“The question before us is make-or-break: What kind of future did Christ actually inaugurate? If he came to be a doorway, not a stop sign, what is the path for those reborn into his life?”
Anne Snyder on the heresy of hope in a world stripped of cosmos.
“I’m always struck by how little Muslims have in common when it comes to a lot of things that you might think everyone agrees on, but they’re divided. They look like America.”
@DMogahed
joins
@shadihamid
and
@matthewkaemingk
on a new
#zealotspod
.
“The Constitution is neither a left-wing or right-wing document. It is ultimately about how to hold a society together.”
On a new episode of Conversing, Yuval Levin joins Mark Labberton to discuss how we find social cohesion amid sharply felt differences.
“God is closer to each thing than each thing can be to itself, yet he is not those things. He is not a facet of Being. Rather, Being is a facet of him.”
Join Dionysius the Areopagite and
@millinerd
on a mystical journey at the Met.
It's time to do pluralism differently.
A new season of Zealots at the Gate with
@shadihamid
and
@matthewkaemingk
will premiere on Wednesday, May 29. Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you stream podcasts. You won't want to miss it.
#zealotspod
“If it were easy for us to see the ways we live in denial, it wouldn’t be denial.”
Chris Owen on why confronting painful truths is essential for personal and societal healing and belonging.
🎉Publication day!🎉
To celebrate the release of Breaking Ground, we're GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES. To enter, reply below and mention *any writer* you want others to know about. Retweet = bonus entry. Contest closes Jan 5 at 5pm ET.
Can't wait? Purchase here:
“Coercing people to faith is a really bad idea just because it doesn’t really work and it often backfires.”
On a new episode of
#zealotspod
,
@JohnInazu
joins
@matthewkaemingk
and
@shadihamid
to discuss navigating religious and political differences.
“It was hard for me to accept this idea that productivity has to go down, and not just that, that it *should* go down.”
@shadihamid
and
@matthewkaemingk
discuss the “unreasonableness” of fasting on a new episode of
#zealotspod
.
Watch the full episode:
Our relationship to material goods determines our character, writes Brian Hamilton—a slow process of moral formation that we've forgotten in the utilitarian, systems-oriented approach that defines modern economic thinking.
It is rare to find a person who says they are happy with the relationship they have with their devices. If these things are harming us all, how much more are they harming the most vulnerable?
@PhilipDBunn
reviews The Anxious Generation by
@JonHaidt
.
Hospitality plays a central role in public memory, writes
@_wgthompson
in a new installment of The Welcome Table, for it is at our tables that we share and retell the stories that give form and substance to our collective identity.
"Only people prepared to lose friends will prove good friends."
@JamesACMumford
makes the case for friendship built on challenge and truth-telling, not affirmation and non-judgmentalism.
Dave Hillis writes about the grace and freedom that form the foundation of truly hospitable leadership.
"We are shaped by our relationality long before our rationality."
On a new episode of Conversing, Mark Labberton reflects on how sacred spaces can transform our understanding of the gospel’s invitation. What do our buildings communicate to others? To ourselves?
On a new episode of
#zealotspod
,
@drmoore
discusses the political future of American evangelicalism and the rise of “secular” evangelical politics, exploring how evangelicalism has become politicized and secularized in American political life.
Rule
#10
for the bookish life:
Find a place to read where you can learn the art of appearing still yet moving with great speed over vast distances, quiet yet in the full thrum of a resonant inner life.
🌷 Our spring issue is out now! Subscribe and get fresh, thought-provoking essays in a beautifully-designed format. It goes beyond empty pondering and instead looks at how we actually engage in the difficult work of being faithfully present in culture.
We just sent our fall issue off to the printer! In this issue,
@KatecBowler
,
@JemarTisby
,
@LMSacasas
,
@_wgthompson
, and more explore the forces that dehumanize us—and what it looks like to respond with dignity and love.
Subscribe by Sept 30 to get a copy.
Where is history headed? What kind of future did Jesus inaugurate, and how does it guide us now? How any one of us answers these questions says a lot about our sensibilities, our teleology, and our hope.
🐋 Subscribe now to get our fall issue!
“Change happens when a small group of people finds a better way to live, and the rest of us copy them.”
@nytdavidbrooks
on moral ecologies and social change.
"Collective infrastructural systems that are resilient, sustainable, and globally equitable provide the means for us to care for each other at scale. They are a commitment to our shared humanity."
“Catholicism, in particular, and I think Christianity in general, should stand a little bit outside of partisan categories.”
@DouthatNYT
joins Mark Labberton to discuss how his faith and theological commitments ground his moral and political views.
Why does society increasingly view forgiveness as something problematic, even unjust?
@timkellernyc
explores the reasons and offers a framework for recovering forgiveness.
“I wonder whether I am witnessing the genuine adoption of an identity or a consumer for whom sampling the spice of nationalist fervour is just one of the commercial choices you’re offered when you purchase a cell phone.”
@PhilKlay
on proxy nationalism.
“If we don’t like some of the versions of masculinity currently on offer, it’s up to us to fix that, rather than to pathologize the idea of masculinity itself.”
@RichardvReeves
on what men are for.
"Contemporary art was steeped in irony and cynicism, mixed with elitism and a fetishization of the art object. It seemed impossible to make something that was true." —
@PageauJonathan
We've been up to n̶o̶ good.
🧵 Comment has become an indispensable cultural reservoir for those who want to bring healing to our common life. Despite all the challenges facing public discourse today, when we look to our community of writers and readers, we have immense hope.
"The biblical narrative includes a very important temporal pause button that the Dominionists ignore: we await the kingdom, we don’t impose it."
@james_ka_smith
"Many women find that female bodies and female fertility are expected to be standardized and made 'safe' to be welcome in the world," writes
@LeahLibresco
.
How can we stop treating women's bodies as problems to be solved?
“Like so many veterans, I’ve often wished that the public writ large would approach war with a sense of the vast human cost of the thing.”
@PhilKlay
on the age of proxy nationalism.
"We have long theological and intellectual traditions that foreground the vanishing, that wrestle with mortality. But our traditions around birth are less reflective."
@jenniferabanks
writes about natality and the miraculous gift of new beginnings.
“If [the anointing] is a sign of the gift of the Holy Spirit, that the king needs a wisdom beyond his own, it will be a sign that we too need wisdom beyond our own.”
@gtomlin
joins
@shadihamid
and
@matthewkaemingk
to talk
#Coronation
.
Full episode:
Home. It’s as much a feeling as it is a place. Even for those with idyllic childhoods, it becomes ground for negotiation. Our new issue delves into these dynamics, at the personal, communal, and national levels. Subscribe before May 15 to get your copy!
“We are seeking to do what we at Comment are always seeking to do: to rehumanize our age, to respond with compassion, to nourish our collective longing for wholeness and belonging, order and freedom.”
Anne Snyder introduces our new issue on gender.
In case you don't get our newsletter, we are VERY excited to welcome
@jwilson1812
as our interim guest editor for the SPRING 2019 issue! It's kind of like a Books & Culture throwback issue with LOTS of great reviews already in the works. Stay tuned for more!
What is the connection between prayer and politics for Muslims and Christians?
@shadihamid
and
@matthewkaemingk
challenge each other with a series of tough questions, and the results are illuminating.
Episode 11 of Zealots at the Gate is out now.
Kintsugi goes beyond restoration, to a new creation. It proves that something can be more beautifully broken and mended than it was before it even broke.
"While football players are pointing skyward, giving God a bit of credit, the Jesus they claim to worship is outside the stadium."
Matthew Vos on the Super Bowl and idolatry.
WRITE FOR COMMENT.
Our summer issue will explore SOCIAL ISOLATION. Are you affected by it? OR, are you creating healthy communities that combat it? No matter who or where you are, we want to hear your stories on the ground.
Interested? Send us a note: comment
@cardus
.ca
The latest issue of Comment is available at 700+ stores throughout the United States and Canada. Find the magazine at Books-A-Million, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, Chapters/Indigo, and a growing number of independent bookstores.
Pick up a copy near you!
The Israel-Hamas war is barely two weeks old and we are witnessing a collective religious failure. How should people interpret and respond to this political and religious cataclysm?
Join
@shadihamid
and
@matthewkaemingk
for a special
#zealotspod
.
We're pleased to announce a new project!
@BrkngGround
is a collaborative web commons that seeks to respond to this unusual moment by bringing together careful thinkers and dedicated doers steeped in Christian imagination.
Brad East reviews
@audreywatters
's Teaching Machines, calling her a "secular prophet."
We might scoff at the idea that teachers can be made redundant by machines, but the prevalence of the idea says something dire about modern philosophies of education.
“The scandal at the heart of Beaty’s book is the enabling organizations and the collapse of institutional ethics—a dangerous pragmatism married to a startlingly idealistic naïveté.”
@rjoustra
reviews
@KatelynBeaty
’s book Celebrities for Jesus.
"A secret prayer turned in me, a desire to participate fully in the life of the church as an artist, finally—integrating my faith with my art-making, making objects that were true not only in message and form but also in purpose." —
@PageauJonathan
At a time when the forces of atomization seem irresistible, many are questioning: Is redemptive, unifying social change even possible? Join the
@trinityforum
and
@commentmag
on Oct 24 for an Evening Conversation with
@davidmbailey
&
@ahc
.
🎟 Register:
“The notion that one could embrace an identity in Christ and leave behind one’s sense of place and cultural identity was, in the end, a delusion.”
@AlbertoLaRosa90
with a theology of migrant experience.
“Leaders have drawn people from a faith that subordinates work to other ends, such as evangelism or contemplative piety, to a faith that sacralizes work, casting it in religious terms.”
David Robinson reviews Andrew Lynn's “Saving the Protestant Ethic.”
“My definition of fundamentalism is the total rejection of doubt.”
Is secular fundamentalism a thing? Is doubt actually good?
@matthewkaemingk
and
@shadihamid
discuss on a new episode of
#zealotspod
.
Full episode:
Can the American Left make space for deep religious commitment?
@ebruenig
joins
@shadihamid
and
@matthewkaemingk
to discuss how people of faith contribute to secular politics while maintaining their “strange” religious identity.
#zealotspod
Why is it that the church, which the final book of its most holy text indicates will be composed of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, is often so unprepared to welcome demographic and cultural diversity?
@JemarTisby
"To forget the body is to forget our dependence, our frailty, our limitations. To forget these aspects of our embodiment is also to forget the value, indeed the necessity, of humility, generosity, care, patience, and mercy." —
@LMSacasas
Can Muslims be feminists? Should they be? This week,
@shadihamid
and
@matthewkaemingk
speak with
@Hadia_Mubarak
, a self-described Muslim feminist, about the role and place of women in Islam.
You won't want to miss this episode of
#zealotspod
.
"In Christianity properly understood, there isn’t a sacred language. Some might say Latin was, but it wasn’t. The gospel can only really be heard in dialect."
“Acceleration is a disease that promises victory over the crisis of decline but ends in spiritual disaster. The “good” future is a mirage. Once you get there, there is always another future to chase. You never get to rest. There is never enough.”
Some tips for intellectual hospitality:
- Read widely.
- Cultivate curiosity.
- Don't engage with straw men.
- Allow people to change their minds.
- Avoid unnecessary provocation.
More on reviving intellectual hospitality here from
@CherieHarder
:
“Dreher’s is a rhetorically powerful vision; an account that appeals to both the apocalyptic and the heroic impulses of our imaginations.”
But it’s also fundamentally fuelled by fear, Greg Thompson writes in his review of
@RodDreher
’s latest.
"More and more, just having a space where people gather, especially people of different ages and ideologies, is shocking and very, very uncomfortable if people don’t practice that regularly."
@Tish_H_Warren
"Our technological milieu has generated an environment that is inhospitable to the experience of wonder, an experience foundational to the pursuit of the highest human aspirations."
@LMSacasas
writes on refusing numbness and recovering wonder.
"War is not as distant, incomprehensible, and otherworldly as many of us who have not experienced it on our own soil think."
Irena Dragaš Jansen reflects on Ukraine.
"If my own very small experience had such a powerful social and psychological pull, how does anybody who’s even a very minor social media celebrity have anything approaching a normal life?"
@jreimr
reflects on a tweet of his home library going viral.
Why is it that the church, which the final book of its most holy text indicates will be composed of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, is often so unprepared to welcome demographic and cultural diversity?
@JemarTisby
"A secret prayer turned in me, a desire to participate fully in the life of the church as an artist, finally—integrating my faith with my art-making, making objects that were true not only in message and form but also in purpose." —
@PageauJonathan