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Harmonizing Heaven and Earth: A Response to Kingsnorth’s “Against Christian Civilization”

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The answer to the fear of Babylon, then—Kingsnorth’s “civilizational Christianity”—is not to relinquish the fields where civilization is made in order to pursue a purer form of Christian service. The answer is rather to seek the Kingdom first with such clarity of intention that every domain of human making can assume its rightful share in Christ’s offering of himself and all created things to his Father.
English farm

Farmers’ Protests: Solidarity, Romanticism, and Populism

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Those who want to break the grip of a deadening globalist managerialism will need more than anger and romance. What is vitally needed now is creativity—new ways of living and revived traditions that can offer an alternative to a political economy that is failing everyone.
Catholic church in America

American Catholics (and Others) after the Election

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Catholics can nurture their own friendships with serious adherents of other denominations and faiths. We can collaborate on projects to improve our neighborhoods and broader society. We can learn from each other in dealing with the many challenges of running a godly household today, from the sublime to the mundane. Wherever possible, and to the extent that our respective traditions permit, we can pray together to our common Father—for His blessings on our country, at least.
Protestant church in America

Protestant Futures and Friendships

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The challenges Protestants face are serious. But if we have the humility to learn from others, we will find that there are models and resources readily available to help us think through how we might respond to our cultural moment.
grandmother and granddaughter

To Die Well, We Must Live Well—And for Others

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Living for others is hard for everyone, in any stage of life. And in a culture that exalts the autonomous self, it is hard to remember that sacrifice is the only path to flourishing.
multigenerational household

Multigenerational Living: A Step Back to Healthy Communal Life

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The love that rebuilds civilization comes when we live together. This is an opportunity to make a serious, radical, countercultural sacrifice of one’s own selfishness, a sacrifice that can change the family culture. It is not an easy decision or an easy life. But it is good.
Coffin

Dying Alone

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Enabling “the good death” begins with reviving attentiveness. We must first attend to the dying in our own communities. Care for the dying, in turn, enlivens reflectiveness on our own death. To advocate increased attendance in the death chamber is not meant to scare, nor to set up a macabre museum. It is instead a reminder that all men are mortal and that one’s eternal destiny is of the utmost urgency. It is instead a way to reintroduce and refine the art of dying well. 
free-range children

Free-Range Kids and the Parental Compass

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Constant supervision thwarts a child’s ability to develop important qualities such as resourcefulness, self-awareness, and perseverance. But independence with a strong inner compass, a compass that is oriented toward the safety and trustworthiness of healthy family relationships, helps children eventually carry that attached compass away from home and eventually calibrate it for themselves.
risk

Building Resilience in a High-Risk World

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Risks are essential to human flourishing. By taking measured risks—to our sanity, our financial stability, our perceived safety—we explore the limits of our ability to withstand discomfort, a posture that then allows us to care for others. In this way, well-ordered risk-taking is fundamentally others-oriented.
housing

It Takes a Swarm to Raise a Village

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For American families, housing has become too expensive. We can make it more affordable if we build enough housing. But in order to do that, we cannot stop at making it legal; we need to make it easy.
Family and children

What Makes America Family Unfriendly? A Q&A with Tim Carney

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The belief that childrearing is prohibitively expensive could be understood as a fruit of our collapsing civil society. Some people today don’t even consider that extended family, neighbors, churches, and other little platoons can, at least theoretically, provide real support to parents. They fall into believing that the only places to turn for help are the market and the state. Parents without community support then shift more burden onto themselves.
Brad Wilcox

Get Married: An Interview with Brad Wilcox

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Demographer Lyman Stone projects that, on the current course, as many as one in three young adults in the United States might never marry and as many as one in four will never have kids. That’s a lot of kinless Americans. Given the importance of marriage and family for what Jefferson called “the pursuit of happiness,” this would be a tragedy. So let’s find new ways to make it easier and more appealing for young adults to get married.
Thomas Aquinas

Courage to Engage the World: Thomism at 750

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Thomas Aquinas had an intellect fully alive. We might not share his title of Doctor of Humanity, but we have the same obligation: to cheerfully explore all, in service of all, for the good of all.
violinists

Music on Main Street: Building Community through Music

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Amid political polarization and concerns about declining social capital, local classical music associations are a bright spot for building humane and civil communities.
David Hume

Lessons from the Most Anxious Philosopher

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The ill effects of isolation on our mental health are not limited to our present cultural moment. In fact, the works of Enlightenment philosophers like David Hume reveal that many of our forefathers experienced similar levels of anxiety and depression, largely spurred by feelings of isolation. Here, we will examine the philosophical roots of our anxiety as seen in Hume’s works.
suburban neighborhood

Empowering People through a Renewed Sense of Place

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Crucially, Kaplan sees the fragility of American life not just in the low-income neighborhoods of inner-city Philadelphia, but in the isolation of otherwise well-off suburbs. His goal is to resurrect the idea of the neighborhood as a specific place with a distinctive sense of community. It’s a cultural narrative that runs counter to a mentality that prioritizes mobility over stability.
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