Saturday, May 28, 2022

Saturday Good Reads - May 28, 2022


What’s old is new again, or maybe it’s always new. On May 21, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick delivered his most famous sermon. The pastor of First Presbyterian Church of New York City, Fosdick entitled his sermon “Shal the Fundamentalists Win?” Tension was rising among both Presbyterians and American Christians broadly over very basic theological issues. Fosdick was on the progressive said, and he took aim at conservative beliefs, like the virgin birth and the miracles of Jesus. Kevin DeYoung has the story of that sermon and what happened as a result. Obbie Tyler Todd at The Gospel Coalition has a similar yet different take on the sermon.

Much has been written and spoken about what’s called “woke capitalism” – big corporations (sometimes called the “Davos crowd”) embracing progressive positions on social issues. Think Disney, Big Tech, Target, even longstanding companies like State-Farm Insurance. Ilya Levine at Quillette writes that this embrace is actually entirely rational (i.e., market driven), but that it is also ultimately unsustainable. Read “Woke Capitalism’s Tragedy of the Commons.”

 

COVID-19 is now yesterday’s news (sort of), and the news media are on to the next new thing, this time, monkeypox. One of journalism’s own arbiters of what’s news, the Neiman Lab at Harvard, says enough already! “Stop googling monkeypox and read this story about cybercondria and the news!

 

More Good Reads

 

Faith

 

The Return of the Culture War – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Is Reading Fiction a Waste of Time? – Kathleen Mulhern at Plough Quarterly.

 

You Must Change Your Writing Style: Ward Farnsworth’s Guidebooks to English Virtuosity and Ancient Philosophy – Colin Marshall at Los Angeles Review of Books.

 

Ukraine

 

Even McDonald’s Couldn’t Save Russia – Ian Birrell at UnHerd.

 

War of attrition: The conflict in Ukraine may yet end in stalemate – Daniel DePetris at The Critic Magazine.

 

Life in Wartime Ukraine: Two Essays – Andrei Krasniashikh at Literary Hub.

 

Life and Culture

 

American Madness: On the mass murder of children in Texas – Bari Weiss at Common Sense.

 

The uses and abuses of nostalgia: The old like to think they had it harder, but secretly feel they had it better, too – Ben Sixsmith at The Critic Magazine.

 

Covid was liberalism’s endgame – Matthew Crawford at UnHerd.

 

More Powerful Than the Hate That Divides: A Response to the Laguna Woods Shooting on May 15, 2022 – K.C. Liu at Sola Network.

 

We Aren't Raising Adults. We Are Breeding Very Excellent Sheep – William Deresiewicz at Common Sense.

 

British Stuff

 

London's Elizabeth Line finally opens—a look at the ambitious art commissions across the train stations of the £19bn project – Louisa Buck at The Art Newspaper.

 

American Stuff

 

The Bullard Boys – Tragedy for A Mississippi Family – Sheritta Bitikofer at Emerging Civil War.

 

“Field of Dreams”: Baseball, the Prodigal, & Paradise – Stephen Turley at Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Poetry

 

Latchkey Kids – Kelly Belmonte at All Nine.


Weary Traveler – Jordan St. Cyr



Painting: Girl Reading, oil on canvas by Harold Knight (1874-1961).

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