What Does Healthy Campus Debate Look Like?

Last updated on: March 10, 2020 at 3:24 pm By John Ehrett

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of listening to a fascinating discussion/debate between Villanova University professors Mary Hirschfeld and Eugene McCarraher. Both have written excellent books on the intersection of Christian faith and economics: Hirschfeld, who holds dual Ph.D. degrees in economics and theology, lays out a Thomistic approach to mainline economics in Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy, while McCarraher argues for a Romanticism-inflected socialism in his monumental The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became... Read more

“The Decadent Society” Misses the Mark

Last updated on: March 8, 2020 at 12:23 pm By John Ehrett

It is a truth universally acknowledged (or, well, it should be) that Ross Douthat is far-and-away the best columnist at the New York Times. When I click through to a Douthat column, I already know that I’m going to read something quite different from the center-left party line that dominates most of the paper. (A few years ago I wrote here about one of his more astute cultural observations.) Alas, the same cannot be said of his books. From Bad... Read more

Originalism Without a Constitution?

Last updated on: March 4, 2020 at 9:08 pm By John Ehrett

I recently came across a compelling article by Sebastian Milbank (son of the eminent English theologian John Milbank), which takes issue with the undemocratic practices of European courts. Milbank points to the decision by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court to identify a “right to self-determined death” in German constitutional law, as well as the European Court of Human Rights’s determination that the placement of crucifixes in Italian classrooms violated student’s rights. In neither case could the court’s decision be justified according... Read more

How to Lose a Generation: Against Tony Morgan’s Worship Quick-Fixes

Last updated on: February 29, 2020 at 1:19 pm By John Ehrett

As a general rule, I try to be a pretty charitable reader. Most of the time, I can manage to put a positive spin on an argument I disagree with—because most of the time, there’s a kernel of truth to be extracted. (This principle generally keeps me from getting too outraged by the Internet.) Every once in a while, though, I happen on a piece that’s wrong on so many different levels that the presumption of “there’s a good insight... Read more

Aristotle and the Architecture of Gotham City

Last updated on: February 15, 2020 at 1:17 pm By John Ehrett

Last week, my wife and I swung by the local movie theater to take in the disastrously titled DC flick Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). It’s an enjoyable, if not exactly profound, entry in the comic-book-movie canon—far more memorable than the average Marvel installment, and with remarkably well-choreographed martial-arts sequences. But beyond the obvious things, there was one element of the film that I particularly enjoyed, one that typically doesn’t seem to come up... Read more

Why Do People Love Literature, Anyway?

Last updated on: February 9, 2020 at 1:43 pm By John Ehrett

In the last month or so, I’ve come across a number of excellent essays on a common theme: the realm of English literature, in both the academy and the marketplace, is imploding. On the academic front, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the leading trade publication for universities and faculty, released a package of essays entitled “Endgame” centered around the thesis that “the academic study of literature is no longer on the verge of field collapse. It’s in the midst of... Read more

Big Architecture Hates You

Last updated on: February 10, 2020 at 8:54 pm By John Ehrett

A few days ago, the Trump administration leaked a draft executive order, “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” that purports to revise the principles governing the construction of federal office buildings. It’s quite good—in fact, I’d classify the proposed order as one of the most irrefutably positive choices this administration has made. The order observes—correctly—that modern federal architecture “range[s] from the undistinguished to designs the public widely consider[s] uninspiring, inconsistent with their surroundings and the architectural heritage of a region, and... Read more

Why I Go Out to the Movies

Last updated on: January 20, 2020 at 9:12 pm By John Ehrett

A few days ago, I ran across an interesting business article tracking the continued decline of cinema-based moviegoing in the U.S. That, in turn, made me ask myself why I love seeing films in proper theaters and don’t especially love the emerging trend of shunting new releases directly onto Netflix or Amazon Prime. Of course there are advantages of the emerging model—cost, convenience, accessibility to folks who don’t have the time or money to pay for a cinema outing—but I... Read more

The Power of “A Hidden Life”

Last updated on: January 16, 2020 at 8:19 pm By John Ehrett

The films of director Terrence Malick are certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. They’re long, sprawling, meditative experiences that largely eschew plot in favor of impressionistic imagery, aiming to evoke a sense of transcendence through sweeping visuals of nature and the intimate dimensions of human life. From The Tree of Life to Knight of Cups, Malick’s movies leave open few entry points for the audience: one either fully commits to Malick’s inimitable vision or finds his work totally opaque. The astonishing... Read more

The Southern Baptist Breakdown

Last updated on: January 9, 2020 at 10:49 pm By John Ehrett

For better or for worse, there’s not that much internal drama among Missouri Synod Lutherans—or, at least, internal drama that’s interesting to those in other traditions. By contrast, the last few years have witnessed some much higher-profile debates within other denominations: the United Methodist Church’s “conservative turn” following an influx of African members; Presbyterians’ debate about LGBT identity following the “Revoice” conference; and now Southern Baptists’ conversation about critical theory and the church. That conversation is the centerpiece of By... Read more