Many years ago, I read the two-volume History of Christianity by Kenneth Scott Latourette (1884-1968). It’s unlikely that Yale University would hire someone like him today, as it did in 1921 – a Baptist minister and experienced as a missionary in China and Japan. He first joined Reed College in Oregon (think about Reed College today) and then the Yale Divinity School. His B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees were all from Yale. He published numerous books on the history of Christianity, including two seven-volume editions. The year he retired from Yale, 1953, he also published the two-volume history that I read about 40 years later.
Latourette’s thesis was that Christianity seemed to move in roughly 500-year cycles, in a pattern of growth, consolidation, scandal and collapse, and reformation. If that timeline is true, we’re due for a collapse and reformation period now, the last being the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. I don’t know if John Seel has read Latourette, but I suspect he has. The Anglican “cultural entrepreneur” says we are standing at a civilization inflection point, which comes along about every 500 years. Western civilization is collapsing, becoming hostile to Christianity, and the focus is moving east and south.
One of the stupidest political moves in an era of stupid political moves was for the Transportation Safety Administration to target former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as a potential terrorist (don’t be surprised if you haven’t read about this in the legacy media). Now both the U.S House and Senate are investigating.
Fact-checking, which journalists used to do, has now become a political weapon. M. Anthony Mills at The New Atlantis describes how the refs are working us.
More Good Reads
Art
Walking – Sonja Banskin Mesher.
50 Years of Building Art on the Wall – Laura Shimel at Missouri Historical Society.
British Stuff
Identity politics has undermined policing – David Green at The Critic Magazine.
American Stuff
The 1864 American Insurrection That Wasn’t: Presidential Election Day and the New York City Fires – Stephen Romaine at Emerging Civil War.
Israel
No, Mr. President, the Protesters Don’t Have a Point – Eli Lake at The Free Press.
Faith
What Makes Our Town (or Any Place) Great – Seth Lewis.
7 Things That Make the Gospel of John Unique – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.
Have You Ever Tried Praying Poetically? – Tim Challies.
Writing and Literature
All the Devils in “King Lear” – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.
Arsy-versey Argy-bargy: How Chaucer remade language – Camille Ralphs at Poetry Foundation.
4 Goals for Good Writing – Ian Harber at Endeavor.
Ludicrous But Memorable: Agatha Christie’s The Big Four – Curtis Evans at CrimeReads.
Harold Bloom in Silicon Valley – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.
Poetry
Gentle Surrender – Paul Wittenberger.
“A Crowded Trolley Car,” poem by Elinor Wylie – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
You Can Call Me Al – Paul Simon in Hyde Park
Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas (1881) by Ivan Nilkolayvich Kramskoi (1837-1887).
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