I come from Colorado Springs, a conservative town. I go to school at a liberal law school in the northeast. As such, I get swamped with political rhetoric from the left and right, and much of it is seething. Like those around me, I often fall into the trap of partisanship. The self-congratulation that comes from condemning a political rival is delicious, but it has consequences, the worst of which is my assumption about people on the other side. I... Read more
Does a moral, psychological “point of no return” exist? Shakespeare illustrates what this turning point might look like in Act III of Macbeth. After killing his king and one of his closest friends, Macbeth, the newly crowned king, announces to his wife, I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er. Strange things I have in head, that will to hand, which must be acted ere they may... Read more
I am twenty-three years old, and I am spending my summer taking Intermediate Latin at Notre Dame. I’m not even doing it for credit; officially, I’ve fulfilled my Master’s program’s ancient language requirements, having already taken Latin I and II. I question my decision at times, especially when I am sitting on my back porch in the summer evenings, covered in a blanket of crumpled notes on participles and infinitives and deponent verbs and semi-deponent verbs, attempting to translate Cicero’s... Read more
The Gospel Coalition recently posted an article by Darren Carlson entitled “Why You Should Consider Cancelling Your Short-Term Missions Trips.” Carlson argues that many short-term mission trips are centered around making the “senders” feel good about serving—while actually failing to benefit the recipients and even sometimes causing more harm than good. He gives several concrete examples of this, such as, “houses in Latin America that have been painted 20 times by 20 different short-term teams; fake orphanages in Uganda erected... Read more
This weekend I had the privilege of gathering with a group of Fare Forward writers and readers on the (honest and truly) sublime Maryland coast to consider the subject of “Public Christianity in the 21st Century.” While the weekend’s conversations spanned topics from gender to post-modernism to Korean birthday customs, a thread that stood out to me was the concept of “institutional thinking” introduced to the group by Adam Myers, a current student at Yale Divinity School. His presentation focused... Read more
Editor’s Note: As regular blog readers will have seen yesterday, a big topic at the recent Fare Forward symposium was the the Christian vocation to be faithfully present in institutions. Coincidentally, noted Christian public intellectual Andy Crouch published at the same time a piece on institutional life in Christianity today. Based on whether you like to talk about institutions or not, this timing was either something providential or a bit more sinister. Either way, we thought it provided a good jumping off place to continue the... Read more
A friend recently gave me the autobiography of a Benedictine nun at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut, entitled The Ear of the Heart. In the first part, Dolores Hart, also known as the girl who first kissed Elvis, tells how she left a promising career in Hollywood, and broke off her engagement to a great guy, in order to enter the convent. The decision looked dramatic, but from Dolores’ perspective, it was a simple act of attention to... Read more
If I say to you that no one has time to finish, that the longest human life leaves a man, in any branch of learning, a beginner, I shall seem to you to be saying something quite academic and theoretical. You would be surprised if you knew how soon one begins to feel the shortness of the tether, of how many things, even in middle life, we have to say “No time for that,” “Too late now,” and “Not for... Read more
Michael Hannon: Lumen Fidei is a fine title for Pope Francis’ first encyclical, but I can’t help but think that After Faith might have been even more apropos. For in this letter to the Christian faithful, the Holy Father does for doctrinal enquiry what Alasdair MacIntyre did for ethical inquiry more than thirty years ago in After Virtue. With a nod to Nietzsche, Pope Francis—primarily through the pen of his predecessor—begins by noting the sterile nature of contemporary understandings of... Read more
In last Saturday’s New York Times, Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster critique the “pursuit of authenticity” that has pervaded American spirituality in the past few decades. Titling their piece, “The Gospel According to ‘Me’,” Critchley and Webster describe America’s transition from a society rooted in Judeo-Christian morals to one characterized by “a weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality tied to a personal ethic of authenticity and a liturgy of inwardness.” Spirituality has become an “eat-pray-love” sense of peace with oneself,... Read more
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