Two films of the past fifteen years, The Book of Eli (2010) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), dramatize this confluence of grifter capitalism and religious demagoguery in the years immediately prior to Trump’s real-life rise to power. 

J. Laurence Cohen on the fusion of religion and politics in the US

“HBO’s Watchmen ruthlessly unmasks the fantasy that whistleblowers alone will end police corruption.”

J. Laurence Cohen explores genealogies of vigilante justice, from American history to HBO’s Watchmen

Evidently, the language which would be assumed under the Eighth Amendment originates from the intent of delegates to secure proper respect for the unalienable rights of all people.

Jackson Jannell on liberty and death

[T]he particular form of liberalism we see today is influenced by what can be described as a contemporary form of gnosticism.

Andrew Latham on the myth of post-liberalism

[The 1990s] can demonstrate the existence and possibility of the very kind of “miracles” that Arendt encourages us to expect and initiate.

Elizabeth Stice explores glimmers of historical hope

If we want memories of miracles to draw on, we can do worse than to remember the 1990s.

Elizabeth Stice on the human role in history's miracles

What is Flourishing? What is good work?

Grant Martsolf and Brandon Daily introduce The Savage Collective

Entering the Pickle was also an unusual experience… a fact that the inscription “Step high, speak low, and leave your dignity behind” emblazoned on its front door… cheekily acknowledged.

Elysia Balavage on a bohemian pillar of the Chicago Renaissance

Guns, in these contexts divorced from a practical function, have come to bear a symbolic meaning.

Catherine Yanko responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

[T]o trace a genealogy of American gun violence would seem to require tracing the genealogy of a double-helix: the genealogy of guns and the genealogy of Americans-with-guns.

James DeMasi responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

The emphasis in Western Christianity has been placed upon individual fallenness and the need for a personal conversion, in contrast to the deeply collectivist culture in which Jesus originally spoke.

Jonathan Lyonhart responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

Winthrop’s remarkable sermon outside the distorting lens of contemporary American exceptionalism might just help us see that a new way forward—a way of love—is perhaps just a really old way forward.

Douglas Sikkema responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

Those in the past are not only metaphors for how we view the family as a structure today: they were people whose lives can provide some vision for our own.

LuElla D’Amico responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

Episode 2.4 of the Genealogies of Modernity podcast is live!

Carlos Bulosan’s humanist vision of freedom was articulated through his deep attention to the material conditions of Filipino life.

Colton Bernasol’s retrieval of a giant of American letters

[Bulosan] locates the “who” of America on its margins, expanding the nation’s definition of itself to include those who have been excised from its democratic institutions and practices.

Colton Bernasol’s retrieval of a giant of American letters

[T]he decline of sickness funds and early community-rated plans transformed a system rooted in voluntarism and mutual aid…

Grant Martsolf on the transition from industrial sickness funds to insurance plans in the United States

Modern American viewers seem to suffer from the same bias as The Gilded Age characters themselves: if it isn’t the English way, it isn’t anything at all.

Jacob Martin on Julian Fellows’s newest television series

The patriotism and religious piety felt by U.S. Catholics during WWI through efforts to supply devotional objects paved the way for the solidification of American Catholic identity.

Sarah Luginbill on portable altars and Catholics becoming American

We cannot know the end of America, though we know from the first unfurling of Ishmael’s prophecy that the voyage of the Pequod is doomed.

Daniel Fitzpatrick follows in the wake of the doomed Pequod