“Madame Medusa”
Girl With A Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer Look at me not, Yet I persistently stare. Eye contact would be fatal: Flush flesh would freeze into rough rock. Perseus thought he slayed me — That was a myth. […]
My Adventures Colonizing the World With Music
I'm a composer, and I was recently informed by some self-assured young academics that being influenced by the European classics made me guilty of “white supremacy” and musical “colonization”! Who knew? All these years I thought I was lovingly sharing something beautiful with others. Half a century ago, as a mere lad, I must confess [...]
Art and Grace: St. Fra Angelico
Fra Angelico’s art, like his personality, is poised between the charm and grace of the Gothic and the realistic spirit of the Renaissance. That’s why he is the best model for the Christian artist, indeed any artist who is guided by higher principles and universal truth. The Annunciation One of the recurring themes [...]
What Has Happened to Our Sense of Shame?
Shame is a product of a society that prioritizes the soul over the body and is a defense mechanism against all that is low, vulgar, and sinful. The loss of shame in today’s world comes from a profound change in values. We used to have a sense of shame that influenced our behavior. Reflecting upon [...]
Where We Find God: The Significance of Church Architecture
The architecture of the church—the spire, the stained-glass windows, the cold, the acoustics, the hardness of pews—fills us with a sense of the sublime. Its greatness creates in us a feeling not of inferiority but of human scale, a scale that must be remembered in the face of God. For those of us of faith, [...]
Whittaker Chambers & the Nashville Agrarians: The Ground Beneath Their Feet
The kinship between the Nashville Agrarians and Whittaker Chambers is seen in three main ways: the farming life itself, the concept of private property, and the religious dimension of human existence. Chambers emerges as a singular figure who, more so than the Nashville group, provides a model for those who are called to live a [...]
Ecumenical Truth Versus the Falsehoods of Ecumenism
The authentic definition of “ecumenical” has nothing to do with the modern understanding of “ecumenism,” which appears to be the willingness to dilute or delete doctrine in pursuit of a perceived unity among disparate groups of believers. Being ecumenical is being evangelical, whereas the new-fangled word ecumenism is the failure to evangelize. It is important [...]
Singing in Dark Times
During our time of confinement, I was most thankful to be with my family. It’s a lot of people in one house. There’s a lot of noise and it is often chaotic, but my kids are cool people and it was a gift to have the extra time together. My husband, aside from being my [...]
Euripides: Poet-Prophet of Pity
Responding to the great bloodshed of young men, women, and virgins he experienced during the Peloponnesian War, Euripides exposes the horrors of war and its damaging effects on humans, particularly on women, in his war plays. Euripides’s dramatic tragedies appeal to our sense of pity and call for peace. The acme of Euripides’s literary genius [...]
Is Christianity a Story?
If we accept that Christianity is a story, emphasize the primacy of faith, and deemphasize historical testimony, are we not merely reduced to telling our different stories, without being able to point to anything as having compelling objective truth? The mythopoetic appeal of Christianity is strong and valid. Yet there has to be something that [...]
Renewing the Clash & Combination of Western Education
“The Heart of Culture” traces the success of Western education, rooted in the very nature of Western civilization as a historical “clash and combination” of Greek culture and Judeo-Christian religion. It is the perfect book for parents, teachers, and administrators who are dissatisfied with modern education but don’t know why. The Heart of Culture: A [...]
Whither Evangelicalism After Trump?
In the wake of the Trump presidency, we are reminded of a persistent theme amongst mainstream evangelical elites: They, like the media of the last four years, have falsely attributed certain ideas, attitudes, and behaviors to Donald Trump, his supporters, and Christian nationalists.[1] The question is why. At this point, it would be incorrect to [...]
We No Longer Make Boys Into Men
In our time of fatherlessness, underachieving boys, social fraying, and the collapse of marriage, helping boys to become men needs to be done. We owe it to them in justice, or else we will not have healthy families, parishes, neighborhoods, and towns. Many years ago, in an article for Touchstone called, “A Requiem for Friendship,” [...]
Rod Dreher and The Nostalgia Option
As techno-totalitarianism really gets into gear, it is up to each one of us to root our lives, our homes, our schools, and our parishes in the eternal values of the Christian faith and classical learning—and we need to do so with imagination and realism, avoiding the temptation to become nostalgic dreamers. Live Not by [...]