Community

God, Wine, and Maryland

Wine is the gift that lifts our gaze from a world of toil to a horizon of leisure and community. It is the gift that reminds us of our primordial communion with one another and with the divine, and the gift that commemorates the radical generosity of...

Can We Restore Civility to America?

This summer and fall, we’ve talked a lot about the decline of civility in our politics—because of growing political polarization, bickering on social media, and rudeness in public spaces. “Every day rudeness, disrespect and hostility sideline collaboration and...

Cultivating Friendship in a Fractured Age

What is friendship? Why is it important and why is it worth cultivating? These axiomatic questions form a significant part of the thought and writing of C. S. Lewis. In a letter to his lifelong friend,...

The Glorious Inefficiency of Local Bookstores

Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Dean Abbott as he considers the importance of the small, local bookstore to civilization. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher Our family lives in the...

The Eternal Community of Russell Kirk

Russell Kirk never liked the word individualism, believing it both an incorrect way to understand the human person as well as aesthetically unattractive. Having read much of the great German and French Christian humanists in the 1940s and...

Should We Love or Hate the Suburbs?

Love for the suburbs is in relatively short supply. The great American migration out of center cities coincided with a number of social trends, not least the dramatic disengagement from civil society spotlighted by Robert Putnam in

Our Unknown Neighbors & the Fate of Community

The last Saturday morning in August, my wife noticed that some of our neighbors had a moving truck outside their home. After watching with the kids for a minute or two, she acknowledged that she had never...

Why We Need “Too Many” Firefighters

Firefighters’ role in the perpetuation of the common good in American communities is significant, even in surprising and unexpected ways. At a time when America is suffering a decline in community service and volunteerism, we should be grateful for firefighters serving our communities in other ways...

Mending Walls: Why Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

The liberal rage against the border wall has much to do with the nature of boundaries. Walls, borders, and fences are manifestations of restraint. Fallen humanity naturally resists the restraints of order that keep the unbridled passions under control. Walls are needed to keep the peace...

Rebuilding Western Civilization: A Tale of Two Monasteries

The three vows of the Benedictine monk are obedience, stability, and conversion of life. In our own ways, we can follow this example, making it real by paying attention to prayer, cracking the books in solid study, and rolling up our sleeves in the honest, hard work...

How Aristotle Got Virtue Wrong

Aristotle’s reasoning about virtue, with its emphasis on man’s relationship to his own soul and man’s ability to perfect his own virtue, opened a path to relativism and radical individualism... All philosophical inquiry is united by two foundational elements....

A Message to Graduating Seniors: Graduate to a Higher Calling

While graduation should be a time of celebration, it should also be a time when young people are encouraged to ponder, discern, and “graduate” to that higher calling that corresponds to the desires of their restless hearts...

Mike Rowe’s Little Platoons

In an age of cynicism and selfishness, Mike Rowe's "Returning the Favor" is an unabashedly feel-good show, telling the story of the many unsung, little, local platoons that comprise the heart of our communities and that quietly give the lie to the idea that only the omnipotent State can take...

Building Communities With Music

Classical music must find its place in love—love of home, of community, of neighbor, and of the culture that binds all these things together. In all but the most exceptional cases, our orchestras won’t survive if they don’t get this part right...