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 [...]
The refusal to consider the possibility that the Magi were historical figures and not mythical magicians reflects the bias of both modernists and conservative believers. For Saint Matthew’s Gospel to actually be true rocks both their boats. As the new year begins, The Imaginative Conservative looks back at some of its finest essays of [...]
At the Annunciation, in a room in Nazareth, the fresh innocence of Eve is recapitulated, but in a new configuration. This is the nature of creation: that all things general, to become real, must become particular. It should therefore not come as a surprise that God Himself should also take particular flesh from a particular [...]
Using dramatic license, “The Crown” features the romance between Charles, Prince of Wales, and his future queen. Though appearing to be in a sense a real-life Cinderella, Diana, Princess of Wales, is a kind of symbol of our dysfunctional modern Western society. We were living in England in 1997, when Diana, Princess of Wales, [...]
The aim and ambition of Jeremy Bentham was that everyone would be happy. But how is it possible for everyone to be happy? The Grand Inquisitor gives the answer: by yielding their freedom and submitting to their overlords. This is the dysfunctional and distorted psychology behind the entitlement culture and the welfare state. When [...]
My experience of Southern Catholics is that they are like fried chicken: They may be spicy and crunchy on the outside—living from hand to mouth, building new churches and schools, and raising money for pet projects, realizing they are somewhat suspect and on the edge—but they are warm and tender on the inside. The [...]
The secret of Jane Austen’s genius is that she conceals the most serious of themes within light-hearted tales: true repentance and regret. Our own vanity and egotistical deceptions are revealed, and having been made self-aware, we stop and laugh and realize that our delight has filled us with light. Along with Granada Television’s Brideshead [...]
The ancient myth-makers knew beneath the glittering palaces of worldly power there were bullish beasts like the Minotaur lurking in the labyrinth. Likewise, beneath our surface palace there is a cavern, a cellar, a dark and bewildering labyrinth. Each of us has his own Minotaur—the fearsome blend of the man and the beast in [...]
Moralistic, therapeutic deism is running on the fumes of authentic red-blooded historic Christianity. When it finally sputters to a halt, what will take its place? The Christian faith in the second half of the twenty-first century will be mystical, mythological, and miraculous, or it will be nothing at all. A graph posted by Stephen [...]
James Cone’s “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” is a passionate and excellent contribution to the discussion of race and religion from the perspective of African-American believers and should help white Christians to see the world from the viewpoint of their black brothers and sisters. The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone [...]
Uberto Pasolini’s “Still Life” is a haunting, original, and moving tribute to human worth and self-sacrificial love at the street level. It is a beautiful, quiet film that packs an emotional and philosophical punch far beyond its weight. Always on the lookout for a film that is better than the formulaic, ideologically-driven entertainment that [...]
What Nietzsche calls Christianity is, in fact, a twisted form of the Judeo-Christian faith. Of course, there are people who use humility as their trump card, their piety to blackmail others, their meekness to manipulate, and their obedience to secretly dominate. Perhaps this is all the Christianity young Nietzsche saw in his Protestant pastor [...]
Together, the corrupting sins of pride and envy destroyed the democracies of ancient Athens and Rome. But what lies at the root of these two greatest of sins? And is there any remedy or antidote that can cure us, and our society, once we give way to them? Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s “Immortal Combat” offers [...]
In “The Decadent Society,” Ross Douthat’s definition of decadence reaches more deeply into the underlying causes of our present rot. Is American society sick, sclerotic, sterile, and stagnant, as he suggests? The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, by Ross Douthat (272 pages, Avid Reader Press, 2020) There is [...]