Pope Francis speaking at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad, March 5th, 2021. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). Any way you look at it, Pope Francis’ March trip to Iraq had the appearances of being rash and even reckless on the surface. This Mideast country has been ravaged by years of war and rocked more recently like…
Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash. When Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule published his article “Beyond Originalism” in The Atlantic last year, his critics saw it as a moment of revelation. The legal right, after decades of hiding behind the mask of proceduralism, had finally reared its true, authoritarian face. Criticism of the article, however,…
Photo by Angelina Kazakova on Unsplash. “Well, I personally think we should scrap the constitution,” current congressional candidate Michael Sisco proclaimed in December 2020 during an episode of his podcast The Michael Sisco Show. During that same episode, titled “The Republic is a Deception,” Sisco mentioned that he favors a form of Byzantine symphonia “where…
Photo by NASA on Unsplash. The Group of Seven nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — agreed on June 5, 2021 to promote a new global tax system. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced on July 1, 2021 that 130 of the 139 countries…
MRI Imaging by Raspbery Vibe. (CC0). If someone is an addict, does that mean he or she is immune from moral responsibility? From substance addiction to addictive behaviors, many addicts blame others, attributing their addiction problem to a source outside their control. A recent example is the case of Robert Aaron Long, the gunman responsible…
Photo by Alfons Morales on Unsplash. This article is part of our “Reflecting on Barth, Bonhoeffer and Modern Politics” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. In this brisk little book, Joshua Mauldin responds to the contemporary crisis of democracy by taking up three related topics: theological criticisms of modernity…
Photo by Artem Zhukov on Unsplash. This article is part of our “At Home and Abroad” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This essay was originally read at Columbia University’s IRCPL event on March 17, 2021. In the American Examples project at the University of Alabama, the idea of American…
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash. Introduction The coronavirus pandemic has robbed us all of something. My brother works for the state of Texas, and he still hasn’t returned to his office, having been away for more than a year. My elderly parents caught the virus early this year. Even after recovering, they have…
Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash. This article is part of our “Reflecting on Barth, Bonhoeffer and Modern Politics” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. From his very first line, Joshua Mauldin establishes immediately what is at stake in his new thought-provoking volume Barth, Bonhoeffer, & Modern Politics: “Modern…
Photo by Utsav Srestha on Unsplash. This article is part of our “Reflecting on Barth, Bonhoeffer and Modern Politics” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Beloved author J.R.R. Tolkien survived the First World War’s trenches, confronted the intellectual challenges and questions of modernity, and then wrote his epic works…