Posts by Matthew Anderson
Douthat’s tepid defense of traditional marriage
Ros Douthat’s endorsement of traditional marriage is about as tepid as you’ll find, down to being nearly incoherent. He wants to talk about the ideal, but then let it go when it becomes socially inconvenient. He’s worried—rightly—about being called a bigot, but attempting to straddle both sides won’t satisfy anyone.
Read MoreExpecting to change the world: A reply to James Davison Hunter
Conservative evangelicals are held captive by stories of secular institutions who refuse to allow the Christian worldview into their discourse about the nature of the world, stories which are used well to raise funds, but which reinforce a culture of negation and hostility toward those with whom we differ.
Read MoreA sword between the sexes
Van Leeuwen’s book is a provocative and thorough study of both Lewis the author and Lewis the man.
Read MoreThe aesthetics of sports
Both bad officiating and good officiating take their meaning–like everything else–in the eschaton, in the final resolution of the game, both in itself and in its relationship to its broader cultural context.
Read MoreChesterton’s orthodoxy as the antidote to modernity
Chesterton is the anti-Nietsche—a poet-philosopher who understands that unless truth exists, the enterprises of art and beauty are rendered meaningless.
Read MoreNeither beast nor God: Gilbert Meilander on personal dignity
*Neither Beast nor God* explores the way in which birth, breeding, and death offend our sense of human dignity (and the ways in which human dignity must be maintained in those acts), and how human dignity and personal dignity relate to each other.
Read MoreDesiring the kingdom: why worldview is not enough
Drawing upon Augustine and the phenomenological tradition, James K.A. Smith argues that instead, humans should be viewed fundamentally, though not exclusively, as lovers, and—post regeneration—primarily as lovers of the Kingdom.
Read MoreThe Gospel and proper political engagement: reflections on the atonement and Christendom
The secular space that the exists between now and the eschaton is the space in which the Church enacts its mission, which is a mission both to people and to the nations and societies that they compose. This allows us to approach politics from a different vantage point—one that is integrated into and reflects the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Read MoreFind the good and praise it: patrol’s post-evangelicalism
We must be evangelicalism’s harshest critics because we are her biggest fans. Only from such a position of loyalty and love will we be able to see evangelicalism as she is: always broken and dying, yet still being reborn and renewed from within.
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