About Barbara J. Elliott

Barbara J. Elliott (1951-2026) was a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. She was a Fellow of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. She was Scholar-in-Residence, and Assistant Professor in the Honors College, of Houston Christian University. Professor Elliott was the President of the Center for Cultural Renewal, and the founder of the WorkFaith Connection. She authored five books, including Street Saints: Renewing America’s Cities. She received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights from the President of the United States in 2001. As an American journalist based in Germany during the Cold War, she interviewed those who risked their freedom and their lives to resist Communism resulting in her book Candles Behind the Wall: Heroes of the Peaceful Revolution that Shattered Communism.

This Mortal Coil: Poems of DNA

By |2026-04-20T17:21:01-05:00April 20th, 2026|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Books, Love, Poetry, Science, Timeless Essays|

Eric Forsbergh writes with insight, compassion, and humor, as he describes in well-honed vignettes the human condition, anchored in our DNA: love, identity, sex, families, babies, war, and death, as we go about our multifaceted lives, making music, solving crimes, surfing the internet, and coping with aging parents as we face our own mortality. This [...]

Conservative Credo

By |2026-04-14T16:00:59-05:00April 14th, 2026|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Conservatism, Featured, Love, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Truth|

Conservatism seeks the Truth that has emerged over time, drawing from the deep wellsprings of human experience, and builds anew on foundations that have withstood the tests of time. It fosters order and the flourishing of human beings as they live in relationship with one another. We are united in the eternal contract between the [...]

John With Jesus: From Passover to the Garden of Gethsemane

By |2026-04-01T21:55:26-05:00April 1st, 2026|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Catholicism, Christianity, Easter, Gospel Reflection, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

I went with Peter to make the arrangements for the Passover supper. When we arrived in Jerusalem, Jesus had told us to look for a man carrying a pitcher of water. We were to follow him into the house he entered, ask to speak to the owner, and say: “The master asks you where is [...]

Faith and Redeeming the Time

By |2026-03-26T15:10:13-05:00March 26th, 2026|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Community, Culture, Film, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

If the people who profess belief in God were to actually live with intentionality—in their business decisions, in their classrooms, in their television broadcasts and movie scripts, in their community organizations, and in their art—together we would transform the culture. One advantage I have in this conversation is that the Elliott household continues the discussion [...]

When Mother Teresa Came to Washington

By |2026-03-19T14:56:23-05:00March 19th, 2026|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Catholicism, Featured, Mother Teresa, Politics, Ronald Reagan, Sainthood, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

As I looked around that room in Washington, filled with so many powerful people, I realized that one day in Mother Teresa’s life brought more good to the face of the earth than all our efforts combined for a lifetime. It was utterly ludicrous, stepping out of a chauffeured White House limousine to go hear [...]

Caves, Happiness, and Liberal Learning

By |2025-12-09T10:31:08-06:00December 8th, 2025|Categories: Eva Brann, Liberal Learning, Plato, Socrates, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, W. Winston Elliott III|

If Plato’s extended metaphor of the mind as depicted by the city is true, every human mind has the capacity to train its Guardians, curb the appetitive part of the soul, and live on the grassy plains in the sun above the cave. It’s a question of true learning. When Eva Brann describes a liberal [...]

John Paul II & the Spiritual Victory Over Communism

By |2025-10-21T16:08:08-05:00October 21st, 2025|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Christianity, Communism, Poland, Politics, Senior Contributors, St. John Paul II, Timeless Essays|

It might be tempting to characterize Pope John Paul II as the political foe who vanquished communism. But that would be untrue. His position challenged communism in the metaphysical realm, not in the political arena. He understood that the error of communism lay in its fundamental understanding of man, who is not merely a unit [...]

Reweaving the Fabric of Our Culture With Love

By |2025-06-24T11:53:33-05:00June 24th, 2025|Categories: Audio/Video, Barbara J. Elliott, Christianity, Community, Love, Religion, Senior Contributors|

Today in America, people of faith are binding up the unraveled fabric of civil society in tangible ways. We hold the threads individually, but when they are bound together, we can reweave a picture of order and beauty in human souls, woven in the vibrant colors of love. People of faith have given our culture [...]

Why Was Nietzsche Perplexed by the Saint?

By |2025-06-18T22:16:11-05:00June 18th, 2025|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Christianity, Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy, Sainthood, Senior Contributors|

In Beyond Good and Evil, with a brilliance that terrifies, Nietzsche slashes his way through philosophers, intellectuals, religious and political leaders, not so much to refute them as to dismiss and disparage them. Why slow down to make a tightly reasoned case when withering sarcasm delivered presto can demolish them instead? Disdain drips from Nietzsche’s [...]

Remembering Ronald Reagan

By |2025-06-04T11:52:11-05:00June 4th, 2025|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Conservatism, Leadership, Presidency, Ronald Reagan, Timeless Essays|

Ronald Reagan was truly a great president who led our nation through a critical period in our history, demonstrating tenacity, courage and faith. He faced down an enemy and never blinked. He inspired Americans to look to our better angels and reminded us that we hold the potential within us to do great things, with [...]

“Anna Karenina”: Aristocratic Life Is All a Stage

By |2025-03-28T11:22:41-05:00March 28th, 2025|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Books, Culture, Film, Timeless Essays|

Anna Karenina is a lush, beautiful, stylized film about succumbing to sexual flame and the complicated relationships of infidelity that tear a beautiful woman apart. The themes of love, lust, and forgiveness are depicted in the opulence of aristocratic society in late 19th century tsarist Russia. If you are expecting an experience like Dr. Zhivago, forget it. This [...]

“Damsels in Distress”: A Cultural Anti-Depressant

By |2025-03-14T16:39:46-05:00March 13th, 2025|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Culture, Film, Modernity, Moral Imagination, Timeless Essays, Whit Stillman|

If you’re feeling depressed about the culture around you, Dr. Elliott has a prescription for you: one full dose of Whit Stillman’s 2011 film, Damsels in Distress, followed by tap dancing. I am perfectly serious. This charming story unfolds with a group of quirky college girls on the campus of Seven Oaks, a fictitious Ivy [...]

Celestial Courtroom: America at the Judgment of the Nations

By |2025-02-28T15:44:01-06:00February 28th, 2025|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Barbara J. Elliott, Featured, Fiction, Secularism, Timeless Essays|

Through unnamed sources involved in the proceedings, these notes were smuggled out of the Celestial Courtroom, where the ongoing evaluation of the Nations takes place in Committee Hearings in preparation for the Final Judgment. St. Peter was the presiding Chairman, Senator Screwtape the first witness. [Classified Top Secret, Embargo on Distribution] St. Peter: We are [...]

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