“It’s possible to read philosophy because it spurs denser thinking and not because it has a truer aim.” Todd Shy on philosophy and belief in New York City.

Athens and Jerusalem by Way of Manhattan’s High Line

Todd Shy reflects on life and faith as he walks the streets of New York.

comment.org

“It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to see the distinction between presence and attention, because the two things look, from the outside, identical. But presence is a fact about location, while attention is a fact about the self.”

Attention Is a Form of Love

Being in the room is not the same as being there.

comment.org

“If materialists are the party of the head and the Romantics are the party of the heart, the religious worldview celebrates both those parts of our nature but also acknowledges the yearnings of the soul.” David Brooks on Christopher Beha’s journey out of atheism.

More Than Evolution Requires

What do you believe when you stop believing in atheism? David Brooks reviews Christopher Beha's intellectual odyssey from Catholic faith to unbelief and back again.

comment.org

“It was impossible to have a family event, even a tragic one, without some odd, comic quality. But it was beautiful, and my mother would have delighted in its awkward surprises, always on the side of audacity.”

Infancies

In preparing my mother for death, we were mysteriously preparing her for life.

comment.org

“Attention is the price of admission to your own life. What you do not attend to, you do not live; and what you do not live, you cannot afterward remember having loved.”

Attention Is a Form of Love

Being in the room is not the same as being there.

comment.org

“All things are dying and rising, labouring and being laboured forth.” Abigail Dees on death and new life.

Infancies

In preparing my mother for death, we were mysteriously preparing her for life.

comment.org

“What I had been stingy with was attention, which is to say I had been generous with everything except the one currency a child can actually feel.” Attila Rebak on attention as a form of love.

Attention Is a Form of Love

Being in the room is not the same as being there.

comment.org

“Even during the high moments when I was worshipping culture and all those great books, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the genius secular saints the Romantics admired were actually selfish jerks.”

More Than Evolution Requires

What do you believe when you stop believing in atheism? David Brooks reviews Christopher Beha's intellectual odyssey from Catholic faith to unbelief and back again.

comment.org

“Art is less a means of expressing oneself or illustrating what is already known and more a means of inquiry, in which the artist begins in deficit and works and makes toward greater clarity.”

At the Edge of Words

Art can be a means of disclosure.

comment.org

“Loving language in this era of chatbots, digital scams, and AI hallucinations has, for me, meant coming to terms with language’s limits and its deadening, anti-human capacities, but also hewing close to its inexhaustible communicatory flames.”

Loving Language Despite Its Deceit

A look at how language and silence reveal and conceal the world.

comment.org

“What binds these communal witnesses is not so much sameness of method as a learned revelation that to be human is to become human together, in the patient company of the living and the dead, over a horizon longer than any one life.”

Seedbeds of Christian Humanism

The Christian humanist tradition has been fed through the centuries not just by individuals but by friendships and communities of conscience.

comment.org

“The twentieth-century monoculture of which Graham was able to avail himself is no more, including within evangelicalism.”

There Will Never Be Another Billy Graham

Some scholars have criticized the so-called Bebbington quadrilateral, which is considered the classic definition of evangelicalism. But Bonnie Kristian argues that it holds up.

comment.org

“Against those who falsely assume that monotheism underwrites the earth’s exploitation, Frymer-Kensky shows that monotheism is what inaugurated the possibility for human accountability in respect to nature.”

The Roots of Gender

Goddess feminism boasts an ancient matriarchal civilization, but what the movement longs for is corrected and fulfilled in Christianity.

comment.org

“Unmasking can feel liberating (or maybe vindicating) for a time, but its dopamine left me light and drifting, with nowhere to settle or stand.”

Athens and Jerusalem by Way of Manhattan’s High Line

Todd Shy reflects on life and faith as he walks the streets of New York.

comment.org

“It’s about beliefs, not as abstract propositions we hold in our minds, but in that robust sense that also speaks to faithful life and practice.” Bonnie Kristian on defining evangelicalism.

There Will Never Be Another Billy Graham

Some scholars have criticized the so-called Bebbington quadrilateral, which is considered the classic definition of evangelicalism. But Bonnie Kristian argues that it holds up.

comment.org

In the latest episode of The Understory podcast, @read.lukeburgis.com and @angeladuckworth.bsky.social ask what it takes to become a real, solid self in a world built to pull us into borrowed identities and crowd approval.

How Does a Person Become Real?

Luke Burgis and psychologist Angela Duckworth explore what it takes to become a solid self—rooted, free, and resistant to imitation.

comment.org

“The security of knowledge and religious certainty turned out to be a sterile, lonely cell.” James K.A. Smith on the false security of certainty.

Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark

James K.A. Smith built his life on philosophical certainty until depression, poetry, and a battered copy of "Dark Night of the Soul" taught him the liberation of unknowing.

comment.org

“While there are many ways to explore the Christian humanist tradition, one particularly inspiring way is through the friendships and communities of conscience that have congealed in different shapes and forms during times of historical tumult.”

Seedbeds of Christian Humanism

The Christian humanist tradition has been fed through the centuries not just by individuals but by friendships and communities of conscience.

comment.org

“With its thousands of daily distractions, the city paradoxically presses me to pay attention to what matters.” Todd Shy reflects on belief in New York City.

Athens and Jerusalem by Way of Manhattan’s High Line

Todd Shy reflects on life and faith as he walks the streets of New York.

comment.org

“Evangelicalism is our country’s most politically significant and controversial religious bloc. Clarity and charity are not only matters of religious import but relevant to the whole of our society.” Bonnie Kristian on evangelicalism.

There Will Never Be Another Billy Graham

Some scholars have criticized the so-called Bebbington quadrilateral, which is considered the classic definition of evangelicalism. But Bonnie Kristian argues that it holds up.

comment.org

“Gender is not merely a social construct but a gift, a gift that all of us—even those we might consider to be quintessentially masculine or feminine—have imperfectly received.” Matthew J. Milliner on gender.

The Roots of Gender

Goddess feminism boasts an ancient matriarchal civilization, but what the movement longs for is corrected and fulfilled in Christianity.

comment.org

“A mother’s love is not replaceable. It cannot be made by superior intelligences in the dark pathways of data centres.” Rachel Roth Aldhizer on what a machine can’t make.

The Labour of Presence

A woman's work, the work of care and presence, is something a machine cannot replace.

comment.org

“If work isn’t a mechanism for notoriety or title, but something much more ordinary and earthbound, couldn’t we be free from so much of the vain striving we see within and all around us?”

Soiled Work

A look at the dirty work the "faith and work" conversation often forgets.

comment.org

“Our myth is that we live in a secular age based on self-evident truths such as human rights. In fact, we live in the age of Hitler, and our religion is World War II.”

Hitler, Jesus, and the Culture War

The clearest moral compass we have in our culture is that Hitler is evil. But is that enough to sustain a society?

comment.org

“The notion that all truth is God's truth makes Christianity inherently integrative and interdisciplinary.” Jens Zimmermann on what makes a humanism Christian.

Defining Christian Humanism

The roots of Christian humanism begin in the incarnation, and the tradition extends through history to today.

comment.org

“When you’re young, it’s easy to confuse strength with dominance; when you’re older, if you’re lucky, you realize the feat of character it takes to be meek.” James K.A. Smith on learning to live with uncertainty.

Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark

James K.A. Smith built his life on philosophical certainty until depression, poetry, and a battered copy of "Dark Night of the Soul" taught him the liberation of unknowing.

comment.org

"At midlife, I had come to understand that leaving this tiny Appalachian town had been the most consequential act of my life. I still felt a strong pull back there." Steven Kurutz on the decline of his hometown.

Demolition Day

A New York Times writer returns to the dying small Pennsylvania town where he was raised to bay it homage.

comment.org

“The magic of the written word has always been its capacity to float free and leap the gulfs of time, geography, and culture. But our alienated age has made me wonder whether those vast scales can, over time, attenuate the more intimate bonds that language also nurtures.”

Loving Language Despite Its Deceit

A look at how language and silence reveal and conceal the world.

comment.org

“True depravity exists, but for most humans it’s surprisingly hard to sustain. Because of the soul’s yearning for goodness, most of us would find a meaningless life intolerable, filled with despair, and so we hunger for virtue.” David Brooks on human nature and the hunger for virtue.

More Than Evolution Requires

What do you believe when you stop believing in atheism? David Brooks reviews Christopher Beha's intellectual odyssey from Catholic faith to unbelief and back again.

comment.org

“The alphabet became more than a practical tool. It bound together religion, language, and identity in ways that endure to this day.” Arthur Aghajanian on the Armenian alphabet and Christian identity.

An Alphabet for Theophany

Armenian letters are a threshold for participating in the sacred.

comment.org