“Every Last One Was a Mother to Me”: Four DC Women Live a Century of Friendship

Last updated on: April 5, 2016 at 6:32 pm By Eve Tushnet

from the Washington Post: …In Southwest Washington, people tended to live out their days in the neighborhood, and the women never imagined that their friendship would outlast its stoops and storefronts. But in the 1950s, the area was marked for urban renewal and razed, decimating the community. Nearly everything was demolished, including Zion Baptist, whose building on F Street SW was replaced by a segment of the 395 freeway. Barnes’s church, Mount Moriah Baptist, also had to move. Their congregations... Read more

Four Kinds of Argument on “True Fulfillment” for Gay Christians

Last updated on: April 2, 2016 at 10:58 am By Eve Tushnet

Tim Otto (I reviewed his book here) asks a question about those of us who call for a revival of devoted, intimate same-sex love within the historic Christian sexual ethic: [I]f Wesley is encouraging people of the same sex to “go all the way” in spiritual, emotional, and intellectual ways, why not “go all the way” with the body as well?… I’m curious as to how Wesley would respond to concerns that by singling out physical intimacy as wrong, his... Read more

A Principal, A Senator, And Two Stories of Second Chances

Last updated on: April 1, 2016 at 9:23 pm By Eve Tushnet

I’m esp struck by the role of Christian faith in both of these pieces. Nancy Hanks, “A Principal Met a Student She Expelled, And It Changed Her Approach to Discipline”: …I prayed for forgiveness for that time and any other time I betrayed the privilege given to me to be a steward and protector over the children I serve. For anytime I never just let my students just be kids. Goofy, carefree kids that make mistakes — sometimes big and... Read more

When the Last Days Come, We Shall See Visions: A Holy Week Roundup That’s Really an Excuse…

Last updated on: April 1, 2016 at 8:43 pm By Eve Tushnet

…to talk about the Mountain Goats. Once more I did my annual Mountain Goats Holy Week and once more it was awesome. Notes from this year: 1. Whoa, my sense of when these albums were made is totally off. Assumed Get Lonely and Heretic Pride were early because I don’t like them much but it turns out that’s not at all true! I still ease in with Get Lonely, but I’m now fond of that one song about the Tianchi... Read more

“The Consolations of Friendship”: Intriguing Theological Exploration

Last updated on: April 1, 2016 at 7:42 pm By Eve Tushnet

by Wesley Hill: …Perhaps this is at the heart of why Christians came to celebrate it. Friendship is a token or participation in that divine lavishness. When I travel overseas to visit a friend, spending more money than I have on plane fare and gifts that I’ve carefully selected in light of the little hobbies and secret interests of my friend that I am lucky enough to know about, I’m doing so not in order to guarantee a specific response... Read more

From What’s Probably an Afterword to Andrey Platonov, “The Foundation Pit”

Last updated on: April 1, 2016 at 7:28 pm By Eve Tushnet

this book looks super All these works appear at first glance–especially to a reader unversed in Soviet history–to be highly surreal. This impression, however, is misleading; they contain barely an incident or a passage that does not directly relate to some real event or publication from these years. Platonov’s focus is not on some private dream world but on political and historical reality–a reality so extraordinary as to be barely credible. buy book here; cf also my constant refrain, “‘Realism’... Read more

“Needing My Neighbor”: Great piece by Matthew Loftus

Last updated on: March 28, 2016 at 9:01 pm By Eve Tushnet

“I’ve always wanted to help people.” My medical school application essay opened with those words, and when I came to Baltimore at age twenty to start my medical training, I was dead-set on helping people in Africa. After two years of attending church in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, though, I fell in love with the community, so my wife and I decided to move into the neighborhood in 2009. I admired the work my church there was doing to deal with... Read more

“Love and Death in the Multiverse”: I review “Constellations”

Last updated on: March 24, 2016 at 11:55 am By Eve Tushnet

for AmCon. Sorry for radio silence! I will be back after Easter. Also this play closes THIS WEEKEND so most Catholics who haven’t seen it won’t–I fail at service journalism–but in case a review is still useful or interesting to you, here it is: Constellations, playing through March 27 on Studio Theatre’s 4th Stage in Washington, is a slender play that uses its increasingly-familiar structure to illuminate less-familiar questions. This is one of those Rashomon-like plays where we see the... Read more

Three Women Discuss What We’ve Learned from Not Having Sex

Last updated on: March 11, 2016 at 1:11 pm By Eve Tushnet

I am the lifer in the world’s most boring women in prison flick: …One woman, Kat, chose to stop having sex with her boyfriend of two and a half years as a way to strengthen her relationship with God and to gain a sense of control in her life. The other, Eve Tushnet, is the author of Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith and Amends: A Novel. She became a Catholic in college and, in doing so,... Read more

“Free-Market Labor Wins Wage Boost Victory”: Reason.com

Last updated on: March 11, 2016 at 1:00 pm By Eve Tushnet

via Jesse Walker: …The Walmart agreement is the latest, the largest, and probably the most surprising win for C.I.W. in a decade-and-a-half campaign to increase wages and ease working conditions for Florida produce workers. For free marketeers the story is how the agreements were won: entirely without government certification, regulatory backing or legal protection. C.I.W.’s innovative use of protests, pressure campaigns and solidarity boycotts to win concessions from the world’s biggest food corporations would be illegal had they stuck to... Read more