Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Reviews

January 09, 2025

The Historian as Priestly Gardener

Contemporary Western culture is profoundly ahistorical, Sarah Irving-Stonebraker reasons in her latest book, Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistoric Age. The Australian professor devotes the first quarter of the book to making the case that, around 2010, the occidental world entered this “phase of late modernity,” to which she assigns the moniker “the Ahistoric Age.” Continue Reading...
January 08, 2025

Jordan Peterson’s Bible Study

If there’s one thing Jordan B. Peterson has proved in his almost-decade run as an internationally known public intellectual, it’s that he can fight. Since his 2016 criticism of a Canadian law for effectively compelling speech related to the use of certain gender pronouns, the professional psychologist and academic has taken on a host of rhetorical sparring partners on Canadian, British, and Australian television; he’s also argued with prominent politicians, scientists, academics, and bloggers. Continue Reading...
December 23, 2024

Christmas and the Joy of Extravagance

Joseph Bottum’s name is likely familiar to many readers of Religion and Liberty: From his tenure as editor-in-chief at First Things to his lovely poetry to his essays at premier venues like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, andThe Times of London, Bottum has been a leading figure of conservative American letters for decades. Continue Reading...
December 19, 2024

Homestead Is Not the Refuge It Wants to Be

It’s getting harder and harder to have a movie that isn’t caught up in the culture wars. Franchises like the MCU, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars sagas, and Disney’s Pixar animations, which once united a broad spectrum of viewers, now get yelled at by both sides, either for not being progressive enough on the one hand or being too “woke” on the other. Continue Reading...
December 11, 2024

Treating Family like Royalty

Many years ago, an acquaintance of my wife’s and mine married a Habsburg. She was not of noble stock—just a good ol’ American girl whose beauty piqued the interest of a European archduke during a visit to the states. Continue Reading...
December 10, 2024

The Life and Death of Alexei Navalny

On February 16, 2024, Alexei Navalny died under mysterious circumstances in the remote Siberian penal colony to which he was moved in late 2023. Founder and leader of the Anti- Corruption Foundation, Navalny was a long-time dissident and one of the most vocal critics of Putin’s regime over the past two decades, so his suspicious death was no surprise to anyone remotely acquainted with contemporary Russian politics. Continue Reading...