative" to consumerism
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, Why we wept when Notre Dame burned
Kate Shellnutt, Vox, How progressive Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans changed everything
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life is not a typical World War II drama
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, The Lighthouse, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, is easily one of the wildest films of the year

Jennifer Rubin, WaPo, Pete Buttigieg shows how to campaign on values in the age of Trump
Michael Gerson, WaPo, White supremacy must be undone — institution by institution
Paul Schwartzman, WaPo, Weary of scandal and violence, Baltimore’s residents ask: ‘Why do we stay?’
Theresa Vargas, WaPo, Baltimore deserves better than a one-star mayor
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Talk of a rising religious left is unfounded. It already exists.
EJ Dionne Jr, WaPo, Pete Buttigieg has broken through the noise on community and religion
James McAuley, WaPo, Billionaires raced to pledge money to rebuild Notre Dame. Then came the backlash.
Sarah Pulliam Bailey, WaPo, Is David Brooks a Christian or a Jew? His latest book traces his faith — and his second marriage.
Nancy French, WaPo, What happened after my husband was attacked for critiquing Franklin Graham’s Pete Buttigieg tweets
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, Students who charge shooters are heroes. It’s shameful they’re martyrs, too.
Sarah Bessey & Jeff Chu, WaPo, How Rachel Held Evans really should be remembered
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, The #SexStrike wasn’t real. Why was there so much coverage?
Carliss Chatman, WaPo,  If a fetus is a person, it should get child support, due process and citizenship
Michael Gerson, WaPo, American politics doesn’t need a Christian supremacy. It needs solidarity.

Deedee Roe, The Witness, Captive Audience: A Black Woman's Reflection on the Sparrow Conference

Matthew Walther, The Week, A new anti-Trump publication is the last thing conservative media needs
Damon Linker, The Week, A manifesto for a new American center
Matthew Walther, The Week, What Notre Dame means to Catholics
Bonnie Kristian, The Week, Mike Pence's vulgar mistake about Christianity

Everything I read online in February 2019

To start off, here are several articles about perspectives on abortion: 
Megan McArdle, WaPo, What the push for legal-until-birth abortion tells us about the abortion debate
Alexandra DeSanctis, The Atlantic, Democrats Overplay Their Hand on Abortion
Abigail Favale, Church Life Journal, Confessions of a Feminist Heretic
Mary O'Callaghan, Church Life Journal, The Devastating Fallout from Prenatal Testing
Sarah Klitenic Wear, First Things, The Ancients on Abortion
Matthew Lee Anderson, CT, Infanticide Debate Reflects a New Era for Abortion Politics

And some articles on somewhat related issues of gender, sex, and life rights:
Christopher Shannon, Front Porch Republic, Gender Is a Social Construct
Russell Moore, Personal Blog, Southern Baptists and the Scandal of Church Sexual Abuse
Christopher de Bellaigue, The Guardian, Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far?

And more sex! Three responses to NBW, a personal story of same-sex attraction, and a reply to critics of Catholic celibacy requirements:
Joshua Heavin, MereO, A Christian Ethic of Sex in a Pornographic Age
Wesley Hill, CT, Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Gospel of Shame-Free Sexuality
Tish Harrison Warren, CT, The Church Made Vagina Sculptures Long Before Nadia Bolz-Weber
Rachel Gilson, CT, I Never Became Straight. Perhaps That Was Never God’s Goal.
Ross Douthat, NYT, Why Celibacy Matters

Also somewhat related, some parenting pieces (on adoption, fatherly commitment, and children's relationship with technology):

Ashley Fetters, The Atlantic, The Hardship of a Very Open Adoption
Anna Machin, Aeon, The marvel of the human dad
Pamela Paul, NYT, Let Children Get Bored Again

Parents need the right ordering of priorities to balance their work and households, and public policy is a tool that should be used to allow for these rightful balances:

Hannah Anderson, Public Justice Review, Cultivating a Work-Wise Family
Candice Gormley, Shared Justice, Time to Care: Joy, Rest, and Recovery
Matthew Loftus, Shared Justice, Time to Care: Time to Heal

In a similar way, urban planning has an effect on how practical (or even possible) it is to be a parent in a city:

Nolan Gray & Lyman Stone, CityLab, How ‘Vasectomy Zoning’ Makes Childless Cities
Alia Wong, The Atlantic, Cities Aren't Built for Parents
Claire Tran, CityLab, Accessibility Advocates Rally Over Mother’s Death on Subway Stairs

Modern politics and ethics: 

Bonnie Kristian, The Week, Our political obsession with shame
Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo, What the Liam Neeson case teaches us about evil

Samuel James, National Review, We're All Fundamentalists Too

Ewwww...more politics:

Emma Green, The Atlantic, These Are the Americans Who Live in a Bubble
Raymond Bonner, The Atlantic, America's Role in El Salvador's Deterioration
Andrew G McCabe, The Atlantic, Every Day Is a New Low in Trump's White House

What is the Church? Reflections on liturgical and worship practices, Hillsong, celebrity evangelicals, and our understanding the ekklesia itself:

Andrew Wilson, CT, Our Churches Are Either Sacramental or Charismatic

Kathryn Watson, The Curator, The He(art) of Worship
Laura Turner, Vox, The rise of the star-studded, Instagram-friendly evangelical church
Krish Kandiah, Church is a Family, Not an Event

Two pieces on the recent United Methodist vote to preserve traditional marriage (a good overview of the situation and a plea from an African Methodist to allow their [traditional] beliefs to be allowed a voice among the widely American progressives):
Emma Green, The Atlantic, Conservative Christians Just Retook the United Methodist Church
Jerry B Kulah, Juicy Ecumenism, African United Methodists Won’t Trade Bible for Dollars

Theology:

Joshua Heavin, MereO, On Theological Education and the Church’s Health
Viktor J Toth & Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, CT, ‘A Theology of Everything’ for a Pluralistic World
Brad East, Commonweal, The Specter of Marcion
Jen Pollock Michel, CT, Move Over, Sex and Drugs. Ease Is the New Vice.
Alstair Roberts, Theopolis Institute, Learning Wisdom From the Serpents

David Mathis, Desiring God, Here I Raise My Ebenezer
Justin Frank, Mere O, The Real Place for Conflict: On Keeping Controversy Close to Home

Church-related profiles and interviews:

Matthew Loftus, CT, Why a Compassionate Baptist Pastor Led a Revolution

Rodney Clapp & Eugene Peterson, CT, Eugene Peterson: A Monk Out of Habit
Philip Hoare, New Statesmen, John Ruskin: a prophet for our troubled times

Jemar Tisby & Wesley Hill, Comment, The Future of Church-Race Relations

David Heim & Kathryn Tanner, Christian Century, Can Christianity be a counterforce to finance capitalism?

BOOKS:
Tara Ann Thieke, Front Porch Republic, The American Bookstore: Prologue
Jeffrey Bilbro, Front Porch Republic, Fierce Velleity: Poetry as Antidote to Acedia
Mary McCampbell, TGC, 8 Works of Contemporary Fiction Christians Should Read
Trevin Wax, TGC, Reading When You're Really Busy
Mairead Small Staid, Paris Review, Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction
Haley Stewart, Church Life Journal, The Wayward Daughters
Amanda Wortham, CxPC, Tethered to the World: Remembering Mary Oliver
Rebecca Onion, Slate, Wild and Precious Life

Book-adjacent – Did Obama's bookishness have any effect on his willingness to engage in war? What would Auden say about today's social media campaigns of censorship? 

Teju Cole, New Yorker, A Reader's War
Edward Mendelson, NY Review of Books, Auden on No-Platforming Pound

The Grammar Guy:
Sarah Lyall, NYT, Meet the Guardian of Grammar Who Wants to Help You Be a Better Writer
Maris Kreizman, Vulture, Grammar Guru Benjamin Dreyer Talks Twitter Style, Denounces ‘Onboarding’
Benjamin Dreyer, Paris Review, Three Writing Rules to Disregard

Book reviews:
Justin Lee, First Things, The Art of Spiritual Warfare
Brad East, Christian Century, An anti-Enlightenment ax to grind
Peter Boumgarden, Christian Century, Christian humanism in a technocratic world
Eric Miller, CT, Submit to God, Not the Market
Kathryn Tanner, First Things, Theology's Umpire
David Crumm, Read the Spirit, In ‘For the Life of the World,’ Miroslav Volf argues: ‘Christian theology has lost its way …’
Adam Kirsch, Tablet Mag, The Alter Bible

James KA Smith, LARB, A (Not So) Secular Saint

Jason Byassee, Christian Century, Loving the creed, loving God

Nathan Goldman, The Nation, Wellness Is Always a Scam
Anthony M Barr, Kirk Center, Reclaiming a Place for Conversation

A great four-part, multi-author review of Jill Lepore's These Truths (and two recent pieces from Lepore herself):

Craig Bruce Smith, Kirk Center, A Conflicted Idea of America
Daniel N Gullotta, Kirk Center, What Hath Lepore Wrought
Robert Greene II, Kirk Center, Citizenship and the Fitful History of the American Way
Lauren F Turek, Kirk Center, Recent Domestic History

Jill Lepore, Foreign Affairs, A New Americanism
Jill Lepore, New Yorker, Does Journalism Have a Future?

Miscellaneous cultural criticism:
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, Apocalypse Is Now a Chronic Condition
Vinson Cunningham, New Yorker, How the Idea of Hell Has Shaped the Way We Think
Matthew Walther, The Week, Marie Kondo and the rise of clutter shaming
Claire Armistead, The Guardian, 'Identity is a pain in the arse': Zadie Smith on political correctness

Jen Doll, Harper's Bazaar, Why Does It Feel Like Everyone Has More Money Than You?

Emily Raboteau, NY Review of Books, Climate Signs

Eugene McCarraher, Commonweal, Undemocratic by Design

Two pieces from Agnes Callard – What would it look like to think things through better? Is pop philosophy really philosophy?

Agnes Callard, Boston Review, Don't Overthink It
Agnes Callard, The Point, Is Public Philosophy Good?

Tech stuff:

Oliver Sacks, New Yorker, The Machine Stops
Eduardo Porter, NYT, Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
Kate Wagner, The Baffler, 404 Page Not Found
Niko Maragos, Popula, The Extremely Online Nun
Kashmir Hill, Gizmodo, I Cut the 'Big Five' Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell

Patricia Lockwood, London Review of Books, The Communal Mind

Casey Newton, The Verge, The Trauma Floor

Baltimore stuff:
Daniel Parsons, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore teacher: 'Our city is slaughtering black children'
Jessica Anderson, Baltimore Sun, 'It’s heartbreaking,' Baltimore attorney says, recalling two former clients killed in recent spate of violence

Jean Marbella, Baltimore Sun, When violence lands at your feet: bullet from Baltimore shooting ricochets past woman, 80, in her dining room

Rachel Nania, WTOP, ‘I wanted to do more for people than just pray’: Pastor blends faith, farms to end food insecurity in black churches

Brandon Soderberg, The Outline, In Baltimore, the future of film culture is an old-school video store

Weird vocal music:

Stacey Anderson, The Guardian, Is Caroline Shaw really the future of music?
Burkhard Bilger, New Yorker, Roomful of Teeth is Revolutionizing Choral Music

Pets:

Rosaria Butterfield, TGC, That D*** Dog: How Pets Can Be a Catalyst for Evangelism
Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, Why We Think Cats Are Psychopaths

Everything I read online in January 2019

New year, new roundup, same procrastination! Here's the million things I read this month.

First, the news:
Angie Brown, BBC News, Nursing mother smashes 268-mile Montane Spine Race record
Carlotta Gall, NYT, Ukrainian Orthodox Christians Formally Break From Russia
Laura Snapes, The Guardian, Martin Scorsese to direct film about Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue
Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans, Religion News Service, Small-town Christian bookstore owners keep faith despite an uncertain future
Evan Tucker, Baltimore Fishbowl, What Baltimore loses if the BSO is forced to cut its schedule

And the world news:

Janine di Giovanni, Harper's, The Vanishing
Danny Gold, Longreads, The Redemption of MS-13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Commentary, The Yellow Rise in Paris
Fraser Myers & Cristophe Guilluy, Spiked, ‘The gilets jaunes are unstoppable’

And reviews:
Gina Dalfonzo, Mere O, Book Review: The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers
Alan Jacobs, Snakes & Ladders, Science and the Good
Josephine Livingstone & Jeet Heer, New Republic, Changing Our Minds
Micah Meadowcroft, Washington Free Beacon, Hospitable on Purpose
Chad Wellmon, Comment, The Year of Whose Lord?
Alan Jacobs, Snakes & Ladders, Humans, humanity, humanism

Kathryn Freeman, CT, Can We Handle the Truth About Racism and the Church?
Emma Green, The Atlantic, Closing the Gulf Between Black and White Christians

Robert Sullivan, NY Review of Books, The Ministry of Mr Rogers

Molly Brigid McGrath, Law & Liberty, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Frontier Anthology
DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: The Book of Dougs & Chidi Sees a Time Knife (Season 3, Episodes 10 & 11)
DL Mayfield, Christ & Pop Culture, The Good Place Recap: “Pandemonium” (Season 3, Episode 12)

A tidy pile of minimalism stuff:
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, NYT Mag, Marie Kondo, Tidying Up and the Ruthless War on Stuff
Rachel Gilson, Desiring God, Does She Spark Joy? Sorting Through Marie Kondo

Myles Werntz, Mere O, The Burden of Parenting: In Praise of Christian Simplicity

These are all profiles or overviews of John Webster, John Milbank, MLK, Thomas Merton, Karen Swallow Prior, Rene Girard, and a guy who plays Jesus at a Bible theme-park:
Brad East, Mere O, God and All Things in God: The Theology of John Webster
Peter J Leithart, Mere O, John Milbank: A Guide for the Perplexed

Gregory Thompson, Comment, The Friend We Need but Do Not Want: Martin Luther King, Jr
Jane Brox, Aeon, Disturbing the Silence

Eliza Griswold, The New Yorker, Conservative Evangelicals Attempt to Disentangle Their Faith from Trumpism
Robert Pogue Harrison, NY Review of Books, The Prophet of Envy

Nina Strochlic, National Geographic, Follow a day in the life of a theme-park Jesus

Technology:
George Dyson, Edge, Childhood's End
Chad Dickerson, Personal Blog, Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email
Nicholas Carr, LARB, Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism
McKenzie Wark, Public Seminar, The weird global media event

Ashley Feinberg, Huffington Post, Jack Dorsey Has No Clue What He Wants

Zeynep Tufecki, NYT, Adventures in the Trump Twittersphere

Cultural criticism:

Justin E H Smith, The Point, It's All Over

Anne Helen Peterson, Buzzfeed, How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
John Hamburger, The Point, What Was New Atheism?

Meghan O'Geiblyn, Paris Review, Objects of Despair: Fake Meat

Martyn Wendell Jones, Imprint Mag, The Hungry Teeth of the Ages

Jason Ā Josephson-Storm, The New Atlantis, Why Do We Think We Are Disenchanted?

Rowan Moore Gerety, The Atavist, The End of Forever

DL Mayfield, Plough, What's the Good of a School?
Brad East, Comment, The Church and the Common Good

On caring for the vulnerable:

Sarah C Williams, Plough, Perfectly Human
Frederica Mathewes-Green, National Review, When Abortion Suddenly Stopped Making Sense
Sarah Quezada, InTouch, Above All Earthly Rule

John Thornton, Sojourners, The Suffering We Scroll Past

Politics:

Charles Duhigg, The Atlantic, The Real Roots of American Rage
Damir Marusic, The American Interest, Making Up Monsters to Destroy
Emma Green, The Atlantic, Women Are Not a Monolith
Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, The Daily Scripture Feed
Elizabeth Bruenig, Medium, Only Burgers Forever Now
Elaina Plott, The Atlantic, An Obscure White House Staffer’s Jaw-Dropping Trump Tell-All
Matthew Yglesias, Vox, Elizabeth Warren’s book, The Two-Income Trap, explained
Lexington, The Economist, John Kasich, conservative orphan

Rachael Bade & Heather Caygle, Politico, Exasperated Democrats try to rein in Ocasio-Cortez

Timothy Shenk, Dissent, Right Privilege

Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, A Better Way to Look at Most Every Political Issue

Theology and Christian Life:
Fleming Rutledge, Ruminations, Whose life is it? and whose death?
Fleming Rutledge, Christian Century, Living water isn't just a metaphor
Julie Canlis, CT, The Bible's Best Description of Salvation Is a Phrase We Rarely Use
Lamin Sanneh, Christian Century, Christian missions and the Western guilt complex
Bonnie Kristian, The Week, 4 competing theories on the theological meaning of Easter

Gina Dalfonzo, CT, A Voice in the Crowd
Jessica Leep Fick, CT, The Audacity of Mary

Brandon D Smith, Mere O, Loving Others Theologically
Brad East, Marginalia, Systematic Theology and Biblical Criticism

Wesley Hill, Covenant, Cruciform Epiphany
Wesley Hill, Covenant, What Makes Romans So Powerful
Tish Harrison Warren, The Point, True Story

Somewhat paired articles – two kind of about bodies (sober musicians and a rich guy who wants to live forever); two about work (the trendy artisanal movement, and a desert monastery with a surprising relation to the internet); two on science (a bizarre signal from space and how beauty subverts utilitarian understandings of evolution); two curmudgeonly articles complaining about kids these days (one of feminism and #MeToo, and one on the secularization of language); two about stories (sad stories and local ones):
Chris Heath, GQ, Creating While Clean
Rachel Monroe, Men's Health, The Bulletproof Coffee Founder Has Spent $1 Million in His Quest to Live to 180
Ryan Avent, 1843 Mag, Crafting a Life
Jonathan Malesic, Commonweal, Taming the Demon
Marina Koren, The Atlantic, What's Better Than One Mysterious Cosmic Signal?
Ferris Jabr, NYT Mag, How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution
Katherine Kersten, First Things, False Feminism
Ewa Thompson, Modern Age, The Great Amputation: Language in the Postmodern Era
KB Hoyle, Christ & Pop Culture, Storied: The Compelling Hopefulness of Sad Stories
S Dorman, Mere O, Living Local Fiction

Miscellaneous:
Marin Alsop, NPR, Finding God, Love And The Meaning Of Life In Messiaen's 'Turangalîla-Symphonie'
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, The Leaked Louis C.K. Set Is Tragedy Masked as Comedy