Just a few recent pieces of note that others may find of interest: A wonderful essay by Alasdair MacIntrye: “The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University” over at Commonweal (HT: Jeff Bouman) Martin Marty on “theocracy” in Sightings Brian Leiter, with whom I’m not often prone to agree, has an interesting post…
Last spring I taught a seminar on “Urban Altruism” that explored the material conditions of community–how aspects of urban planning, architecture, and other social arrangements either foster or detract from community-building (friendships, civic concern, neighbor-love, etc.). Two recent reports confirm much of what we discussed in the class: 1. This past summer the American Sociological…
[Breaking blog silence here. General craziness has kept me from spending much time on Fors Clavigera. What blogging time/energy I’ve had has gone into The Church and Postmodern Culture blog and Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank.] The New York Times recently published an interesting series of articles on the ways in which religious organizations receive all…
For the sixth time since 1999, our family is making a cross-country trek to California: 1 minivan, 2 adults, 4 kids, 2200 miles (x2), 3 days, 6 people/hotel room. You do the math. But there’s no better way to see America–indeed, no more “American” way to see America–than to drive it. In particular, I was…
Fors Clavigera was launched in an Orwellian spirit disappointed, frustrated, and at times frightened by a world too much like that of 1984. While posts along that line have subsided, the external realities have not. Today’s local paper carried several articles that confirm the point: A New York Times piece noting that the “family values”…
Frustrations with what passes for the “left” AND “right” in this country have found me re-considering the possibility that I might be a “conservative” (!). Of course this has nothing whatsoever to do with the kabal of free-market revolutionaries who somehow convinced the world that they were conservatives. Rather, I mean a good, old, real…