Jeffrey Bilbro

“Love Letter to America.” A.M. Hickman takes a hard look at America’s many dysfunctions: “Then the realization sinks in like news of a dear old friend’s death: There beneath the giant plastic rodent breasts of Betty Beaver’s, you stand not only in the richest country in the world, but in the third-richest state in that […]

A democracy is not kept by filling in a ballot bubble once every four years. It’s kept by responsibly and virtuously exercising our freedoms in our homes, communities, and institutions day by day.

“Dinner with Dinosaurs.” In a wide-ranging and probing essay, Lauren Spohn considers what kind of narrative we need to motivate human action and guide our technological and cultural project: “It’s partly thanks to the success of Bacon’s program that we are here: paying attention to empirical reality worked so well that we have more or […]

“Against Syncretism, For Christians Building Like Christians.” Jake Meador provides a good summary of and response to Paul Kingsnorth’s recent lecture: “Bucer’s measure of judging a Christian society was not its technological advancement, its political power, or its wealth; his measure was to what degree the poor were cared for (he held that any society […]

“Left Behind in Grimsby.” Simon Cross narrates the tensions he experienced ministering in a neighborhood where he wasn’t stuck: “There’s a feeling of inadequacy that comes with knowing how little you can do to help people. Social pressures, lack of opportunities, chronic health conditions, and poor decisions made, or made for you, at formative stages […]

As an English professor, I repeatedly tell my students that metaphors matter. In the context of media technologies, evocative metaphors may be the

“The Moses Option.” Paul Kingsnorth writes against the dangerous allure of activism: “What is the ‘solution’ to our modern ‘problem’? For a start, it is to stop thinking like that, because that is Machine thinking. We do not have a ‘problem’ that can be ‘solved’ by politics or war or top-down civilisational projects. We just […]

“An Education in Thanksgiving.” Rachel Alexander Cambre gives a very perceptive reading of Hannah Coulter: “Stories that bring the past to life, on the other hand, pass down memories of the blessings that have shaped our lives, and in doing so, they pass down gratitude. Rather than dismiss the past as irrelevant or mistaken, stories […]

“The Berry Center Journal.” The fall issue of the Berry Center Journal includes an opening letter from Mary Berry, a 1989 speech by John M. Berry Jr., and more, including a new short story by Wendell Berry: “it is a prayer also for his home country and his home history. For if Wheeler had gone […]

I’ll be taking the next couple of weeks off for the Christmas holidays. Look for these to resume in January. “Can a Phone-Free Learning Environment Work? This College President Emphatically Says Yes.” Charlie Camosy talks with Wyoming Catholic College president Kyle Washut about their campus culture and the benefits of cutting out much digital tech: […]