I write semi-regularly at the Front Porch Republic.
“Forming Imaginations that Value Faithful Service.” Center for Rural Ministry. November 2023.
“Online Content Runs from Good to Bad. The Bigger Danger Is Online Habits.” (A review of Samuel James’s Digital Liturgies.) Christianity Today. November 2023.
“What Problem Does ChatGPT Solve?” Plough. July 2023.
“One Island in Time.” (A review of Eugene Vodolazkin’s A History of the Island.) Current. June 2023.
“An Exile’s Suitcase: A.E. Stallings’s This Afterlife.” Plough. May 2023.
“Dying to the Indispensable Self.” Christianity Today. February 2023.
“Media-Friendly Sins of Other People.” Plough. November 2022.
“Practicing Authentic Conversation.” (A review of Wendell Berry’s The Need to be Whole) Front Porch Republic. October 2022.
“No More ‘Normal.’ How to Live after the COVID Apocalypse.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 2022.
“Severe Mercies and Magnanimous Despair.” Front Porch Republic. May 2022.
“Why You Should Pay Attention to Local, Not Just National, History.” Lyceum Movement. March 2022.
“What to Do with News: Learning Wisdom at Walden Pond.” Desiring God. January 2022.
“How Tech Reform Diminishes Us.” The New Atlantis. Winter 2022.
“Spiritual Secession: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth.” Front Porch Republic. November 2021.
“To Fit and to Fix: The Moral Imagination of Alexander McCall Smith.” Plough. September 2021.
“Labours of Love.” Comment. May 2021.
“Tending the Soil of our Homes: Gracy Olmstead’s Paean to Roots.” Front Porch Republic. March 2021.
“Forming Redemptive Communities Outside the Digital Public Sphere.” Theopolis. March 2021. I also wrote a brief follow-up to a discussion regarding this essay: “Seeing Clearly and Making Do.”
“Pilgrimage and the News: Journeying Together toward God.” Fare Forward. March 2021.
“In What Sense Abundant? (a response to Matt Frost)” The New Atlantis. Fall 2020.
“Going Dark.” Breaking Ground. 29 September 2020. This essay was collected in the printed volume that resulted from this project.
“Turn Aside: The Poetic Vision of R. S. Thomas.” Plough Quarterly. 25 August 2020.
“Free America, The Front Porch Republic, and America’s Decentralist Tradition.” Front Porch Republic. June 2020.
“Wendell Berry and Zoom.” Front Porch Republic. May 2020.
“Presidential Politics: Pseudo Choices and a Third Party Worth Considering.” Front Porch Republic. November 2019.
“Ernest Gaines, 1933-2019.” Front Porch Republic. November 2019.
“Two Great Interruptions.” Front Porch Republic. November 2019.
“Learning to Read ‘the Book in Front of Us.'” Front Porch Republic. August 2019.
“What I Stand For is What I Stand On,” a review of Library of America’s What I Stand On: The Collected Essays of Wendell Berry 1969–2017, by Wendell Berry. Plough Quarterly. 26 March 2019.
“Fierce Velleity: Poetry as Antidote to Acedia.” Front Porch Republic. February 2019.
“Whose Nostalgia? Which Liberalism? Reflections on ‘Faith and Democracy in America.'” Front Porch Republic. December 2018.
“Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Politics.” Front Porch Republic. December 2018.
“Dirt Thick with Known Dead.” Front Porch Republic. November 2018.
“Messing About in Boats.” Front Porch Republic. September 2018.
“Educating Humans to Subvert Technocracy.” Front Porch Republic. August 2018.
“Restoring Trust in the Aftermath of Anti-Social Media.” Front Porch Republic. June 2018.
“J. Drew Lanham’s Clear-Eyed Vision of the Land.” Front Porch Republic. May 2018.
“The Rooted Faith in Wendell Berry’s Fiction,” with Jack Baker. The Gospel Coalition. 13 March 2018.
“Patiently Learning to Belong,” a review of the Library of America’s Port William Novels and Stories: The Civil War to World War II, by Wendell Berry. The University Bookman. 4 February 2018.
Rev. of Awaiting the King, by James K. A. Smith. Mere Orthodoxy. 20 November 2017.
Rev. of Wendell Berry and the Given Life, by Ragan Sutterfield. Christianity Today. April 2017.
“Does Wendell Berry Have Rose-Colored Glasses?” Front Porch Republic. December 2016.
Rev. of 99 Poems: New and Selected, by Dana Gioia. Books and Culture, October 2016.
“Baseball: Practices for Coming Home,” First Things. 30 August 2016.
“Reading Wendell Berry in the National Parks,” National Parks Traveler. 31 July 2016.
“Eating as Discipleship,” Comment. 28 July 2016.
Rev. of You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, by James K. A. Smith. Mere Orthodoxy, April 2016.
“The Seer: Seeing Through Wendell Berry’s Eyes.” Front Porch Republic. March 2016.
Rev. of From Nature to Creation: A Christian Vision for Understanding and Loving Our World, by Norman Wirzba. Books and Culture (Jan/Feb 2016): 5.
“A Way of Happening,” Curator Magazine. 14 December 2015.
Rev. of Twisted Shapes of Light, by William Jolliff. Windhover, July 2015.
“Wendell Berry Opts Out of the ‘Culture of Violence.'” Front Porch Republic. April 2015.
Rev. of An Introduction to Christian Environmentalism: Ecology, Virtue, and Ethics, by Kathryn D. Blanchard and Kevin J. O’Brien. EcoTheo Review, April 2015.
Rev. of Sunshine Wound, by L. S. Klatt. Books and Culture, 2014.
“Imagining Healthy Work: Why We all Have to Become Monks.” Front Porch Republic. March 2014.
“The Taste of Strawberries: Tolkien’s Imagination of the Good,” Christ and Pop Culture Magazine: Beauty’s Allure 2.16. 8 August, 2014.
“Beauty Will Save the World.” Front Porch Republic. October 2013.
“Place Isn’t Just Geographical.” Front Porch Republic. May 2013.