Stanley Fish notes the similarities in the right-wing and left-wing criticisms of the modern university. Patrick Deneen calls for public liberal arts education, not careerist college education, for all citizens.…

(Yeah, I’m proud of that title.) Who should determine the course of Christian theology–pastors or professors? (I guess no one’s arguing for bloggers or, um, English teachers.) A model for…

NYC vs. MFA: Two Literary Cultures that together define American literary fiction Why monarchism might be the only hope for Democracy Francis Fukuyama speculates on the conspicuous absence of a…

Teka Childress interviews four writers on distributionism as a follow-up to last week’s introduction. Christ the Center talks politics with civility and intelligence. CCEL offers a selection of historic Christian…

Israeli chess grandmaster Alik Gershon sets a world record by  beating 458 of 523 opponents simultaneously. Jenny Truax introduces distributism, an alternative to capitalism and socialism and communism. John Stackhouse…

Revised Common Lectionary Page for 31 October 2010 (23rd Sunday after Pentecost, Year C) Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 and Psalm 119:137-144 •Isaiah 1:10-18 and Psalm 32:1-7 •2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12 •Luke 19:1-10 I…

On Joel Marks’s conversion to “desirism” How the recent suicides have changed Evangelicals’ treatment of homosexuals. Jeremy Beer (who has a great name) calls for fresh scholarship on the taxonomy…

Susan McWilliams laments that Modern Family has benefits that actual modern life has stripped away from most families. Patrick Deneen wonders whether 18th-century liberalism had inherent in its project the…

Gain some perspective on the sizes of things in the universe. Gain some perspective on the relative volumes of communications traffic. The Kindlings Muse has another great lecture from one…

Revised Common Lectionary Page for 10 October 2010 (20th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C) Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 and Psalm 66:1-12 • 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c and Psalm 111 • 2…

In an effort to be more like every other blog, we’re going to start having an occasional post of links to interesting articles. Our debut installment: Why Glenn Beck isn’t…

This week’s music is the 1982 Daniel Amos classic “The Double,” one of the few songs I know about Platonism. It’s crazy out of print (and just crazy), so it…

Today’s “On the Square” article from First Things is an interesting exploration of the decline of conservative social values, even as conservative economic values continue to rise. Far be it…

I dislike Walden so intensely and thoroughly that I’ve somehow avoided reading Henry David Thoreau’s other great masterwork, the much shorter “Civil Disobedience,” until this year. The joke was on…

I have no idea where Gilmour and Grubbs have been–unless the end of the semester came with such a rush of relief that their heads exploded. I’m working on a…