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woman in warm sweater reading book at home

The Scandal of Virtuous Reading

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In The Scandal of Holiness, Jessica Hooten Wilson suggests that we shift from passive, uncritical acceptance of cultural mores and entertainment to active formation in virtue, leading toward a life of sainthood. To do this, we need stories of sanctity that do not elide the messiness of everyday reality. These stories are neither saccharine accounts of cheap piety nor dry philosophical and moral theories.
football or soccer fans at a game in a stadium

Why the Super Bowl Is Good for America

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Don the jersey, embrace the pageantry, and invite friends over for seven-layer dip.
Two gold rings on wooden

Gay Marriage, Civil Rights, and Christian Virtue: An Interview with David French

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“What I see in modern America is something maybe a little bit different than what other folks see. I think the nation vis-à-vis its laws is far more just than it has been at virtually any point in its previous history. Racial discrimination is outlawed de jure. You have an extension of the First Amendment to all American communities. You have greater religious freedoms in a concrete way than we’ve ever enjoyed in the history of the United States. We have a lot of problems, but we’re better than we’ve been.”
School boy memorizing the lesson in classroom

There Is No Thinking without Memorizing

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We deploy faddish educational notions such as “critical thinking” to the detriment of our students. What is often derided as “rote-learning” is actually essential to sophisticated analysis. Memorization creates a base of knowledge. We draw upon this foundational knowledge as we engage in more conceptual thinking.
Indiana State House, Indianapolis

Abusing Religious Freedom for Abortion Access

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States would have to choose between religious liberty laws and every other law they would enforce, nearly all of which burden someone’s conscience and limit behaviors some people consider obligatory. What appears to be a victory for religious liberty is really just the opposite.
Young African American man sitting and lifting a dumbbell with the rack at gym

Is “Self-Improvement” a Real Thing?

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As we decide what habits to adopt or discard in 2023, it’s important to carefully sort through the advice on offer to see if it’s based on a sound vision of human nature and of what constitutes a good life. Thankfully, the Public Discourse archives can offer guidance here, as on so many other topics.
The United States capitol building in Washington DC on a summer day with its flag waving in the wind..

The Congressional Fight over the House Speakership Was a Good Thing

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The long debate over who should be speaker was a healthy expression of Madisonian transactional politics, and it had helped illuminate the path toward restoring the People’s House as the seat of American self-governance.
Photo of Cardinal Pell in wine cellar

Seven Days with Cardinal Pell

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I consider myself lucky to have gotten to know George Cardinal Pell a bit—and that after his 80th year.
Catholics in Pew at Mass

Census Fidei? Methodological Missteps Are Undermining the Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality

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As a social scientist, I have grave concerns about the methodological mess that has characterized this synod’s massive, unwieldy data-collection-and-analysis venture.

Joyous Surrender: A Rhapsody in Red (and Green)

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Christmas isn’t tasteful, isn’t simple, isn’t clean, isn’t elegant. Give me the tacky and the exuberant and the wild, to represent the impossibly boisterous fact that God has intruded in this world.
Book cover of the Betrothed

A Masterpiece Novel That Should Be an Instant Classic

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In Alessandro Manzoni’s recently translated novel, The Betrothed, the world is regularly pitted against the sanctity of a few. The novel often asks the reader, an implicit echo, how do you live as a faithful Christian when so much evil persists in the world? But more than anything, it shows us the reality of forgiveness and the possibility of fulfilling Jesus’s most challenging commandment: love your enemies.
Christian cross on USA flag

Treatise or Tweet? A Review of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism (Part 2)

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A call to repentance or prayer would not preclude action, but it would certainly force necessary and prudent reflection about the very problems Wolfe diagnoses and what the first response should be. Creating a deplorables basket of enemies on the political Left, while ignoring spiritual enemies, makes the project more political for sure, but not more Christian.
Open book and reading glasses on the table, illuminated by sunlight. Stack of vintage books in the background. Selective focus.

Classic, Contemporary, and Controversy: The 2022 Public Discourse Book List

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Reading recommendations from Public Discourse and the Witherspoon Institute.
Black and white photo of large family gathered

Toward a New Vision of Wealth

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In modern societies, wealth is not tied to land or long-lasting material things, nor is it transmitted across generations; it is fluid, shapeshifting, and usually doesn’t extend beyond the horizon of our own lives and personal needs. This series attempts to offer fresh ways of imagining wealth so that it becomes more conducive to cultural vibrancy and helps us flourish.

Are Marriage and Parenthood Only for the Wealthy?

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In a post-industrial society where marriage and fertility are expressions of values, rather than buttresses for economic security, policies that strive to make it as easy as possible for people to get married and have children should be at the forefront of the agenda. Broader state investment alone cannot take the place of a pro-family culture, from media outlets to religious institutions to schools.
Photo of the Lincoln memorial

Lincoln’s Marks of Democracy

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Take Lincoln’s words so that we will remember to speak frankly about what we consent to, and what we do not; take them, so that we march, not to hangings and burnings, not to cancellations and silencing, but to public forums and to ballot boxes, those altars of democracy.
Photo of Independence Hall in Philadelphia

Bare-Bones Religious Freedom

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In Religious Liberty and the American Founding, Phillip Muñoz believes that there is a kind of natural rights logic that leads to his minimalist version of religious freedom. His central premise is that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the “natural rights” logic that was prevalent in the Founding period; and he tries to follow this logic to its conclusions, come hell or high water.
Baptism of Constantine by Raphael

Antiseparationism: A Response to Scott Roniger

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If Hittinger does not think that the Church is meant to keep herself uninvolved with temporal politics, or that the temporal polis is meant to keep itself uninvolved with the Church, then his separationism does not conflict with integralism at all. This would be welcome news for Hittinger’s many integralist admirers. But it would also mean that Hittinger’s lectures, although rhetorically situated—and marketed—as a corrective to integralism, offer no such thing.
Christ enthroned from Van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece

The Sign of Contradiction: A Response to Mr. Urban Hannon

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The source of disagreement between the integralists, as represented by Mr. Urban Hannon, and Dr. Russell Hittinger is at root Christological. If God in fact achieved the separation of his Kingdom from temporal politics in the person of Jesus—as St. Augustine, Pope St. John Paul II, and Ratzinger claim—then Hittinger’s lecture is not only correct, but also profound. Recognizing such separation really would be the beginning of wisdom.
Painting of the signing of the Constitution in Independence Hall

What’s Wrong with Social Contract Theory

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Although social contract theory is a prominent feature of the American founding, it is both unsound and harmful to a proper understanding of politics. This fact presents a challenge to any form of conservatism that is based on protecting and promoting the principles of the American founding.
Photo of William F. Buckley

Where Does National Review Stand Today? A Conversation with Ramesh Ponnuru and Matt Franck

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National Review midwifed and nurtured the modern conservative movement into being. Conservatism today is in a very different situation from the one that Bill Buckley confronted in 1955. There is this vast conservative enterprise now; it’s kind of hydra-headed. But the basic need is, first, to think about the circumstances in which we find ourselves and how to apply conservative principles to them—or a conservative disposition, if one prefers—and second, how to build a coalition that is large enough to take these ideas off of the shelf.
Cartoon of ragged school

A School Model That Could Transform Society

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Lord Shaftesbury’s success in transforming education for the poor provides a variety of lessons for us today. His “ragged schools” suggest that by increasing local control of schools, expanding vocational training, and introducing curricula that recognize the integrated nature of human beings, our society might become more enriched—both materially and spiritually.
Carravaggio's Bacchus painting

Did Ancient Greeks and Romans Really Believe in the Gods?

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In Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion, Jacob Mackey argues that the ancient Romans’ participation in polytheistic rituals necessarily implied that they believed in their gods. But his discussion of Roman religion would have been even more persuasive if he had spent more time discussing ancient documents and less time explaining modern theories of belief and practice.
Photo of 10 commandments monument

Rights and Liberty in the Western Legal Tradition

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John Witte, Jr.’s The Blessings of Liberty offers a wonderful overview of the development of human rights in the West. He contends that natural rights are found in the Bible, were developed by Christian thinkers, and played an important role in the West long before Enlightenment thinkers wrote about them. Witte also focuses on religious freedom more narrowly as the preeminent right.
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