1. First off, we have from the New York Review of Books “A Tale of Two Churches.” This one doesn’t go where you think it’s going to go, and so much the better. It tells the story of two North Carolina pastors, Jay Stewart and Derrick Hawkins, one white, one black, and the joining of […]
Another Week Ends: Nihilism of Grace, Pirate Jokes, Johnny Cash, Nathan Colberg, a Chess Grandmaster, Rich Thieves, and the Punk Churches of East Germany
1. Our first link this week comes from Digital Doxa, new home to peer-reviewed “scholastic musings” about the age of the Internet. They jump off with a fantastic dispatch from Lisa Ellen Silvestri, about widespread online nihilism. As Silvestri points out, nihilism (formally “the experience of nothingness”) has proliferated across the Web in recent years, […]
Another Week Ends: Aging Presidents, Reusable Grocery Bags, the Soul of Pixar, Zero-Sum Happiness, Bad Good Books, Bomb Threats, and the Joy of Being Cancelled
1. There’s much ado about cancel culture going around the web these past two weeks. The New York Times has a pair of profiles on the new morality forming in certain circles of left-leaning activism, though to observe it on the political left is not to say that it doesn’t happen everywhere else, including the […]
Another Week Ends: Religious Decline, Peloton, Halloween Righteousness, Reformation Day, and Kanye
1a. This week featured a point-counter-point on the religious decline in America. Fewer people are going to church, particularly millennials. Accordingly, Christine Emba sees genuine cause for alarm. Millennials prefer low-cost, substitute religions (read: seculosities!), and the church may not be there as a fallback option in the future: Faith and practice can’t persevere through […]
Another Week Ends: Time-Wasting Projects, Serotonin, Destination Funerals, the Hope of Children, the Languages of Love, and Jesus is King
1. Ear Hustle is a podcast about incarceration. It shares stories about life in San Quentin prison and the reintegration into life that follows a sentence there. The final episode of the recent fourth season is a hard story of reconciliation between a police officer and the man who shot him and went to jail […]
Another Week Ends: Cursed Energy, Leaning Out, #ChillTimes, Nick Cave, Squadparenting, His Dark Materials, and Gerard Manley Hopkins
1. First up, the viral op-ed in the New York Times about “leaning out.” Author Ruth Whipmann responds to popular imperatives for people—especially women—to be more assertive, aggressive, what-have-you. Beneath these may be a motive to empower, but they’re coming, after all, in the form of demand. You know, the law. More expectations to be…more. […]
Another Week Ends: El Camino, Total Work, Acedia, More Judge Tammy, Nir Eyal, History’s Long Defeat, and the Only Character Jesus Ever Named
1. These two thuderbolts struck at the same time. First, from Judith Shulevitz, the author of The Sabbath World and writer at the Atlantic, comes “Why Don’t I See You Anymore?” a treatise on the ever-expanding workweek, and its stupefying impact on our family and social ties. Shulevitz, who you might guess from the book […]
Another Week Ends: Capital-F Forgiveness, Gracious Depravity, Performative Wellness, #GettingReal, Useless Value, and IDKHBTFM
1. It’s not every week we get to witness such a stunning display of capital-F Forgiveness, so let’s savor this one. I’m referring to Brandt Jean’s overture to his brother’s killer, Dallas police officer Amber Guyger at her sentencing: As far as I can tell, the clip makes everyone cry when they first watch it, […]
Another Week Ends: Lost Dog, Greta Thunberg, a Trip to the Future, Dubious Evangelicalism, David Powlison, Ken Burns and Lil Nas X
1. Jesus’s parable of the lost sheep is one of the great stories in the Bible, and also ever. A shepherd leaves behind everything in search of one lost sheep — and of course, it’s about more than that. It’s about humankind’s wandering nature and the tirelessness of God. But if you’ve heard the story […]
Another Week Ends: John Gray on Tom Holland, Leslie Jamison on Susan Sontag, Tavi on Tavi, Malcolm Gladwell on Friends, Sad Phoneless Pictures, and the Love of Ferns
1. Lots to chew on this weekend, including this genuinely positive (and daring!) review of a book we mentioned last week—Tom Holland’s Dominion—by one Mockingbird’s favorite atheists, John Gray, in the New Statesman. As DZ mentioned in his earlier post, Holland’s new book discusses how, despite the decline of Christendom in the West, Christianity is […]
Another Week Ends: American Simultaneity, Protestant Mercies, Melancholy Summers, Freedom Rock, Obvious Plants and more Daniel Johnston
1. Let’s start by heading straight to the jugular this week with “The Age of American Despair” by Ross Douthat in the Times. There’s not a whole lot to say that we haven’t said before, but hot on the heels of the tragic headlines about pastor Jarrid Wilson, it felt irresponsible to lead with anything […]
Another Week Ends: Vulnerable Stars, Moral Lovers, Generational Dysphoria, Wizard Rock, and Reading Under the Covers
1. Let’s start off with entertainment this week. It’s not that Brad Pitt’s star has fallen by any stretch. His turn as Cliff Booth in Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood will likely garner him another Oscar Nomination. His 2017 divorce, however, with superstar-wife Angelina Jolie and their family of six kids, hasn’t exactly been […]
