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…
First, given what I’ll say in a moment, let me state for the record (again!) that I am no fan, supporter or sympathizer of the Religious Right. To the contrary. But there seems to be no shortage of Christian scholars, pundits, and armchair cultural critics pointing out the inadequacies, inconsistencies, and injustices of the Religious…